In yet another move designed to distract attention from his abysmal record, the sluggish recovery, and continuing dismal unemployment data, President Obama confirmed what anyone who paid any attention to his actions and past statements already knew: the president supports same-sex “marriage.” Mr. Obama’s historic announcement is a watershed moment for the nation. Across cultures and throughout history, marriage between a man and a woman has been, as Cicero put it, the “first bond of society.” Never before has a president endorsed a position that would so “fundamentally transform” America. But wait, that is what he promised to do in his 2008 campaign. His first term as president has been evidence of fundamental alteration of the basic aspects of American culture and society. Some think that Vice President Biden jumped the gun — that Mr. Obama might have preferred to time his announcement a bit differently. President Obama might possibly have preferred to wait until after his hoped-for re-election before publicly embracing such a controversial issue, but things are not going so well in his 2012 campaign, what with him drawing only half-full stadiums and lagging contributions. Plus, even Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post was calling the president “weak and evasive” as he tried to avoid stating the obvious. It was an open secret that the president supported legalization of same-sex “marriage” — on the record — as early as 1996, so his comments about his position “evolving” put him in an untenably wishy-washy position vis-à-vis his LGBT supporters. Further, his 2010 statements about the “sacred” nature of marriage and the importance of God being “in the mix” ring hollow in light of his actions undermining marriage: He overturned “don’t ask, don’t tell,” signed “hate crimes” legislation, stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and extended domestic benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees. If he is re-elected, the sad undermining of holy matrimony and the disintegration of the family will continue until these pillars of American society shrivel into weak ruins of their former strength. Clearly, the president had no choice but to “come out” for same-sex “marriage”; it had become a matter of character and integrity. Even his staunchest supporters were tired of the “wink-wink and nod-nod.” Others believe the big announcement was carefully orchestrated. First, he sent out Vice President Biden to test the waters and extend the media life of his announcement. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, quickly chimed in to agree. David Axelrod, the president’s campaign manager, affirmed that the president did, indeed, agree with the vice president. When the president spoke (typically, out of both sides of his mouth and trying to have it both ways), he also said it was a matter for the individual states (in conflict with his position of not enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act). And, of course, reporters like Amy Walter, ABC’s political director, quickly declared the decision to be a personal one, not one with a “political agenda.” Sorry, Amy. The politics of the decision are clear. The president is having a hard time raising money and generating enthusiasm for 2012. At this point, he needs a big boost in both money and enthusiasm. After his big announcement — which was news to no one — he raised $1 million in 90 minutes, not exactly chump change, but not an avalanche either when he’s looking to raise a billion dollars to fund his campaign. Analysts say that one in six of the president’s major fundraisers is openly homosexual. Obviously, homosexual activists will work even harder and will dig deeper into their deep pockets to ensure his re-election. Andrew Tobias, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, said, “Within minutes, people were calling with their credit cards. They’re thrilled.” Some pundits are trying to claim that the president’s calculated endorsement of the homosexual agenda will not hurt him with black voters. The latest polls, though, confirm that blacks and Latinos are among the strongest supporters of traditional marriage. Further, traditional marriage has prevailed in all 32 states where the issue has been put to a vote before the general public. In those states where same-sex “marriage” has been instituted, it was either by judicial fiat or legislative action. The president and all his advisors might just discover that the nation is more pro-marriage than the elites would like to think. The president claimed that the marriage issue is “generational” (older working-aged people, having gained both wisdom and self-sufficiency, are not among Obama’s base). Sadly, Mr. Obama used members of the military and his daughters as emotional fodder for his televised statement, claiming that their desire for equality is “the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.” The president also linked his endorsement of homosexual “marriage” to his campaign theme of “forward” by claiming that the presumptive GOP candidate, Mitt Romney, would “take us back.” In contrast, Mr. Romney, during one of the televised primary debates, said, “3,000 years of human history shouldn’t be discarded so quickly.” The nation’s “progressive” elites think that they should be allowed to re-write cultural mores and morals to suit their more enlightened “change of perspective.” The risks of further deterioration of marriage are clear in the social science research. With 41 percent of the nation’s children being born out of wedlock, America is reaping the whirlwind from the very predictable negative outcomes of the decline in marriage and the breakdown of the traditional family — nowhere more evident than on display on a drive through Detroit or other major cities. It is a very sad day for America when our president chooses to put his short-run, short-lived benefit of getting re-elected ahead of the long-run well-being of the nation’s priceless children who will bear the brunt of his support for the unleashing of rapacious special interest groups whose appetites for self-indulgence knows no limits.
