SUPPORTING SCOTT BROWN: PRAGMATISM OR PRINCIPLE?
My latest at Pajamas Media came out yesterday and it deals with the idea that many conservatives who have made Scott Brown their latest darling will drop him like a hot potato sooner rather than later.
You can’t pigeonhole Scott Brown. He’s a conservative — but he’s not. He’s a squishy RINO — but he’s not. He’s pro-choice, pro-gun, pro-consumer protection, pro-free market, and pro-environment. He opposes gay marriage but supported a regional cap-and-trade scheme — a vote he now says was a mistake. He supported the Massachusetts health insurance plan promoted by Mitt Romney with its individual mandate, although he now says that they need to get costs under control.
The picture that emerges after examining this fellow’s record and his position on the issues is one of an independent thinker with conservative principles who doesn’t allow ideology to dominate his thinking or his politics. Prudent, pragmatic, reasonable, but not squishy about where he stands (see his fight to repeal the sales tax increase and his battle over gay marriage).
He appears to be thoughtful and nuanced. His abortion stance mixes classic libertarian thinking with the concerns of a parent with two daughters. He grants women the right to choose and opposes partial birth abortions, but he wants strict parental notification requirements as well.
[...]
So what will conservatives make of such a man? A hit with labor unions and environmental groups — sometimes. Strong anti-tax cred. Pro-choice, but not in-your-face about it. Beloved of teachers unions — sometimes. Proven fiscal hawk. A man’s man who loves triathlons, has served in the National Guard for 30 years, has a beautiful wife, and drives a GMC Canyon truck with nearly 200,000 miles on it.
Right now, he is the darling of the right, with endorsements from the tea party groups and online conservative activists. He is, after all, that coveted “41st vote” on health care reform. But beyond destroying Obama’s dream of a government takeover of health care, how “reliable” a vote will he be for Republicans in the Senate?
I should mention that I think the enthusiasm among tea partiers, evangelicals, and other true conservatives for this guy is amusing. In six months, they will be condemning Brown for being just another stinking RINO.
That’s if Brown wins. Many things are pointing to a Brown win on Tuesday - polls, enthusiasm, self destructing Democrat - but the electoral apparatus is in the hands of one party in that state and the stakes are enormously high.
Of course there will be cheating and stealing votes. The trick is not in carrying it off, the trick is in not getting caught. A study done a couple of decades ago showed that anywhere from 1-3% of all votes in a national election are the result of some kind of chicanery. In a state like Massachusetts where one party has been entrenched in power so long and the infrastructure for cheating has been in place forever, that number is probably slightly larger. My estimation is that Brown will have to win by 3% or more to have a chance to make it to the senate. Anything less, and the Democrats will “find” enough Coakley votes and “lose” enough Brown votes to flip the election.
Then there’s the outside chance that enough Democrats will hold their nose and go to the polls and vote for Coakley anyway - especially after being inspired to do so by President Obama’s visit today. With a 3-1 Democratic advantage in registration, that scenario is not out of the realm of the impossible.
The point being, the giddy celebrations going on at Republican haunts on the web today are a little premature. By all rights, Brown should win. But the only poll that counts happens on Tuesday. And what happens in the dead of night at the precinct level following the vote could spell the difference for Brown’s chances.
If Scott wins, he’ll join the other RINO Senators - John McLame, Olympia Snowe, Sue Collins, and Lindsay Lohan (er, Graham). But that’s not the only reason to vote against him. Another is that the Democrats SHOULD be allowed to enact socialized medicine. They believe that they were defeated in 1994 because they failed to enact socialized medicine, not because American voters oppose it. So they should be allowed to enact socialized medicine - and then they should face the wrath of the American people.
Comment by Zbigniew Mazurak — 1/17/2010 @ 2:20 pm
Inspired by Obama? What has happened has gone completely over your head. This shouldn’t even be close for the Democrats, but their hubris has gotten the best of them.
Comment by obamathered — 1/17/2010 @ 3:14 pm
I have to keep reminding myself that this is MA .. not PA, MN, OH or some other battleground state. This is MA .. the state that went for McGovern went Nixon crushed him in 49 other states.
I wouldn’t want to be a Democrat now .. even in a “safe” seat.
Comment by Neo — 1/17/2010 @ 4:24 pm
An unnamed study, in an unnamed state, in an unnamed year is the basis for concluding the Democrats must obviously try to steal this election.
Okay.
Whether Coakely wins by one vote or one million, it’s still a win. Sounds a lot like how the New York 23rd loss engineered by the teabaggers was actually a victory for the GOP.
An unnamed study, in an unnamed state, in an unnamed year is the basis for concluding the Democrats must obviously try to steal this election.
Vote fraud and vote stealing occurs on both sides in every election. The question is to what degree it happens. You are an idiot and an ignoramus if you believe otherwise. Naive doesn’t begin to describe your myopia. It is American tradition and used to be a lot worse. Our electoral procedures and laws are antiquated and invite some of it.
Massachusetts is a one party dictatorship. If the result on Tuesday is stealable, it will be done. That’s the bottom line and to believe otherwise is idiotic.
Here’s a partial treatment of the subject:
http://www.slate.com/id/2202774/
ed.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 1/17/2010 @ 4:27 pm
I’d also like to ask for some more information about the 1-3% voter fraud study. I find the allegation stunning and quite frankly uncredible without something more staunch to back it up that “a study from before”.
