Scott Brown for Republican nominee in 2012?

[Quartz]

I was reading the latest Palin thread, and it got me thinking. None of the current leading Republicans really shine, not from here on the other side of the Atlantic anyway, and many have significant issues. So I'm wondering if the Republicans might settle behind Scott Brown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Brown) for 2012?

He's very much in the mould of Obama. He ran a stonking campaign, winning a traditionally Democrat state. He ticks all the right boxes - handsome, military service at home and abroad (albeit JAG in National Guard), male model, intelligent, down-to-earth, etc. In addition, he also appears to have Clinton's charm.

And funnily enough, his memoirs are coming out next year.

And, of course, he's expendable.

[Captain Midnight]

The Republicans need to find a peachy clean white guy, a WASP. Someone who is going to play to white voters. Mitt Romney fits the bill nicely.I don't know Scott Brown, but why not? By 2012, he will have more experience in national politics than Obama.

It would be kind of strange to have two REPUBLICAN candidates from Massachuttes.

I don't think Obama is going to win in 2012. I just don't see it, and I can see white voters turn out in droves spurred on my evangelicals and tea partiers. The wars will still be going on, the economic problem is not going to go away. Obama has aged about 10 years since he took the job. Now, he is on "The View" because the job is easier and the pay is better.

I think the "Silent Majority" is going to come out one last time before they drown in 2012. I hope Sarah Palin stays home. Maybe someone has an open vagina shot of her like Dr. Laura Sleshinger.

The job is just over Obama's head. Biden should of been the President and Obama the V.P. Biden would suck at being President, but I think he's be more competant.

[Buck Godot]

The Republicans need to find a peachy clean white guy, a WASP. Someone who is going to play to white voters. Mitt Romney fits the bill nicely.I don't know Scott Brown, but why not? By 2012, he will have more experience in national politics than Obama.

It would be kind of strange to have two REPUBLICAN candidates from Massachuttes.

I don't think Obama is going to win in 2012. I just don't see it, and I can see white voters turn out in droves spurred on my evangelicals and tea partiers. The wars will still be going on, the economic problem is not going to go away. Obama has aged about 10 years since he took the job. Now, he is on "The View" because the job is easier and the pay is better.

I think the "Silent Majority" is going to come out one last time before they drown in 2012. I hope Sarah Palin stays home. Maybe someone has an open vagina shot of her like Dr. Laura Sleshinger.

The job is just over Obama's head. Biden should of been the President and Obama the V.P. Biden would suck at being President, but I think he's be more competant.

Only problem with your plan is that Romney's a WASM not a WASP, which may make problems for inspiring evangelicals.

[BrainGlutton]

The Republicans need to find a peachy clean white guy, a WASP. Someone who is going to play to white voters. Mitt Romney fits the bill nicely.I don't know Scott Brown, but why not? By 2012, he will have more experience in national politics than Obama.

It would be kind of strange to have two REPUBLICAN candidates from Massachuttes.

I don't think Obama is going to win in 2012. I just don't see it, and I can see white voters turn out in droves spurred on my evangelicals and tea partiers. The wars will still be going on, the economic problem is not going to go away. Obama has aged about 10 years since he took the job. Now, he is on "The View" because the job is easier and the pay is better.

I think the "Silent Majority" is going to come out one last time before they drown in 2012. I hope Sarah Palin stays home. Maybe someone has an open vagina shot of her like Dr. Laura Sleshinger.

The job is just over Obama's head. Biden should of been the President and Obama the V.P. Biden would suck at being President, but I think he's be more competant.

Only problem with your plan is that Romney's a WASM not a WASP, which may make problems for inspiring evangelicals.

It's campaign season on the northern land mass of planet Glox . . . (http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-05-22/news/campaign-season-on-planet-glox/)

[Quartz]

From over here, Romney has a major problem with a lack of charisma. As I recall, he really didn't engage or enthuse people.

And I think reports of Obama's imminent demise are exaggerated. The shine may have gone off, but the substance is being revealed.

[Ravenman]

Well, Scott Brown was the deciding vote for Obama's takeover of Wall Street (cite) (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/sen-scott-brown-to-vote-yes-on-financial-regulation/) which is going to lead our country to such doom that we will likely cancel elections so that Herr Obama can declare himself the Czar of Socialism and take away our guns, so that's why you better invest in gold now.

Or at least, that's what most Republicans are going to say about him.