Infantile. The characteristics of a baby or child, says Webster’s. Being infantile is a charming characteristic — in a baby or child. In adults? Adults charged with the serious responsibility of discussing or actually running public policy? Never good. As seen here in this story about Occupy Wall Street, replete with photo of a protester defecating on a police car. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. has been observing and writing about this kind of ludicrous behavior that he terms the “Infantile Left” for some 40-plus years through the magazine that he created and you are reading, The American Spectator . What brought this memorable photo of a defecating Occupy protestor to mind was reading the stunning, pull-back-and-survey-the-battlefield book that is Tyrrell’s new book, The Death of Liberalism . The book is nothing less than an autopsy conducted while the battle still rages. An astute recognition that Liberalism’s defenders are being reduced by the day if not the hour to the political equivalent of the survivors of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, the latter known to history as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. A great swarming, savage last-assault across the political battlefields into the incessant cannon and rifle fire of the American majority. Leaving in the aftermath not only massive Liberal casualties on the battlefield, but inducing a sense of crippling psychological failure among the Liberal survivors, of which at the moment the Occupy Wall Street debacle — they of the defecating-on-police-cars and rape tents crowd — is the most vivid example. The irony? It wasn’t always so. Classical liberalism, as Tyrrell states, originally “stood for adherence to individual liberty, to tolerance, to reason, and for many of us, to empiricism.” The classic liberalism of a George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and the others known today as the Founding Fathers but one example, if the example most familiar to Americans. Tyrrell cites this wonderful definition of classical liberalism given all the way back in 1873 by England’s Sir William Harcourt, who made the point in a talk at Oxford. Liberty, said Harcourt, …does not consist in making others do what you think is right. The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this — that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic government tries to make everybody do what it wishes, a Liberal Government tries, so far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do what he wishes. Harcourt anticipated the reign of Obama and Pelosi by 139 years. In the style of true conservatives everywhere, he understood the eternal human nature — and its temptations with centralized power. Tyrrell employs a literary device that originated with the late William F. Buckley, Jr. To wit, separating the original meaning of “liberal” in its classic sense from today’s term by capitalizing the word to “Liberal” or “Liberalism.” It is a useful device to differentiate what has come to mean two very, very different belief systems, one of them appallingly nuts. For a small sample of just how infantile one can see the Infantile Left at work here in Oakland, California in 2011, in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, at the Pentagon in 1967, in Los Angeles in 1992 or all manner of places in 1986 when Ronald Reagan bombed Libya in response to an attack on U.S. military personnel in then-West Germany. Here’s an interesting one with Infantile Left expressing itself on the environment. And who could miss these two bookmarks to the career of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry doing the Infantile Left gig here (as captured in a Swiftboat ad) and here , where he windsurfed as a presidential candidate. And there’s Hillary as potential president The examples are endless, and you can’t make it up. The details of the Liberal autopsy begin immediately, with Dr. Tyrrell walking slowly around a figurative steel table examining the lifeless political corpse, diligently recording the life of the deceased. Just who were these Liberals, anyway? After 40 some odd-years of experience, Tyrrell knows them well. Liberals: …who began as the rightful heirs to the New Deal, have carried on as a kind of landed aristocracy, gifted but doomed. They dominated the culture and the politics of the country, unchallenged from the beginnings of the Cold War to the first Nixon Administration. So dominant were they that they could totally pollute the culture with their prejudices and their views. In its place they created Kultursmog , a Kultur whose contaminants were everywhere in the media, among the literate classes, even among illiterates — everywhere. Kultursmog is the only form of pollution to which the Liberals never