The uniter: Scott Brown’s center-right-indie coalition
(Photo via R.S. McCain)
(Photo via Voting Female)
(Photo of Northeastern University rally sent in from reader Scott T.)
On Sunday night, Public Policy Polling (swing state specialists) released the latest stunning numbers in the Massachusetts Senate race. Martha Antoinette Coakley is hemorrhaging independents and the enthusiasm gap is widening as the Bay State heads into the January 19 special election.
Reports PPP:
Over the last week Brown has continued his dominance with independents and increased his ability to win over Obama voters as Coakley’s favorability numbers have declined into negative territory….
-Brown is up 64-32 with independents and is winning 20% of the vote from people who supported Barack Obama in 2008 while Coakley is getting just 4% of the McCain vote.
-Brown’s voters continue to be much more enthusiastic than Coakley’s. 80% of his say they’re ‘very excited’ about voting Tuesday while only 60% of hers express that sentiment. But the likely electorate now reports having voted for Barack Obama by 19 points, up from 16 a week ago, and a much smaller drop from his 26 point victory in the state than was seen in Virginia.
-Those planning to turn out continue to be skeptical of the Democratic health care plan, saying they oppose it by a 48/40 margin.
-Coakley’s favorability dropped from 50% to 44% after a week filled with perceived missteps. Brown’s negatives went up a lot but his positives only actually went from 57% to 56%, an indication that attacks against him may have been most effective with voters already planning to support Coakley but ambivalent toward Brown.
-56% of voters in the state think Brown has made a strong case for why he should be elected while just 41% say the same of Coakley. Even among Coakley’s supporters only 73% think she’s made the argument for herself, while 94% of Brown’s supporters think he has.
Those “missteps” aren’t merely “perceived.” They’re quite real, piling up, and epitomize the entitled, elitist mindset of Coakley and her party. As Boston Red Sox great Curt Schilling put it at a rally Sunday after endorsing Brown, Coakley’s clueless jab at him is “another sign of her aloofness, and just the fact that she’s very out of touch, I think, with the people.”
The Left’s tired, old “Blame Bush” bromides aren’t cutting it. Who’s Martha Coakley kidding? Her supporters accuse Brown — an Army National Guardsman from a middle-class-upbringing who has campaigned across the state in his truck — of being a “Bush crony” candidate while Coakley parties with Washington lobbyists and the Kennedy clan (at least one of whom reportedly can’t even get her name right).
She’s the proven voice of fatcats and corruptocrats.
He’s uniting Tea Party activists, rank-and-file union members, GOP party faithful, and independents.
How did he unite this coalition?
Some moderate Beltway Republicans think Brown’s center-right-indie coalition vindicates and validates their agenda to turn the GOP into Democratic Party Lite.
I know. The coffee spurted up my nose, too.
Tea Party-basher David Frum, for example, is using the Brown surge to praise himself — and to take another of his endless smacks at “talk radio conservatives:”
The Scott Brown who may rescue the country from Obamacare is not a talk radio conservative.
Strong on defense and school choice, opposed to the Obama administration’s signature initiatives, Brown voted in favor of Mitt Romney’s health plan in Massachusetts. He describes himself as pro-choice (subject to reasonable limitations), accepts gay marriage in Massachusetts as a settled fact, and told the Boston Herald editorial board he would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor. He calls himself “fiscally conservative and socially conscious.” He’s got an environmental record too: In the state senate he voted in favor of a regional initiative to curb greenhouse gas initiatives.
Most important: Unlike his arrogant, brittle opponent, Brown has shown himself an open and accessible candidate, optimistic and without rancor. In short – he’s running exactly the kind of campaign that we alleged RINOs have been urging on the GOP for months now.
It would be a travesty if Brown’s victory is seized upon as a victory for anger, paranoia, and ideological extremism.
Maggie Gallagher politely corrects Frum on Brown’s gay marriage stance:
I love David Frum. But his account of the Brown/Coakley race fails to note that Scott Brown was one of a small band of state legislators who voted to let the people decide marriage — through a state marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of husband and wife — and that Martha Coakley, as attorney general, championed the current lawsuit aimed at overturning DOMA.
Being a gay-marriage champion (as Corzine and, most lately, Dodd have found) apparently doesn’t help you win many elections, even in the the liberal Northeast.