But seriously, I believe he is cutting out too much of a centrist role for himself to stand any chance of getting the support of the Republican establishment. There's going to be a strong litmus test for the Republican's 2012 candidate, and whomever ends up successfully showing that they can balance the traditional GOP conservatism with the rambunctious Tea Party nonsense will almost certainly be the person facing Obama. I can't see for one second that Scott Brown is anywhere near filling that role.

[BrainGlutton]

I don't think Obama is going to win in 2012. I just don't see it, and I can see white voters turn out in droves spurred on my evangelicals and tea partiers.

What, you think they didn't in 2008? It just wasn't enough.

I think the "Silent Majority" is going to come out one last time before they drown in 2012.

Guess what? The people you are talking about are no longer a majority.

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

Maybe as a Vice Presidential candidate in 2012 or a Presidential candidate in 2016 but I don't see Scott Brown running as President in 2012.

[Quartz]

Maybe as a Vice Presidential candidate in 2012 or a Presidential candidate in 2016 but I don't see Scott Brown running as President in 2012.

It's pushing it a bit, but wasn't Obama's rise from Senator to President almost as rapid?

[Chronos]

Sure, a Republican winning a Massachusetts Senate seat is big news, and understandably so. But he's still pretty far left for a Republican (certainly in the top three most liberal, along with the ladies from Maine). While that might be good for general-election success, he'd have a very hard time surviving the primaries.

[Really Not All That Bright]

It's pushing it a bit, but wasn't Obama's rise from Senator to President almost as rapid?
Yes, but Brown doesn't have Obama's speaking skills, and the 2012 Republican candidate will (presumably) be campaigning against an incumbent. While the incumbency rate for Presidents isn't nearly as high as it is for Representatives or Senators (largely, I suspect, because Americans generally know who the President is but rarely know who their Congresscritters are) the incumbent still has a significant advantage (http://www.polsci.buffalo.edu/contrib/faculty_staff/faculty/documents/PolSciQElection2004.pdf)- one that the pundits often overlook.

Obama is currently trending around a 44% approval rating, or roughly the same as Bush immediately prior to the 2004 election (http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm) (other than a brief "we found Saddam!" spike). There's little doubt that the economy will have recovered a bit by Election Day - certainly housing prices will have gone back up and the jobless rate will go down a bit - which will naturally give him a boost even if everything else stays the same.

Anyway, Brown is the ideological opposite of what Republicans want right now, or at least as close as can be found within the Republican Party. He's a centrist, and an incrementalist, when the Republican base wants a Tea Partyist, a radical (or, more specifically, a reactionary).

I have no doubt that Brown could pose a credible challenge to Obama in the 2004 presidential election. I very much doubt that Brown can win the Republican primaries with things as they stand.

[boytyperanma]

Brown would have no chance in a primary. Right now he's trying to balance being as far right as he can get and still be reelected in MA. The only candidates that can make it through a Republican primary in the current atmosphere are people who go right whenever possible.

Early on their was some talk of Brown as a potential presidential candidate, that talk seems to have died out on the right since he took a few bold stances and voted no to filibuster Democrat's proposals.

I think he's chosen his path for now and despite my interests it's looking like he might pull off being reelected as a senator.

[Stuffy]

No current republican senator can win in 2012. None. Scott Brown will most likely have trouble retaining his senate seat when it comes up.

[Quartz]

No current republican senator can win in 2012. None. Scott Brown will most likely have trouble retaining his senate seat when it comes up.

I tend to agree with the former; I don't know about the latter. But if the latter is true, then Brown has nothing to lose by trying, right?

[Wesley Clark]

No current republican senator can win in 2012. None. Scott Brown will most likely have trouble retaining his senate seat when it comes up.

Pretty much. Brown only won because people were upset by one party rule and there was an anti-incumbency vibe in the nation. He will be gone in 2013.

I have no idea who will win in 2012, but with the GOP primaries going further and further to the right someone like Brown, who has voted for cloture on more than one democratic vote, isn't going to win.

Likely/probably/hopefully the GOP primary will elect some radical, know nothing firebrand who loses big in the general election by alienating everyone who isn't already committed to the GOP. No idea who that'll be though.

[boytyperanma]

No current republican senator can win in 2012. None. Scott Brown will most likely have trouble retaining his senate seat when it comes up.

I tend to agree with the former; I don't know about the latter. But if the latter is true, then Brown has nothing to lose by trying, right?

I'd say him trying would cost him any chance of being reelected to his senate seat.