object. In fact, they deem it healthy. While Tyrrell doesn’t say it here, the saga of Liberals is not unlike the saga of the late Whitney Houston. At one time the very essence of raw talent refined, polished, sparkling and dominant. Followed by the inevitable results of decline evident after years of what might be called snorting political cocaine — the dependence on sheer racism, a culture that glorifies sexual gratification, a wild addiction to the idea of feel-good emotions replacing hard science, economics and plain common sense. Followed by the inevitable…political death. No, one does not crap on a police car to make a point about economics. Rational political actors do not get drunk and leave a girl in a car to drown then resume a lifelong Senate career as if nothing untoward had happened. One doesn’t fan riots or anti-Semitism that results in death and destruction of property, gain fame by making preposterously false allegations of a racial rape — and get to host an MSNBC television show as a reward. Paying off a pregnant mistress with tax-deductible funds after exhibiting one’s streak of anti-Semitism by musing aloud to a reporter about New York City as “Hymietown” shouldn’t make one a serious player in a serious political party. Not to mention that fiddling with an intern and lying about it to a grand jury should cause more than an “ahem” from a party that insists it is fighting some grand war for women. As Tyrrell documents, the list of infantile behavior by the left is long, well beyond the specifics of behaviors by the late Senator Edward Kennedy, the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and, of course, President Bill Clinton. Not to mention the monkey business of one-time presidential hopeful Gary Hart with Donna Rice and the still imploding reputation of ex-Senator and 2004 vice-presidential nominee John Edwards. The plagiarism scandal of Joe Biden has elevated him to the vice-presidency. But there is more to this behavior that has caused the Death of Liberalism . There are those pesky fundamentals called issues, approached by Liberals with what Tyrrell correctly calls the real objective of the “Stealth Socialist.” (Interestingly, Tyrrell points out that when Republicans are presented with political leaders who engage in likeminded personal misbehavior, they reject them — two of the more prominent examples being the presidential run of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the exploded career of South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford.) One by one Tyrrell examines issues and events that served as the proximate cause of Liberalism’s death . And the Stealth Socialist issues and events are as momentous if perhaps not as memorable as the personal behavior is tawdry. • Henry Wallace: The rise and fall of FDR’s Liberal Vice President Henry Wallace, whose Liberalism even in 1944 touched off alarm bells with the powers-that-be within the Democrats’ own party hierarchy. Replaced by Missouri Senator Harry Truman (and in the nick of time — FDR died a bare four months after being inaugurated, placing Truman, not Wallace, in the White House) Wallace set about leading the opening round of what became the Liberal civil war within the party. Eventually, Wallace departed, becoming the 1948 nominee of the Progressive Party. • The Big Lie: Combined with a laughable yet disturbing sense of moral superiority, the Big Lie is now routinely used as Pickett’s armies used the bayonet. In hand-to-hand political combat the sharp end is pointedly used to accuse of racism those who question Liberalism’s latest panaceas or by shrieking, as Tyrrell notes, that “anyone questioning their latest scheme of alleviating poverty hates the poor.” This use of the Big Lie began with the fiction that Alger Hiss was not a Communist, something that has now been positively affirmed by the release of the Venona files. The longer Hiss lied, the angrier Liberals became at those charging him with lying. More recently when Bill Clinton as president lied under oath about Monica Lewinsky, the Big Lie was employed to insist that “it was a minor infraction of the law, like double-parking one’s tractor in downtown Little Rock.” • McGovernism: In 1972, a young delegate to Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party convention of 1948 was South Dakota Senator George McGovern — the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Tyrrell examines a now obscure but key moment for the Liberals, that being the formation of the “McGovern Commission.” Formed after the pitched battle between Liberals and the battered remnants of the old FDR-Truman Democrats in 1968 — and it was a battle, with Infantile Liberals taking to the streets of Chicago during the party Convention and getting into a furiously bloody battle