As for disparaging “talk radio conservatives,” every major local, state, and national “talk radio conservative” has thrown his/her voice and audience behind Brown. And it is thanks to the power of talk radio, Tea Party grass-roots, and conservative online activism — not through RINO armchair campaign managers — that Brown has been able to raise money and get his message out.
As for Brown’s vote for that greenhouse gas initiative, he admits he was “sold a bill of goods” and unlike, say, Barack Obama, he is incorporating the ClimateGate scandal’s new discoveries about data suppression and manipulation into his thinking.
Brown opposes adopting a federal cap-and-trade boondoggle scheme that would amount to a massive new energy tax on Americans. He has repeatedly emphasized a bread-and-butter economic platform contrasting Coakley tax-and-spend liberalism with his opposition to imposing new tax burdens on working Americans during a recession.
In contrast, Frum has pushed for Republicans to abandon the traditional, mainstream low-tax/less-government message in favor of things like a national carbon tax.
As for Frum taking credit for the “kind of campaign” Brown is running, don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.
Brown may not be the most conservative Republican who walks the Earth (a fact I’ve readily pointed out many times over the past few weeks), but he is promising loudly, clearly, and proudly to stop the bribe-stuffed Demcare legislation and to reject business-as-usual backroom deals.
In contrast, Frum crusaded for Republicans to go along and negotiate on Obama’s big-ticket initiatives and bemoaned the “furious rejectionist frenzy of the past 12 months.” He accused the GOP of losing its mind and pouted that Republicans looked “clueless” and “silly” for standing against the stimulus boondoggle and Obama’s generational theft. Who looks silly now?
Frum and others are pointing to this analysis claiming that Brown is “a more liberal Republican than Dede Scozzafava.” Nonsense. On the core do-or-die issues for mainstream Republicans, Brown is on the Right side. Scozzafava was on the radical Leftist side. He’ll vote against the Dems’ new stimulus schemes. She supported them. He’ll vote against the Dems’ cap-and-tax legislation. She would have voted for it. He’s opposed by the teachers’ union hacks. She raked in campaign cash from the National Education Association and an entire alphabet soup of Big Labor groups.
On social issues, they wrongheadedly lump Brown and Scozzafava together as pro-choice Republicans of the same mold. Scozzafava rubbed the issue in the faces of her constituents with Planned Parenthood/NARAL endorsements and her glowing acceptance of an award named after notorious eugenicist Margaret Sanger. Brown, on the other hand, has not made abortion a focal point of the campaign and the Tea Party activists whom so many critics accuse of “purism” have been fine with that.
Instead, Brown has run on the core Tea Party issues of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and a strong national defense, while appealing to a broader swath of voters by emphasizing integrity, independence, and willingness to stand up to machine politics. After a year’s worth of Obama’s phony fruits and congressional foxes guarding the henhouse, voters have had enough of the enablers and water-carriers. Unlike Frum, Brown is channeling the energies of taxpayers of all stripes who are disgusted and angry — yes, ANGRY! – with the culture of corruption in Washington. That is how Brown has struck common ground with his insurgent center-right-indie coalition: By stepping up to oppose the Dems’ plans to rig the game and undermine representative government, instead of sneering at angry taxpayers’ “ideological extremism”/”paranoia” and instead of trashing the talk radio networks through which those angry taxpayers communicate, commiserate, and organize.
Reality check: With his small-town, anti-elitist appeal, Brown’s campaign has much more in common with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber populism than it does with David Frum and Beltway GOP Re-Branding defeatism. Yes, we can all get along — except for those Washington worrywarts too busy pissing on the very same right-wing “rancor” that is fueling 2010′s GOP comeback.
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What we are uniting against:
According to ad-buy information provided to the Fix, there are 13 — yes, 13 — groups paying for ads in the race’s final days, with Democratic groups outspending Republican-aligned by more than $1 million.
Coakley’s ad advantage comes from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is set to spend $1.4 million on ads in the final week of the race — a staggering sum given the overwhelming Democratic tilt of the Bay State, and yet another sign of how worried the party is. (The National Republican Senatorial Committee is not running ads in the state.)
The other major Democratic groups in the mix are labor-affiliated. The Service Employees International Union is up with $549,000 in ads, and Citizens for Strength and Security, which is funded by unions, is spending $425,000 on ads.
