Watching right-leaning TV host Elisabeth Hasselback on HLN’s Joy Behar Show tonight, I found myself wondering (not for the first time) why Republicans are so enamored with Scott Brown.
Here’s a guy who won a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts—granted, that’s quite a feat for a Republican—and, as a result, we have conservatives calling for him to run for president in 2012.
It can’t be Brown’s conservative credentials. In his Massachusetts surroundings, Brown’s political ideology might be somewhere to the right of this guy. And in any state he chooses to run in, Brown’s conservative credentials can stand on their own two legs. But we’re talking about a segment of the Republican Party that ran away from John McCain in droves. And by the time Scott Brown’s Senate story is written, he may have proven to be as much a maverick as The Maverick himself.
Brown is pro-life, believes the institution of marriage is best suited for one man and one woman, and opposes the health care reform bill that passed Congress.
But he also says the issue of abortion is best decided by a woman and her doctor, favors civil unions and opposes a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and supported Massachusetts’ health care legislation, which required all residents to obtain insurance…a stipulation of the federal health care bill that conservatives have decried as unconstitutional.
That sounds sorta like the senior Senator from Arizona, doesn’t it? Or the one from South Carolina? Or—dare I say it—Tennessee? They’re hardly liberals, and they clearly fall on the right side of the political dial, but cruise the conservative sector of the blogosphere for any length of time and you’ll find plenty of right-minded folks griping about their political views, even going so far as to slap the RINO tag on them.
So why Scott Brown? What makes him a better face of the Republican Party than up-and-coming conservatives like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker or Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty?
Brown’s political ideology makes him seem more like someone who could reach across the aisle and compromise with Democrats than someone who will tow the official GOP line like a Newt Gingrich or a Fred Thompson. But the last time I checked, neither party was very much interested in holding hands and singing Kumbaya with the other side.
So why Scott Brown? It seems to me that Republicans are enamored with Scott Brown because he gave them hope by achieving at a time when the party as a whole was floundering. Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like where the Democrats were at in 2004 with a newly-elected U.S. Senator who today occupies the White House? And, in fact, aren’t the Republicans who are clamoring for Brown to make a run for the presidency in 2012 simply banking on his newfound political stardom rather than his track record or even his stance on political issues, since most of us don’t know exactly what his stances are?
And isn’t it interesting that some of the same Republicans who are seriously mentioning Brown and the White House in the same sentence were criticizing Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign as a half-term, inexperienced Senator running for the presidency?
It will never cease to amaze me how closely the political parallels run between two parties whose ideologies couldn’t be more different.
February 6th, 2010 at 6:51 am
Who are these “Republicans who are clamoring for Brown to make a run for the presidency in 2012″? I have heard rumors in the media but haven’t seen anyone specifically quoted. I’m wondering if this isn’t a case of the liberal news media creating something or at least trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. There may be some moderate or liberal ‘Republicans’ making such statements but I doubt any truly conservative Republican seriously thinking of Brown for President.
I think the reason Republicans and especially the “Tea Party” folks were excited about Brown’s candidacy for Senator is that they saw him as a savor to end the filibuster proof advantage the Democrats had in the senate. One of the things driving the Tea Party Movement is their helpless dismay of watching Obama and the Democrats “fundamentally change” the America they cherish into something they loath. They saw the government, in a few short months take over a huge chunk of our manufacturing base (GE & Chrysler), the banking industry, and it appeared our health care system was next. They saw the destruction coming to our economy in the form of Obama’s “cap and trade” climate control bill. It isn’t so much that they are enamored with Brown himself but they saw him as their best and only hope to end the filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
And this is one reason I think you see a new-found respect for the Tea Party Movement among some of the smarter Democrats. They saw the Tea Party people become pragmatic in accepting a moderate Republican and enthusiastically supporting his candidacy in the most liberal state in the country to achieve their political goals. This is a sign of maturity and seriousness in the movement and a sign they that are certainly a force to be reckoned with.
Again, I would be interested if you know of any truly conservative Republican who has made such a statement of support for a Brown candidacy for president. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but I have read these vague references in the media about this but all I am seeing is smoke so far.