with the police of the old line Mayor Daley — McGovern’s task was to reform the party’s delegate selection process. He did — by obliterating the idea that individuals should be elected as delegates to the party’s national convention and replacing it with the now-sacred cow of identity politics. If you were black — and X percent of your state’s population was black — you have a delegate’s seat based on skin color. Ditto with gender, etc. Running himself four years later, using the rules he himself had engineered, McGovern not only trounced the party Establishment and won the 1972 nomination but permanently ousted the dwindling remnants of what FDR historian and ex-JFK aide Arthur Schlesinger once termed The Vital Center . • Class Warfare: If FDR employed a bit of class warfare during the Great Depression, it was McGovern who immersed the party in this pernicious cycle of greed and envy. The greed for government money — taxpayer money or “free” money as it is called today — combined with the envy of those who achieved without it. McGovern proposed three policies in particular that caught Tyrrell’s eye in his autopsy, three policies he notes that “stand out as beyond the wildest hallucinations of Henry Wallace” — began instantly to clog the Liberal artery that normally channeled a sensitivity to the sensibilities of working Americans. They were: — “a government grant of $1,000 annually for every man, woman, and child, rich or poor”; — ” a 37 percent reduction in the Pentagon budget…the savings going to social welfare programs…”; — “a rise in taxes, most strikingly on inheritance — no one would be able to receive more than half a million dollars from one’s family in a lifetime or at the time of one’s death!”
This week you’re likely to hear a lot more about the death of one of the Beastie Boys and the French election than what Republicans are trying to do to save the Pentagon budget from the wrecking ball of sequestration. The reasons you won’t hear about it are lessons for Mitt Romney, who remains oddly disconnected from what House Republicans are doing. That’s the first problem. Romney, the presumptive nominee, is rapidly earning the reputation attributed to the Palestinians almost forty years ago by Israeli Prime Minister Abba Eban: he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Romney could be working closely with House leaders to pass legislation — putting Senate Dems under the gun for killing the bills – to illustrate vividly how a Romney presidency would help save the nation from Obama’s spending spree, reductions in military strength and over-regulation. But he isn’t. One of the biggest problems that will come to a head soon after the election is the result of last year’s disastrous debt ceiling deal, which imposed about $600 billion in defense cuts (on top of the $400 billion Obama already made) over the next ten years. As I wrote here three weeks ago, sequestration imposes limits on future spending across the board, a decision made in perfect ignorance of whether we’d be cutting fat or muscle. Moreover, sequestration spending cuts will result in the Pentagon breaching its contracts for major weapon systems. These breaches will end up costing as much (or more) to terminate the contracts as it would to actually buy the weapon systems for which the contracts were signed. And sequestration will cost a massive number of high-tech private sector jobs. (According to one study by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, the sequestration cuts would cost almost 600,000 jobs and $35 billion in lost earnings in 2013 alone.) Congressional sources tell me that Democrats are getting nervous about defense sequestration. But with Obama’s continued threat to veto any bill that fixes the mess, they’re not nervous enough yet to do anything to stop the coming train wreck. Fortunately, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Ca) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca) are stepping up to prevent it. At four syllables, sequestration is too long a word to use in politics. The fix for sequestration McKeon and McCarthy have chosen is budget reconciliation (two words, eight syllables, beyond the attention span of 98% of the media). Nevertheless, it’s a good idea that deserves our support. Reconciliation is a tool that establishes a budget figure. It bases the figure on instructions to congressional committees to produce enabling legislation that will result in spending at that level. Working over the past few weeks, House committees have come up with legislation that will enable the Pentagon to be protected from the first year of sequestration spending cuts by cutting non-defense programs, from which this week’s try at reconciliation proceeds. The differences between House conservatives, trying to impose some