Romney wasn't up for any election in MA as a second term governor but if he wanted I think he could have found a place elsewhere in MA politics toward the beginning of the term. Once it was clear to the general public he was going to run for president his popularity in MA fell through the floor.

MA is OK with electing moderate Republicans.

In order to make it through a GOP primary you need to be a hard right conservative Republican.

As Brown can't be both a moderate and a conservative, he has a choice, present himself as hard right and shoot for president or work on presenting himself as more moderate win a full term senate seat.

Politically I think he has much better odds of getting the senate seat and if the GOP ever comes back to their senses he'd have a better shot at the presidency as a moderate Republican at a later date.

Personally I don't want Brown as my senator and I feel he lacks the intellectual capacity to make a good president. So him running for president right now would be great to me, he'd lose both the senate seat and the presidential race.

[Mnemonic Vice]

Scott Brown has demonstrated a real knack for knowing what to say and when to say it. He has positioned himself, in my opinion, marvelously to win reelection in the liberal state of Massachusetts. As a Massachusetts native myself, the state has always shown a tendency to go liberal at the lower levels of the political schism, while still managing to elect a Republican governor on a fairly consistent basis (re: Romney and Weld as recent examples).

Brown had the erudition to tailor his viewpoints to fit with his constituency, and it worked.

The problem, herein, is that, nationally, the Republican party has consistently been a group whose sole existence is based on toeing the party line, and repeated the same recycled factually questionable social and financial dialog. Scott Brown, to his general credit (and electoral detriment on a national scale) hasn't done this.

The only hope that a candidate like Scott Brown has to win the nomination of the Republican Party would be if the Tea Party pulled enough of the zealots and extremists out of the main GOP voting bloc that the moderate Republican once again had a leading voice in the party. Unless that happens, Brown is better off cultivating his image within the Bay State and attempting to shock the world once again by holding his Senate seat next time around.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Of course, if the Tea Party does pull away that many voters, winning the Pub nomination won't mean much.

[Mnemonic Vice]

Of course, if the Tea Party does pull away that many voters, winning the Pub nomination won't mean much.

While I generally agree with this sentiment, I think Brown in this scenario would actually have a punchers chance.

If a legit 3rd party Tea Party candidate siphoned off the extreme wing of the Republican party, you would be left with a small segment of moderate Republican voters...perhaps 15% of the general population, who would stay with the Republican candidate.

That said, as an Independent-minded Obama supporter who voted for Bush twice (I'm sorry), I could see alot of the Independent support that Obama got swinging to a Scott Brown type, particularly after seeing him go hard and fast against the Tea Party-representative in the debates. I could even see a small percentage of the frustrated moderate Democrats swinging his way.

Longshot? Probably...but could he scrape together 40% vote total among this hodge-podge? Not impossible...and in a 3 way race, potentially enough...

[Sam Stone]

The tea party vote isn't going to come out for a centrist, Washington politician. Nor will they go for an old Republican establishment figure. They don't care about Romney's Mormonism. They don't care if their candidate is a white male. That's just stereotypical crap the left believes about the tea party.

However, Romney has a big problem - in a time when the right wants an authentic person with conviction, Romney has shown himself to be a political chameleon. He comes across as a technocratic managerial type, not a philosophical firebrand. His biggest liability is that he signed a health care bill similar to the one that got the tea party into a lather. He does have a lot of appeal with centrists, so he's probably the most electable of the candidates, if he could win the primary.

But the guy the tea party wants is Chris Christie, the new governor of New Jersey. Maybe not Christie himself, but someone like him - a hard nosed, plain speaking guy willing to take on the establishment. Leading contenders right now are Christie, Mitch Daniels, and Sarah Palin. Newt Gingrich and Romney are long shots but possible. Squishy 'compassionate conservatives' like Mike Huckabee and culture warriors like Rick Santorum need not apply.

Other contenders could include Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, or someone not really on the radar yet - perhaps someone out of the business community.

We'll know who wants it fairly soon after the November election: anyone who wants to make a serious run at the presidency has to start fundraising and building a campaign organization very soon. One strike against Romney's supposed desire to be president is that he's been awfully quiet. If he wants to be the nominee, he should have an active PAC like Palin and Gingrich do, and he should be writing books and Op-Eds to raise his profile with the tea partiers.

[Really Not All That Bright]

The tea party vote isn't going to come out for a centrist, Washington politician. Nor will they go for an old Republican establishment figure. They don't care about Romney's Mormonism. They don't care if their candidate is a white male. That's just stereotypical crap the left believes about the tea party.
The only person who suggested that the Republican candidate needs to be a white male in this thread appears to be a conservative.