And this:
Even if Democrats lose the Jan. 19 special election to pick a new Massachusetts senator, Congress may still pass a health-care overhaul by using a process called reconciliation, a top House Democrat said.
That procedure requires 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to prevent Republicans from blocking votes on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities. That supermajority is at risk as the Massachusetts race has tightened.
“Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation,” said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Getting health-care reform passed is important,” Van Hollen said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “Reconciliation is an option.”
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Were it only so…then we would definitely have HCR through the Senate by now!
Dems control 27 legislatures, Republicans 17, 8 split and one (NE) nonpartisan. Assume that the 8 split go 50/50 and give NE to the Republicans and Democrats still come away with 62 senators.
A lot of that is cowardice.
Lets them claim they opposed a bill they didn’t.
Like Arlene Spectre, earlier this year, when he was still pretending to be a Republican, voted to support Obama’s plan to provide funding to kill brown babies, then when he found his vote wasn’t needed, he changed it, so officially he voted against Obama.
Dishonesty and cowardice.
chaps, some of the state leges probably flipped during the disaster of 2008. With 6 year terms, it might not break down that way.
BTW, the filibuster was 67 votes until 1974, IIRC…
Yes, but the Senate seats don’t all change hands with gubernatorial elections.
Exactly. The founders did everything they could to set up roadblocks along the way. Their goal was to keep the federal government from doing very much at all.
To: mytake
The Federal Election Commission has the data for donations to both Scott Brown and Martha Coakley as of 12/31/09 posted at:
http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapHSApp.do?drillLevel=state&stateName=MA&election_yr=2010
12/31/09 was before the online donations to Scott Brown sky rocketed in January. I hope the FEC will post updated data soon.
http://www.OpenSecrets.org is another good site for getting info about campaign contributions, but I couldn’t find info about the Massachusetts special election on their site yet. I am listing this site here in case you want to check out donation info for other candidates in your local areas.
Let’s use these web sites to keep an eye on the donations for all of the candidates in 2010!
Good point. Here were the flips in 2008:
So that would probably be 3 seats less right there.
Senate candidates only file quarterly. And they can’t file electronically, like the House candidates, because that would provide too much sunlight. They legislated that Senate reporting must be done manually to slow down the relevations that the reports reveal.
So anybody got the odds on Coakley throwing a massive hissy fit if(when) she looses?
MarcoPolo #118 said
Thank you for the update, MarcoPolo!
Sounds like we need to start demanding more disclosure from Senate candidates!
Who do you suggest we write to, to protest the lack of electronic filing and more frequent disclosure?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant!
We need to clean up the election process before the 2010 elections!
OT: milblog storm over posuer at Houston mayor inaguration.
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=16756
There should be a drinks game for tomorrow’s election. Every time the MSM says “Ted Kennedy’s Seat” or “surprised at a Republican winning in MA” or “misjudged the electorate” or
“people are frustrated and angry” or “Bush” or “what happened,” it is time to drink. Can you think of others?
Just joking about the above, but if Brown wins,and I hope and pray he does, expect to see heads explode. I am hoping Chris Matthew’s leg will start tingling…
I bet Uncle Teddy is rolling over in his grave about now.
Go Scott Go
The warning came from Massachusetts in 1775 that tyrants arrived to take our freedoms.
What warning will historic Massachusetts give in 2010? A warning to the tyrants, or to the patriots? History awaits.
when I saw, and heard, a Gun fired, which appeared to be a Pistol. Then I could distinguish two Guns, and then a Continual roar of Musquetry Paul Revere
On Twitter, Brown has 10,187 followers compared to Coakley’s 3,514 followers. The total uploaded views for Brown’s YouTube videos are 578,271 versus 51,173 for Coakley.
Verry interesting.
Perhaps a Jenningsesque “the voters had a temper tantrum” quote?
Don’t worry: it will be dampened by the spreading wet spot traveling down his pant leg.
USN RET–Coakley will blame it on Copenhagen just like the nitwit Danny Blover–or that Bush is doing fund raising for Haitians. Go Scott Brown. Phrissy Matthews will feel something running down his leg and it won’t be a tingle.
That ain’t a military poseur, it is some flamer with a major case of teh ghey dressing up like The Village People for the inauguration of Houston’s first vagitarian mayor.
Seeing the photo of the Brown supporters wearing SEIU logo togs almost made me think I had been somehow transported to Bizzaro World. Upon further reflection though, it is merely a reminder on how detached union leadership is from the people they claim to represent.