fiscal discipline without sacrificing national defense on one hand, and Obama and Senate Dems who refuse to even consider a federal budget, are irreconcilable. The budget reconciliation measure that McKeon, McCarthy, and others are bringing to the House floor this week will illustrate just how irresponsible Obama and the Dems are. If only people pay attention to it. This week, the House will pass a budget reconciliation bill that would prevent the sequestration of about $300 billion in defense budget authority that will come into effect in January and instruct the House committees (which have already passed the necessary bills) to make the reconciliation effective. The reconciliation bill will never see the light of day in the Senate. Which brings us to the lessons for Mitt Romney. First and foremost, the national security issue isn’t critical to the presidential campaign, at least not yet. Obama has managed to push it off the stage in the moments he isn’t spiking the ball about the death of bin Laden. In fact, the Republicans have lost their ownership of the defense issue. In years past, Republicans were the “daddy party,” trusted with the defense of the nation and some grasp of the economy. Dems were the “mommy party,” concerned only with the welfare state and increased government control of the economy. Now, after eight years of George W. Bush’s self-imposed quagmire of nation-building and his oxymoronic “big government conservatism,” Republicans are trusted with neither national defense nor the economy. Obama is engaged in the most massive reduction of our military’s capabilities in generations, and Republicans haven’t yet been effective in even slowing him down. If Romney were to get involved personally in the McKeon-McCarthy initiative, he could begin to recapture both issues. Defense spending can’t be cut without the so far unaccomplished analysis of what the Pentagon needs to deter or defeat the threats we face. Sequestration cuts defense spending without regard to the threat matrix, and borders on the criminally negligent. It also reduces jobs and GDP without regard to the negative effects on the economy. And — after the termination costs of breached contracts are paid — sequestration won’t reduce Pentagon spending nearly as much as claimed. Romney should make it his campaign theme all this week. It would gain a level of traction his campaign now lacks. Romney is now trying to consolidate his influence over the national debate and take on Obama. That’s a claim to leadership that he has to assert credibly. The other big lesson for him in the reconciliation debate this week is that Republican control of the House gives him a leadership tool that he has to use. No one really knows how many Republican voters are still queasy about Romney, but the number has to be too high for him to ignore. He is now the leader of the Republican Party and he has to demonstrate to them, and to the “moderates” and undecideds, that he is the right choice in November in a way that will convince people to go to the polls and not sit this one out. Leadership has to be proven, and if Romney were to engage fully with House Republicans, he could go a long way to proving that he is worth the effort to vote in November. Romney has endorsed the Ryan Budget Plan, which would reduce the federal debt and protect Pentagon spending from sequestration. (Ryan’s plan takes too long to bring spending under control but it’s at least a credible attempt). But Romney hasn’t done more than say he favors Ryan’s plan, and his own economic plan lacks the force and simplicity that the election demands. Obama has made it clear that the Ryan plan will be a big issue in the fall, regardless of whether Romney goes all-in on it or not. Better to go at it forcefully than to appear uncertain. And far better to link it to energy policy, defense, and jobs than to remain vaguely committed to both. And there’s much more like that to be done. Why not ask Cong. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to revive and pass his patient-oriented substitute for Obamacare? We now have the highest corporate tax rate in the civilized world. Why not pass a House bill to reduce it and really stimulate economic growth? Why not pass a House resolution damning Obama’s deal with Hamid Karzai that prohibits us from launching raids from Afghanistan into Pakistan like the one that killed bin Laden? Or a bill to rein in EPA’s and other agencies’ regulation blitzkrieg on the economy? All it would take is a few hours of meetings between Romney and House leaders and a few speeches by Romney in conjunction with their actions, which could be spread out between now and the election. That would demonstrate leadership and energize voters more than anything Romney is doing — or apparently planning — now.