[waterj2]

The Republicans need to find a peachy clean white guy, a WASP. Someone who is going to play to white voters. Mitt Romney fits the bill nicely.I don't know Scott Brown, but why not? By 2012, he will have more experience in national politics than Obama.Not true. Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004, putting his Presidency at the four year mark of his term. Brown was elected in a special election in January 2010, putting the start of his hypothetical Presidency a little under the three year mark of his Senate term.

If Brown wanted the Presidency, his best bet would be to hope the Republicans get trounced in 2012, and are looking for a centrist in 2016. And of course, hope he gets reelected to the Senate in 2012. To win the Republican nomination in 2012, he'd have to start staking out a much more conservative voting record than he has been so far, and he'd have to do it soon. Doing so would pretty much mean giving up on reelection in Massachusetts. He's already got a narrow path to tread if he wants a second term, and that path is a very different path than one that could lead to Republican primary victories in states outside the Northeast.

Romney stopped being concerned primarily with governing Massachusetts about halfway through his term, in 2004, four years before the election, and didn't run for reelection in 2006. And it still involved him being seen as a flip-flopper. And if current trends hold, the Republican Party of 2012 is going to be far more demanding of ideological purity than it was in 2008.

Also, if Romney's running, I think he'll be using many of the advisers that helped Brown get elected. From what I understand, Brown's team consisted of a lot of people from Romney's campaigns (many of whom are currently working to get Charlie Baker elected governor). Just as Obama needed a top-notch team of advisers and endorsements from big Democratic Party names such as Ted Kennedy, so does Brown. And Romney is pretty much the only guy that he stands much of a chance to get them from. In 2016, especially if he's ambitious, he's likely to have much better contacts, and Romney's chance will likely have irrevocably passed.

[The Second Stone]

The tea party vote isn't going to come out for a centrist, Washington politician. Nor will they go for an old Republican establishment figure. They don't care about Romney's Mormonism. They don't care if their candidate is a white male. That's just stereotypical crap the left believes about the tea party.


Maybe the fact that you are not an American and in fact a Canadian has blinded you to the deep prejudice against Mormons in this country, and especially by the very same people who vilify Barack Obama for being a secret Muslim. They may not care in Massachusetts, but out here in the Tea Bagging West you should hear what Christian Republican White people have to say about Mormons. What they say about Catholics is rather polite, if irrational, by comparison. The quality of someone's Christianity is very important to the political right. Personally, I think that Romney is the strongest and best Republican candidate at the moment and I want the other team to nominate their best. George W Bush was a disaster because he was lazy, functionally stupid and an all around bastard, but that is what the Tea Bag base wants, but without the baggage of the Bush name. They openly and then secretly loved Bush.

[Cisco]

Scott Brown seems like a decent enough guy. I disagree with a lot of his positions, but I disagree with some of Obama's positions too, and I voted for him-- and will happily vote for him again next time around. I think Brown would be 10 times the president that whatever nudnik the GOP ends up hoisting for 2012 would be.

[Really Not All That Bright]

You are assuming that many of the same voters who think Obama is a Muslim actually know that Romney is a Mormon, assuming that a significant number do care. Romney polls better (http://news.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20100729poll_launches_mitt_romney_as_gop_front-runner/) among Republicans right now than he does among all voters.

ETA: That was addressed to The Second Stone, not Cisco.

[Cisco]

Maybe the fact that you are not an American and in fact a Canadian has blinded you to the deep prejudice against Mormons in this country, and especially by the very same people who vilify Barack Obama for being a secret Muslim. They may not care in Massachusetts, but out here in the Tea Bagging West you should hear what Christian Republican White people have to say about Mormons. What they say about Catholics is rather polite, if irrational, by comparison. The quality of someone's Christianity is very important to the political right.
Not that there isn't at least some truth to that (I happen to know there is), but then how do you explain Glenn Beck?

[boytyperanma]

The tea party vote isn't going to come out for a centrist, Washington politician. Nor will they go for an old Republican establishment figure. They don't care about Romney's Mormonism. They don't care if their candidate is a white male. That's just stereotypical crap the left believes about the tea party.
The only person who suggested that the Republican candidate needs to be a white male in this thread appears to be a conservative.

Not to mention said conservative made an entire post without mentioning the subject of the thread Scott Brown. Maybe he was just copy pasting from the Romney thread by mistake.