Has Brown’s momentum surprised ACORN, who, caught with their pants down, didn’t file enough phony absentee ballots?
I’m looking forward to a Brown win followed by Kerry losing his seat when he’s up for re-election.
For some reason, although I cannot cite the exact reference, I recall this supermajority requirement resulting from something pushed by the Democrats when they were in the minority.
I also recall there being some change where it required 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, even if it was just stated rather than an actual filibuster…also a result of Dem whining back then.
They shouldn’t be surprised when they change the rules to suit them that the rules come back to bite them at some point.
Gee. Kinda like what’s going on in MA at the moment.
Oh, and if Biden had been lucid at some point in the past 10 years, he may have remembered this.
Be back later. School district meeting on their plan to raise taxes.
…in a bad economy no less.
I might have to force myself to watch Olbermann tomorrow night just to enjoy the potential psychotic breakdown (above and beyond the usual psychotic outbursts…)
Matthews may be even more whacko. Sadly, and fortunately, our cable doesn’t offer MSNBC.
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Republicans have crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats on some pretty big bills – the stimulus bill, for instance.
If the Democrats don’t want to see filibusters, they could try to craft a genuinely bipartisan healthcare bill.
yeah glad they didn’t need that when Bush’s social security reform passed…er wait…
HA! Even the libtards over on the CNN.com poll say that Brown wins!
The obamanation stumps for croakley in MA and makes NO reference to his health care deform debacle, which is a CENTRAL ISSUE in the MA situation. Why not, Barry? Cat got your tongue?
Holdouts in the obamanation health care deform debacle are BRIBED with $100 million exemption (Landrieu D-LA), Medicaid exemption (Nelson D-NE), insurance plan tax exemption (SIEU). Why be exempt from such a great plan?
Obama, your boat is sinking. Do you swim as well as you govern?
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=43D62D3D-18FE-70B2-A8A2DB2551E7FCD1
If Brown wins, THE ONE plans on being MORE pugilistic!!!
Yeah, that’ll work…
OPERATION OVER-REACH hits a new milestone.
Teddy Kennedy (wearing a nightshirt and nothing else) “Did somebody say drinking game? Make mine Chivas, and hold the ice!”
I’m thinking that Teddy is eager for anything like ice where he is now…
Ohhhh, don’t count on it. I’m totally expecting a WA state style, “Ohh wowsers! Lookee here! Brown was winning handily until we found {insert number needed to win} absentee ballots at the Kennedy compound mailing facility! Oops!”
FIFY
If Brown wins the election today but then screws over Massachusetts, I’ll move to Mass. and start his recall myself. He’s got one chance and this election IS NOT ABOUT HIM – he’s being given a special honor at a time when the stars have aligned.
However it goes, I think its about time to start the recall petitions on our congresspeople anyway and not wait for the regular election cycles.
hmmm I wonder who Teddy Kennedy will be voting for today?
Heads up per Gateway Pundit:
Here’s hoping for the best today.
A Brown win would be huge for conservatives, independents, and moderates of all political stripes. Basically a shot across the bow of the far left regressives.
It would have symbolic and political ramifications, but as a 40 year old independent Masshole who’s been raging against the machine his entire life, let me tell you this. The entire campaign has been directed just as much toward Beacon Hill, as it has toward Capital Hill. We here in Massachusetts are extremely unsatisfied with the autocratic, one party pooh-bahs, of the entrenched corruptocrats of Beacon Hill, who are all but daring us to break out the tar and feathers, and dump them into Boston Harbor like our ancestors did with old Earl Grey 237 years ago.
“The tree of Liberty,” said Thomas Jefferson, “must be watered, from time to time, with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.” If Beacon Hill doesn’t get the message this time, shall we open the spigots?
Three things we will hear ad nauseam from the liberal establishment if Brown wins:
1. It wasn’t about Obama
2. Massachusetts voters were suddenly struck stupid.
3. Massachusetts voters are racist, sexist, homophobes, or something.
Reading liberals is like reading a children’s book, minus the charm and innocense.
On January 19th, 2010 at 3:16 am, jpmzo said:
4. Massachusetts voters have had enough of the Democrats.
They have been behaving very badly for a long time.
fluffy, Massachusetts voter
I am hopeful of a Brown victory, but trying to be realistic, it is Massachusetts.