Comment by busboy33 — 1/17/2010 @ 5:44 pm
Rick is quite wrong about the potential for cheating in modern US elections in MA or most other states. I worked in dozens of campaigns and was involved in many tight finishes and several hotly contested outcomes. An election apparant victory margin has to be well under one percent — usually a lot closer than that (think: FL in 2000 or MI in 2008) — for a challenge and recount to have a chance of reversing that apparent outcome.
When delving into cast ballotsd, what you then find is a good many “irregularaties,” such as improperly executed absentee and paper ballots, mistakes by election officials in sending, receiving or tabulating absentees (a greater problem as mail-in voting grows), people who are registered in more than one place because Americans are highly mobile and usually don’t bother to inform jurisdictions they have left about their moving, and the like. On top of these issues, there can be disputes about the way people have marked their ballots (as we saw in FL), which says a lot about voter sloppiness and nothing about cheating.
In all, such irregularities rarely add up to one percent of the votes cast and tend to sort themselves out proportionaterly so they don’t change to outcome. That’s while aggressively challenged and litigated elections wind up being called by miniscule margins.
Comment by John Burke — 1/17/2010 @ 6:35 pm
Thank you John Burke. I would assume that Rick’s 1-3 percent is probably the “old school” result of fraud in elections. I hope your figures are correct and that technology is improving voting as it has so many other areas of life. Rick does have a good point that Massachusetts is a “one-party dictatorship” and local Democrats, such as the Kennedys, have been credibly accused of vote fraud throughout the 20th Century. I think he is right that if the Dems can pocket it, they will.
PS Rick: Thanks for enraging the trolls!
Comment by Jim — 1/17/2010 @ 10:45 pm
So Rick - did you ever own up to your lie yesterday about how “there has never been a recorded instance of any hospital worker refusing to give the morning after pill to a rape victim if it was requested”?
I see that reading is not one of your strong suits. That goes with thinking, and being able to write coherently.
Three for three in the idiot department.
ed.
Comment by dave™© — 1/18/2010 @ 12:01 am
Everyone that reads this article or visits this site should read American Thinker’s article
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/fabian_conservatism.html
and stop quibbling over what ever hairs are split regarding the the GOP. The bottom line is the GOP needs to do what the Left has done — always advance their agenda, never retreat, never surrender.
Comment by cedarhill — 1/18/2010 @ 6:31 am
Rick, I can see that you are feeling better.
Comment by lionheart — 1/18/2010 @ 11:04 am
Regardless of the percentage of voter fraud, it is a certainty that the system would be improved if more people, from both sides of the isle, volunteered to be poll watchers on election day. I think that the registration process varies from district to district, so you’ll need to check with your commissioner of elections to find out how to volunteer.
Comment by lionheart — 1/18/2010 @ 11:15 am
As much as the Democrats are entrenched in this state I think there are plenty of other states out there in a Republican “dictatorship”. It’s true that we have had one party power for a long time, and its decried every election season, but now that Kennedy is out there might be time for a change in this state since the love-affair is hopefully gone. Scott is building momentum here, something that might not have happened with an active candidate but Coakley has always shown herself less than active, though the party is pushing - I’ve had 8 calls from various Republican organizations just this past weekend.
Comment by Boy 0 — 1/18/2010 @ 12:04 pm
Funny, I thought people didn’t have elections in a dictatorship. Interesting link, now how about one to the cases Republicans have successfully brought proving voter fraud in Massachusetts.
Surely someone must have caught one of those busloads of undocumented workers being brought in to vote we hear about ever election.
As you said it’s about the level of fraud. If it were anything more than a few cases of felons voting when they shouldn’t I would expect it would be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or the Boston Globe today.
Is this an overblown threat or is the GOP just inept?
Comment by Richard bottoms — 1/18/2010 @ 1:22 pm
Richard Bottoms - Many dictatorships have elections. In them you get to choose the only guy on the card. For some reason he gets 100% of the vote….even if 95% where write-ins for “Please, anyone else”.
Comment by KenGirard — 1/18/2010 @ 2:18 pm
The difference between Scozzafava and Brown is that Scozzafava was to the left of the district while Brown is to the right of it. There is ample evidence of this. The eventual Democrat winner had to deceitfully tack far to the right of his actual positions in order to eke out a small win over the Conservative nominee. Had the GOP and Conservative lines run with one candidate, this would have been a win for the GOP.
Scott Brown’s libertarian challenger is polling about 3%. There’s no credible challenger to his right. This is why I predict that Brown will have a lot more slack than predicted by the article.
Comment by TMLutas — 1/18/2010 @ 2:29 pm
[...] Moran pegs it. “…I should mention that I think the enthusiasm among tea partiers, evangelicals, and other true conservatives for this [...]
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Now you’re deleting comments Rick?
The classy train just keeps chugging along.
Comment by busboy33 — 1/19/2010 @ 12:28 pm
[...] apparently got their way last night in Massachusetts, helping elect a Scott Brown, a right-wing ideologue well to the right of most to occupy Teddy Kennedy’s long-held but absent Senate seat. Mitch McConnell and his merry band [...]
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