[Really Not All That Bright]

...how do you explain Glenn Beck?
Obviously, Satan is real.

[Stuffy]

Not that there isn't at least some truth to that (I happen to know there is), but then how do you explain Glenn Beck?

He didn't have to run for his position.

[Cisco]

He didn't have to run for his position.

That's the topic sentence of an argument, not an argument.

[Sam Stone]

I'm curious - how many of you who claim to know what the tea party wants actually follow tea party dialog directly, as opposed to reading someone else's interpretation of what the tea party wants?

I may be Canadian, but I also live in Alberta which is far more closely aligned to the tea party folks than is coastal America. Our Conservative party is being challenged from by the Wild Rose party, which is a libertarian-oriented party with a female leader. It's currently polling higher than all other parties in Alberta combined.

I read tea party web sites, listen to their podcasts, I'm personally aquainted with several of the more powerful people in the movement. I think I know these people fairly well - much more so than I did the old Catholic, Ivy League Republicans of the Buckley stripe or the deep south Republicans.

I don't see the racism that so many of you think is there, for one thing. What I do see is a strong desire to bue left alone. They don't like being condescend to, they don't like being told what too think or how to behave, and they don't think the federal government understands them or ohas their interests at heart. They want to run their businesses, keep their profits and invest it in their own communities rather than having it all go to Washington to be distributed back to them as some distant technocrat sees fit.

There is lots of contradiction here - they come from states that have big farm subsidies, for example. But by and large, what you're really seeing here is a bunch of people who have been told what to think for a long time, and they are finally asserting themselves.

Trust me - if Romney had been consistently articulating a small government, free market philosophy and had a history of putting free market reforms in place and of cutting the size of government, almost no one in the tea party would care about his religioin. Hell, some of the most popular people in the movement are overt athiests. This isn't about religion. It's about culture anid values. Small government vs big government. Rule by technocratic elites vs self governance. Big deficits and high taxes vs small deficits and low taxes (an admitted conundrum - we have yet to see if they'll stomach the kind of cuts their philosophy requires).

If a black American came along with the speaking ability of Obama coupled with the free market principles of Milton Friedman, he'd be the darling of the tea party.

[Frank]

The image Brown needs to convey to Massachusetts voters if he wishes to be reelected Senator is totally, completely, and 100% incompatible with the image he needs to convey if he wishes to be nominated as the GOP candidate for President.

If he can hang on to his Senate seat for maybe twenty years until the cycle has looped around again, he might have a shot then. Not in 2012. No way. No how.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Well, the thing with the pickup truck probably works in both scenarios.

[Frank]

I may be Canadian, but I also live in Alberta which is far more closely aligned to the tea party folks than is coastal America. Our Conservative party is being challenged from by the Wild Rose party, which is a libertarian-oriented party with a female leader. It's currently polling higher than all other parties in Alberta combined.
39%, with four sitting MLAs out of 83, only one of whom was actually elected, with the next election not due till 2013.

Better that the Tea Party, I must admit.

[Cisco]

I'm curious - how many of you who claim to know what the tea party wants actually follow tea party dialog directly, as opposed to reading someone else's interpretation of what the tea party wants?

I may be Canadian, but I also live in Alberta which is far more closely aligned to the tea party folks than is coastal America. Our Conservative party is being challenged from by the Wild Rose party, which is a libertarian-oriented party with a female leader. It's currently polling higher than all other parties in Alberta combined.

I read tea party web sites, listen to their podcasts, I'm personally aquainted with several of the more powerful people in the movement. I think I know these people fairly well - much more so than I did the old Catholic, Ivy League Republicans of the Buckley stripe or the deep south Republicans.

I don't see the racism that so many of you think is there, for one thing. What I do see is a strong desire to bue left alone. They don't like being condescend to, they don't like being told what too think or how to behave, and they don't think the federal government understands them or ohas their interests at heart. They want to run their businesses, keep their profits and invest it in their own communities rather than having it all go to Washington to be distributed back to them as some distant technocrat sees fit.

There is lots of contradiction here - they come from states that have big farm subsidies, for example. But by and large, what you're really seeing here is a bunch of people who have been told what to think for a long time, and they are finally asserting themselves.

Trust me - if Romney had been consistently articulating a small government, free market philosophy and had a history of putting free market reforms in place and of cutting the size of government, almost no one in the tea party would care about his religioin. Hell, some of the most popular people in the movement are overt athiests. This isn't about religion. It's about culture anid values. Small government vs big government. Rule by technocratic elites vs self governance. Big deficits and high taxes vs small deficits and low taxes (an admitted conundrum - we have yet to see if they'll stomach the kind of cuts their philosophy requires).