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Irreconcilable Budget Differences
Barack Obama didn’t believe in government healthcare mandates…until he did. He didn’t think we should spike the football on Bin Laden…until it was time for reelection. Joe Biden thought Obama was ill-equipped for the job of President…until he took the job as his right hand man. Yes, the ability for this administration to say one thing and do another is nothing short of astounding. Apparently this sphere protecting the executive branch from any lasting accusation of hypocrisy also extends to the executive spouses. Take for example President Obama’s recent targeting of colleges that prey on veterans . They survived insurgents, terrorists and roadside bombs. But President Obama is worried that many military veterans who made it home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now being targeted by unscrupulous for-profit career colleges . Mr. Obama plans to fly to Fort Stewart in Georgia on Friday to sign an executive order intended to help protect active-duty troops and veterans from deceptive and misleading practices.. (emphasis mine) To be clear, I know nothing about these institutions. They could be great, they could be awful. But I do know why Obama doesn’t like them and that is quite simply because they are “for profit” which really gets in the way when you are trying to nationalize student loans and higher education. Luckily for Jill Biden , the rules governing the awfulness of these institutions are kept out of the administration’s hypocrisy protection sphere. Northern Virginia Community College is the latest two-year institution to announce a partnership with the University of Phoenix, with the announcement yesterday of a transfer agreement. Students from the community college will get a tuition discount when they transfer to Phoenix, according to a news release. They will also be able to tap the for-profit provider’s prior learning assessment offerings, which can grant college credit for prior training and work experience. President Obama, who has often been critical of for-profits, has visited Northern Virginia five times for photo ops and to give speeches. Jill Biden, the vice president’s wife, is a professor at the college. (emphasis mine) See how this works? It’s the perfect example of how liberals think. Everything is horrible unless they are there to make sure “it’s done right.” Never mind the idea that perhaps our brave men & women of the military are probably intelligent enough to figure out who is trying to screw them over with a scam college vs. a college that might actually help them. They can’t be trusted with this decision without a liberal overlord placing pillows under their feet the whole time. Or, perhaps some consistence is called for? In a campaign year when the scrutiny of the national media is focused so intently on every move the Obama administration is making, shouldn’t Mrs. Biden be asked to step down from her position at this evil for-profit institution? Haha, no I’m just kidding. They won’t even ask her about this. Follow @BenHowe
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Jill Biden: Government Oversight for Thee, Free Markets for Me
On the dais at Boston Marriott Copley Place, Ann Romney beamed as she rattled off the names of all the politicians who had helped her husband on Super Tuesday. She didn’t forget the home crowd. “And finally, thank you Massachusetts,” the commonwealth’s former first lady exclaimed, singling out “our senator, Scott Brown” for praise. Brown, of course, wasn’t there. Even in Boston, a Mitt Romney for president rally is likely to draw a partisan Republican crowd. As a senator who probably needs to win two-thirds of independent voters this fall in a state the incumbent Democratic president is likely to carry, Brown didn’t need to be seen on stage while Romney was throwing out red meat about the flaws and failures of Barack Obama. That’s not to say that Brown, who endorsed Romney, wasn’t happy to see the former governor do well. Romney, who won the semi-open Massachusetts primary with 72 percent of the vote, is the only Republican nominee who can keep the presidential contest in the Bay State close enough for Brown to realistically win enough ticket-splitters to hold on to his Senate seat. It’s a difficult balancing act that Brown has to maintain in a tough political environment, but so far he hasn’t stumbled. Much has changed since Brown—hyperbolically dubbed “the Scott heard ’round the world”—captured Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in a January 2010 special election. He was the first Republican to win statewide since Romney eight years earlier, the first GOP member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation since January 1997, and the state’s first Republican senator since Edward Brooke’s second term expired in 1979 after he lost re-election to Paul Tsongas. Two years ago, Brown caught both state and national Democrats almost completely by surprise. By the time they realized Kennedy’s heir apparent Martha Coakley was in trouble, it was too late. A full court press by a who’s who of Democrats ranging from Bill Clinton to John Kerry couldn’t put Humpty back together again. Brown was also a national