Outside of being a seemingly hopelessly liberal state, Massachsetts would be a great place to really get the ball rolling to take back our runaway government, considering their history and the original Tea Party.
Even if Scott Brown had been 25 points ahead in the polls yesterday there’s one HUGE reason why it wouldn’t deter me one iota from casting my vote today.
I view my vote for Scott as one small splinter of a big wooden stake getting driven through the puny evil heart of puking liberalism.
Perhaps some may construe this as ‘piling on’? ….YOU BETCHA!
If I may be so bold.
Dances – Good on ya. Cast one for me too please. Vote early and often!
Yep, a victory just large enough to prevent the scumbag Dems from stealing the election would be wonderful……a huge victory would be better than sex…..as I remember it! LOL
Win or lose; this neck-and-neck race in MA is akin to an Israeli Jew running neck-and-neck with Ahmadinajad for President of Iran.
The left/Dems don’t get the magnitude of this; that on day 364 of the Obaman Empire, it may be over.
___‹^›__‹(•¿•)›__‹^›___
*Fingers crossed* several times over, for a crucial Republican victory, and a victory for the future of this Country.
The extremist liberals will do -anything- to win. That includes cheating and lying. So if you live in Massachusetts, make sure you vote today.
All the polls excepts R2000 indicate Brown with a solid margin. And even that R2000 poll indicates a huge swing toward Brown.
So if we can escape the cheating liberal ballot stuffing, Coakley will go down in flames and Brown’s win will send a message to the Dems in Congress and to Obama. That message is…
“Don’t throw out those old cardboard boxes libs. You’re gonna need ‘em to pack up your stuff.”
What Dances… said – ditto!
GO, SCOTT!
Off to vote…
This is one area Brown can’t take credit. Barack Obama brought this coalition together. It was driven by the tea Partiers and make no mistake about that!
Heard on Fox News radio that at a heavily Dimocrat polling place, many of the D’s are voting for Brown. Hope a Tsunami is brewing. Go Scott Brown.
B. Hussein
If Brown simply deftly played the hand he was dealt…; and if he observed the wisdom, “When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, do not interfere.”…still, kudos to him.
Irony and poetic justice if “the end of the beginning” of the destruction of our wonderful nation begins in, of all places, Massachusetts.
A Scott Brown victory should be a “come to Jesus” moment for every Blue Dog and traditional Democrat. Beck nailed it this morning when he said, “The Democrats in MA appear to be choosing country over Party.”
If you are either of the above, and you want to remain in Congress, you had best represent your constituents and not the White House.
We shall see which they fear more after today.
Don’t forget my personal favorite, voter intimidation! I am a proud member of the “Sponsor a Thug” program where, for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day, I too can help feed and clothe an inner city youth, as well as provide charter bus service from Mattapan directly to Brockton so they can serve as “greeters” to all those nice white folks going to polls.
Every Christmas my sponsor thug sends my family a hand written (–er, scrawled, actually) note detailing how much their bench press went up this year and how many crackers they scared away from voting.
It feels good to know you can give back something to the community.
I don’t see this as a win for Conservatives.
From what I can tell, Scott isn’t the most conservative guy.
Maybe for the bluest state,that’s relative enough
That being said, I would vote for him if I were is Mass.
A Brown win may derail the healthcare obamination.
At least it will continue to expose the corruption and how far Reid-Pelosi will go to get around any semblance of the will of the people
Don’t worry, Teddy! You will cool off soon enough. Today “your seat” will be going to a Republican and hell will officially freeze over.
Oh yeah!!! YOU GO!!! Spoken like a true Viking! What a great post! I only wish I lived in MA today to be a part of history!
It is always heartening to see someone willing to work with and support our disadvantaged youth, Chap.
Yes it is heartening.
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HI KILROYSHERE–#166. Nice use of the “special characters” to make the old WW2 Kilroy Was Here logo. I haven’t seen this for 50 years. I wondered where he went–hiding out in your computer!
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John Bibb
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Errah, I JUST VOTED, TWICE!!!!
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HI CHAPOUTIER #174. I belong to the PLUG A THUG society. In Texas it can be hazardous to your leg to stand in front of a polling place with a nightstick trying to keep someone from voting.
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Those stray bullets can hurt a lot! Just ask the British who were at the Lexington / Concord bridge about 233 years ago.
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John Bibb
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