If a black American came along with the speaking ability of Obama coupled with the free market principles of Milton Friedman, he'd be the darling of the tea party.

Jesus, that sounds like a parody of how they see themselves. I mean you really nailed it with the farming subsidies, Sam. The whole movement is hypocritical beyond absurdity. It's a mass denial of reality in favor of some fictional, 1830s perception of what America "used to be."

[Stuffy]

That's the topic sentence of an argument, not an argument.

Actually it was mostly a joke.

[Stuffy]

I don't see the racism that so many of you think is there, for one thing. What I do see is a strong desire to bue left alone.

Who you gonna believe me or your lying eyes huh?

[Sam Stone]

I forgot to mention a couple of other strong possibilities for challengers to Obama in the next presidential election: Jeb Bush and Mike Pence.

Oh, and please ignore the typos in my last messages. I'm typing this from an iPad, and Apple's auto-correct is insane.

[Jonathan Chance]

Typos don't matter.

But Sam, I think you're utterly mistaken about the Tea Party. I think within two years this thing fades away.

And about the racism? In my campaign (voting in less than 100 days!) the local Tea Party, which is one of the most active in Ohio, is clearly racial in bent.

Hell, I bumped into their founder in a grocery store last week. I chatted him up...you never know where a vote will come from, after all, and we've known each other for years. He mentioned that he'd been travelling to 9-12 and Tea Party events all over the state doing organizing. Well and good. Then he sang out with "We've got to do it. We're trying to take our country back from the blacks."

I smiled and nodded. This is a man who was invited to the first Tea Party event on the National Mall to be a speaker because he was an early organizer. And he DOES travel throughout Ohio giving speeches and helping to organize other groups.

So you'll forgive me if my experience doesn't march with yours.

[Really Not All That Bright]

I forgot to mention a couple of other strong possibilities for challengers to Obama in the next presidential election: Jeb Bush and Mike Pence.
Wow.

I've never heard of Pence, but I've never seen such a boneheaded list of policy positions in my life, other than the banal "cut government waste" stuff.

[Marley23]

He's very much in the mould of Obama. He ran a stonking campaign, winning a traditionally Democrat state. He ticks all the right boxes - handsome, military service at home and abroad (albeit JAG in National Guard), male model, intelligent, down-to-earth, etc. In addition, he also appears to have Clinton's charm.
Almost none of those things are true of Obama, so how is Brown in Obama's mold? Obama did run a good campaign, but he was running in a state that strongly favors Democrats these days, he never served in the military, and he's not particularly Clintonesque. 'Down to earth' is not something I've heard said about Obama very often either. Intelligent, sure. Handsome... some people think so. I guess you could say Obama and Brown were/are both fresh faces and that that worked in their favor in their senate campaigns. But it seems to me that Brown pitched himself as a regular guy sort of candidate ("I drive a truck") and Obama never did that. He wouldn't be able to pull it off if he tried.

Pretty much. Brown only won because people were upset by one party rule and there was an anti-incumbency vibe in the nation.
If you're listing the reasons Brown won, you need to include the fact that his opponent is universally agreed to have run a terrible campaign.

The circumstances around Obama were pretty unique. His 2004 DNC address drew a lot of attention, and he was able to excite some people early on because of his message and also because of his race. That helped make him a credible candidate in the middle of his first term in the Senate. I don't see that happening for Brown at the same point in his career. He did attract national attention for winning unexpectedly, but I don't see him getting to that point where he's a serious (if longshot) candidate for 2012. And it's true that he is a Massachusetts Republican, too.

[Ravenman]

I'm curious - how many of you who claim to know what the tea party wants actually follow tea party dialog directly, as opposed to reading someone else's interpretation of what the tea party wants?Shoot, I don't think anyone knows what the Tea Party wants, other than "change." One of the conservative posters here made a pretty good comment during the 2008 campaign, in that many disenfranchised center-to-left people projected their own beliefs on Barack Obama, and therefore Obama was sort of everything to everyone.

I would say the Tea Party is even more so. What the Tea Party stands for is whatever any conservative-to-libertarian person who is somewhat riled up wants it to stand for. Witness the numerous organizations which claim to represent the Tea Party that go all the way from Ronald Reagan worshippers to fruitcakes who think there is a secret 13th Amendment to the Constitution that would strip Obama of his citizenship. (Yes, I'm serious.)