conservative cause, as people donated money far and wide to see a Republican sitting in Kennedy’s seat. Brown campaigned openly as the 41st vote against Obamacare. His election would not only restore the Republicans’ power to filibuster the dreaded health care bill, but also prove that the legislation was unpopular even in Kennedy country. He became a Tea Party cause célèbre , and the burgeoning grassroots movement saw his upset victory as a sign of their national potential in November 2010. Now Brown is the incumbent, running in plain sight of Democratic operatives nationally and in Massachusetts. Representing one of the country’s bluest states, he sits high atop their target lists. After a series of feints to the center, Brown is no longer a national Tea Party favorite. One local Tea Party group, in fact, hoped to find a Republican primary challenger. Brown has been equally offhand with the movement, downplaying its role in his election and declining to appear at some Tea Party rallies. This time around, likely Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren is a national progressive darling. She is more a symbol of Occupy Wall Street than Brown ever was the Tea Party. She is attracting the out-of-state political contributions and hauling in more money than Brown in some quarters of fundraising. And Warren radiates the kind of energy that once animated the Brown campaign. Despite all this, Scott Brown still has a fighting chance. After early polls showed Warren pulling ahead, four of the five next major surveys found Brown leading by as many as nine points. In March, the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling had Warren back out in front by five points. But even that poll, which sampled registered rather than likely voters, showed Brown with a double-digit lead among independents, pulling 17 percent of Democrats, and pitching a Curt Schilling-like shutout among Republicans. BROWN HAD TRIED to demonstrate his independence from the national GOP in order to cultivate unaffiliated voters and soft Democrats. During the lame-duck congressional session, he broke with conservatives by supporting the New Start Treaty and an end to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy concerning gays in the military. Brown was a member of the Army National Guard, had advocated for veterans in the Massachusetts legislature, and had mostly sided with hawks during his special election campaign, so both votes were considered a surprise—and a betrayal by his more conservative supporters. Yet Brown also voted to retain the Bush tax cuts and opposed the DREAM Act, which he labeled amnesty for illegal immigrants. He sided with social liberals on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, saying a GOP plan to defund the organization—which is the nation’s top abortion provider but also performs women’s health services—“goes too far.” Brown then joined social conservatives in opposing the contraceptive mandate the Obama Department of Health and Human Services imposed on religious institutions. This triangulation has won Brown enemies on both sides. For his opposition to the HHS mandate, the Boston Phoenix blasted him as “Scott Brown, crazy person.” The liberal alt-weekly editorialized that Brown had joined “the Republican cult against birth control” and the “vast and growing right-wing war on women.” Meanwhile, conservative activists complained that Brown was too liberal. “There’s enough of an underground movement in the Tea Party movement as seeing him as not being conservative enough,” Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, told the Boston Globe (which also occasionally reads like a liberal alt-weekly). “There probably will be multiple people who attempt to run against him.” And while no such primary challenge has materialized, Brown’s vote for the Dodd-Frank financial reforms—arguably his biggest transgression against conservative principles—will almost certainly keep him from receiving major national Tea Party support this fall. But the fallout from his juggling hasn’t been entirely negative. Several polls have shown Brown to have high approval ratings among independents, now a plurality of Massachusetts’ registered voters. There is a reason he is hovering at around 90 percent support from Republicans while also getting a larger crossover vote than Warren: he has demonstrated finesse at dealing with controversial issues. Consider contraceptives, where he has simultaneously opposed the HHS mandate and criticized Rush Limbaugh for his comments about Sandra Fluke. “Brown’s stance on birth control might still hurt him among women, who are important swing voters in Massachusetts,” writes political journalist David Bernstein (in the Phoenix of all places). “But he is probably helping himself among conservative Catholic Democrats, who were key to his victory two years ago.” Brown’s office has been tireless at constituent services, even retaining some of Kennedy’s staffers who helped with immigration issues. (That kind of work frankly had more to do with Kennedy’s political durability than his liberal voting record.) He is a dogged door-knocker and practitioner of retail politics. Brown’s press releases emphasize the local (remember Tip O’Neill’s adage?) and