Scott Brown, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts, has a halo around him today, as he is the man of the hour and could in theory kill health care reform in the Senate, now that the Republicans have 41 votes in the Senate and could, if they remain united, filibuster any legislation on the subject and many others.
Some are even suggesting that Scott Brown, with his good looks and charisma and beautiful family, could be a potential candidate for President in 2012!
But before we go awry on this concept, realize something that Scott Brown has to know in his heart. That is that he faces election for a full term in the Senate in 34 months, and while he won a convincing victory by five points last night in a special election, he certainly knows that the Democrats will be targeting him for 2012, a Presidential election year, and he will have the battle of his life to keep the seat he has gained for now.
With the conservative record he possesses, can one really think that Massachusetts, still a “blue” state more than most in a section of the country known to be more “liberal” than the rest of the country, will actually reelect him to a full term, if he votes and speaks as a right winger? He has shown in the past that he has reactionary views on race and gender and has no interest in social or economic reform. Even the Republican senators who served in the last century from Massachusetts–including Edward Brooke (the first African American elected Senator), Leverett Saltonstall, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. were moderate to liberal, rather than conservative!
Has Massachusetts by this vote suddenly become “red” (Republican) and will repudiate its past of such moderates as the above, plus the contributions of the Kennedys, John Kerry, Paul Tsongas, and all of its ten liberal Democratic congressmen? I would have to say that to imagine that is to be hallucinatory! 🙂
So the career of Scott Brown in the US Senate is bound to be very short lived indeed!