I don't see the racism that so many of you think is there, for one thing.
When the Tea Partiers descended on Washington lo these many times,
one would have to be ignorant not to see some people expressing some combination of intolerance, ignorance, or offensiveness. From what I saw, there were very few being outright racist, but a fairly notable number of what I'd call simple intolerance -- "We're tired of Mexicans crossing the boarder to steal our women, etc." Well, not literally, but close.

Rule by technocratic elites vs self governance. It's funny how "technocrats" is such a terrible word now. Tea Partiers hate politicians. They hate lawyers. They hate career bureaucrats. They think people ought to be drawn from everyday America to run the government -- fine. So the idea of having, say, an economist make economic policy ought to be appealing, right? "NO! He's just some TECHNOCRAT who specialized in BEING AN EXPERT and then APPLYING HIS CONSIDERABLE KNOWLEDGE TO GOVERNMENT! We can't have that! Why can't we have a fry cook from Wendy's run the Treasury for once?!?!"

If a black American came along with the speaking ability of Obama coupled with the free market principles of Milton Friedman, he'd be the darling of the tea party.Well, there's Alan Keyes, and he's a nut.

[Little Nemo]

I'm curious - how many of you who claim to know what the tea party wants actually follow tea party dialog directly, as opposed to reading someone else's interpretation of what the tea party wants?

I may be Canadian, but I also live in Alberta which is far more closely aligned to the tea party folks than is coastal America. Our Conservative party is being challenged from by the Wild Rose party, which is a libertarian-oriented party with a female leader. It's currently polling higher than all other parties in Alberta combined.

I read tea party web sites, listen to their podcasts, I'm personally aquainted with several of the more powerful people in the movement. I think I know these people fairly well - much more so than I did the old Catholic, Ivy League Republicans of the Buckley stripe or the deep south Republicans.

I don't see the racism that so many of you think is there, for one thing. What I do see is a strong desire to bue left alone. They don't like being condescend to, they don't like being told what too think or how to behave, and they don't think the federal government understands them or ohas their interests at heart. They want to run their businesses, keep their profits and invest it in their own communities rather than having it all go to Washington to be distributed back to them as some distant technocrat sees fit.

There is lots of contradiction here - they come from states that have big farm subsidies, for example. But by and large, what you're really seeing here is a bunch of people who have been told what to think for a long time, and they are finally asserting themselves.

Trust me - if Romney had been consistently articulating a small government, free market philosophy and had a history of putting free market reforms in place and of cutting the size of government, almost no one in the tea party would care about his religioin. Hell, some of the most popular people in the movement are overt athiests. This isn't about religion. It's about culture anid values. Small government vs big government. Rule by technocratic elites vs self governance. Big deficits and high taxes vs small deficits and low taxes (an admitted conundrum - we have yet to see if they'll stomach the kind of cuts their philosophy requires).

If a black American came along with the speaking ability of Obama coupled with the free market principles of Milton Friedman, he'd be the darling of the tea party.It's posts like this that reveal you're a Canadian not an American. You guys are nuts over language not race.

Race is the 800 pound gorilla of the Tea Party. It's the subject that everyone is thinking about and nobody is talking about. Race is the reason there were no mass movement against Clinton or Carter but an ongoing demonstration against Obama.

Tea Partiers may say they want traditonal values and small government and fiscal responsibility and whatever else. But those issues have been around for decades. What got marchers out on the sidewalks was race.

[Sam Stone]

Can you post some samples of racism directly from a tea party group?

[Digital Stimulus]

Can you post some samples of racism directly from a tea party group?
Samples from individuals? Or do you expect something akin to formal statements from one the groups?

Also, perhaps you missed post #39.

[Marley23]

Let me guess: someone comes along to post a photo of one of the racist posters seen at Tea Party events, like the one with Obama as a witch doctor. Sam Stone says that's not directly from a tea party group, it's just a person at a rally. Someone else says the point is that racism is feeding the movement to some extent and that arguing over whether or not the statement must be official is semantics. Then the whole thread descends into pointlesness.

[Little Nemo]

It isn't 1950. People don't openly speak about keeping the races seperate. (Although they do complain about how political correctness means you can't say some things anymore.)

Most of the racism is, as I posted, unstated. It's things like when Tea Partiers say they want our country back...and the President isn't like us...he doesn't share our values...we just want things to be they way they used to be.