the non-ideological. Elizabeth Warren is none of those things. She is a defender of the “99 percent.” A Harvard professor who advised President Obama on financial regulation, she was a liberal favorite to become the first person to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Obama declined because he didn’t think he could get her confirmed and ended up having to ram through Richard Cordray in a disputed recess appointment. (Brown, ironically, was a rare Republican who voted for the CFPB’s creation and Cordray’s confirmation.) Warren is running against Wall Street and economic inequality. That’s not exactly a losing message in Massachusetts. But like Coakley, she’s an imperfect populist. Warren supported the $700 billion bank bailout, which she oversaw for the Obama administration. She’s also willing to take campaign donations from bailout recipients, though she claims such contributions flow purely from those who “want reform.” She told the Boston Herald , “There are people on Wall Street who actually believe we need better rules, fairer rules.” The Washington Examiner ’s Tim Carney had a somewhat different take: “The way you prove you want reform? You give money to Warren.” BROWN AND WARREN arrived at an agreement to discourage third party ads that take a side in the Massachusetts Senate race. Brown has twice had to make donations to a charity of Warren’s choice because business groups have ostensibly violated the pledge. He most recently cut a check for $34,545 because of a series of commercials by the American Petroleum Institute. But the agreement could end up being marginally to Brown’s benefit, because at this point more outside groups may be inclined to support Warren (the biggest out-of-state conservative group helping Brown was the Karl Rove-aligned American Crossroads). An exchange Brown and Warren had over the pledge also highlights a potential pitfall for the Democrat. “I am pleased to uphold my end of the bargain with Professor Warren,” Brown said in a statement. “With this action, we have taken a step toward strengthening the People’s Pledge by expanding it to cover issue ads. I am determined to keep third-party groups out of Massachusetts and I am encouraged that issue ads are now covered and by the commitment that both candidates have shown to honoring the People’s Pledge.” Contrast this with Warren’s statement: “It is appropriate that on the day Scott Brown votes to give billions in tax dollars to big oil, the richest most profitable companies on the planet, he’s writing a check because big oil spent tens of thousands of dollars advertising on his behalf. Big oil and energy already have given him nearly $200,000. But we are glad he has decided to pay up and the pledge is intact.” One of Martha Coakley’s problems was that she appeared relentlessly negative, while Brown remained positive and upbeat. It’s more acceptable for a challenger to criticize an incumbent’s record, and unlike the special election, the Brown-Warren contest will happen while other political mudslinging is going on. But Warren at least runs a risk of falling into the trap Brown set for Coakley. Writes Bernstein, “Tellingly, Brown has not unleashed his bankroll to attack Warren—to define her negatively, before she has a chance to solidify a positive impression.” Although Warren’s strong poll and fundraising numbers cleared the field of major primary competitors, her glide path to the Democratic nomination is also attributable to her party’s major elected officials taking a pass on the race. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has openly signaled that he thinks Brown will win and that Warren must prove she is “saleable.” In a late March interview, he even declined to express support for Warren. “I’m not with anybody at this time,” Menino told a Boston television station. “At this time, I’m not involved in the campaign.” BROWN IS A RARE Massachusetts Republican who has never lost an election. Warren is a Democrat who has never won one. But this won’t be a cakewalk. Brown has little margin for error. Warren’s party affiliation gives her a much higher floor. Remember that Coakley ran a much worse campaign in a more difficult climate without high turnout from Democratic blocs, and she still received 47.1 percent of the vote. Brown ran in a Tea Party year with an element of surprise and got 51.9 percent. With the exception of the GOP landslide year of 1994, Republican statewide winners since 1990 have typically finished in the low 50s by carrying at least 65 percent of independents, 25 percent of Democrats, and 90 percent of Republicans. Brown will have to hit those numbers while Obama is on the ballot, in a state where recent Democratic presidential nominees have broken 60 percent. Massachusetts Republicans fielded an unusually competitive slate of candidates in the last election, but all of them, except for Brown and some people running for the legislature, lost. So it’s no surprise that Scott Brown will be behind Romney in the race for the White House. Romney is the only candidate who might keep Obama below 60 percent in Massachusetts. But in his typical balancing act, Brown will stay way, way behind Romney.
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Scott Brown’s Balancing Act