This reticence does have its conveniences. It makes it possible for tea party defenders to stick their fingers in their ears and deny that there's any racism involved. As long as there are no hoods or burning crosses you don't have to explain why there are no black faces in the crowd.

So Sam, I'm giving you the benefit of a doubt and assuming that, as a Canadian, you're not seeing what any American sees and not just denying the obvious.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Can you post some samples of racism directly from a tea party group?
Um... okay. http://www.theroot.com/buzz/tea-party-candidate-new-york-gubernatorial-race-adorable

[dudemanjack]

Can you post some samples of racism directly from a tea party group?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/tea-party-protests-nier-f_n_507116.html

[Normal Phase]

As things stand, Scott Brown would never make it through the primary. The Republican Party is all but pared down to the ideological core, and he fails on most of their points. He's recently been caught whining about always having to be the one to vote with the Democrats when the rest of the Republicans want a Democratic-sponsored bill passed but don't want to be caught dead voting Yes. There are several states with open primaries where Independents and crossover Democrats might push someone like him to the front, but not nearly enough.

McCain had many of the same flaws, but so did everyone else who had any national exposure or who was treated seriously by the media. A lot's changed recently. The hard right wing is a lot more organized and a lot more well known; and the Republican Party itself much more restricted in viewpoint. An ideologue will be their candidate, not a centrist. If Scott Brown is to stand a chance he will have to tack hard right, right now, and -- see above -- he's not doing it.

[Chronos]

Quoth Sam Stone:I'm curious - how many of you who claim to know what the tea party wants actually follow tea party dialog directly, as opposed to reading someone else's interpretation of what the tea party wants?If you based an assessment of what the tea party movement is actually about on what they say, then you'd come to the conclusion that they're staunch supporters of Obama. He wants to cut their taxes and leave them alone, and they're up in arms against the idea.

(by the way, let me say that I'm always a bit bemused seeing Sam Stone and The Second Stone debate. Can't just use "Stone" as mental shorthand, any more).

[Sam Stone]

Really Not That Bright has a reasonable example. Now we'll have to see whether the tea party people condemn that. dudemanjack posted an example that I would use as an example of how the left is trying to smear the tea party as racist. There is NO evidence that those racial slurs occurred. In fact it seeems to me that the event in question was an attempt to trap the tea partiers by sending members of the Congressional Black Caucus marching through a tea party rally, surrounded by cameras and microphones, hoping to catch racist acts on camera to use against the movement. They couldn't manage to do it, so they just lied and said it happened, and the media dutifully reported it as fact. To date, no documentary evidence of racial slurs has been presented, despite a $100,000 reward being offered to anyone who may have captured it on a cell phone or video camera.

[Cisco]

Lol, what, Sam?

"Rnatb has a good example, and that's all we'll say about that. Now back to why the Tea Party isn't racist . . . "

You're a pretty intelligent guy, Sam, which is why it baffles me that you so often demonstrate how thick your ideological blinders are.

[Stuffy]

In fact it seeems to me that the event in question was an attempt to trap the tea partiers by sending members of the Congressional Black Caucus marching through a tea party rally, surrounded by cameras and microphones, hoping to catch racist acts on camera to use against the movement. They couldn't manage to do it, so they just lied and said it happened, and the media dutifully reported it as fact. To date, no documentary evidence of racial slurs has been presented, despite a $100,000 reward being offered to anyone who may have captured it on a cell phone or video camera.

You do realize how Machaivellian that sounds, and that you're talking about Democrats ;)

[Sam Stone]

Quoth Sam Stone

(by the way, let me say that I'm always a bit bemused seeing Sam Stone and The Second Stone debate. Can't just use "Stone" as mental shorthand, any more).

One of us is the other's evil twin. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which. :)

[Blank Slate]

Where were the teabaggers when Bush was running up huge deficits and spending like the proverbial drunken sailor? Nowhere, that's where. Silent.

It's not a movement, it's just a bunch of angry republicans pissed that they lost the election. If it was a movement about principles, they would have marched on Washington during the Bush years. They're a joke.

I think Brown would make a solid candidate in the general election, but as others have noted, he'd never survive the primaries. Unless he's so ambitious that he would adopt a platform that mixed teabaggery and far right-wing talking points.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Really Not That Bright has a reasonable example. Now we'll have to see whether the tea party people condemn that.
That was on April 12. I think four months is probably long enough for the (no doubt strident) Tea Party condemnation to have filtered through to the mainstream media, don't you? Or any media, for that matter.