Red and Blue
Analyzing the Republican Victory in Massachusetts
Jan 27, 2010
Arnie Arnesen and Michael Krull
BLUE
The threat level this week is brown
By Arnie ArnesenI know Scott Brown. In fact I met him way back in 2005 in the early days of his political career as a lonely Republican state senator in an overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts state senate. I was hosting a new daily prime time TV show on a cable station serving NH, Mass and Maine. I had contacted Dan Winslow, Mitt Romney's chief legal counsel looking for a smart, articulate, engaging Massachusetts Republican who could join a political round table. Without skipping a beat Dan said he had the man: charming, easy on the eyes and definitely an up and comer in Massachusetts politics. His man was an attorney, a National Guardsman, State Senator; voted Cosmos sexiest man.... it was of course, Scott Brown. In 2010 Scott may have packaged himself as a come -from -no- where -pickup -truck -driving pal -of -good-old-boy- sports -figures, but the truth is, Massachusetts Republicans had been grooming Scott for a future career for years. The fact that Scott Brown (described by some as a Sarah Palin with brains) managed to seize the moment was both an accident and a design. Scott's campaign tapped more into the voters' dissatisfaction with the dysfunctional Democratic establishment of Massachusetts (just a quick example... in January of 2009 Speaker of the House DiMasi resigned a few months before he was indicted by the feds on a series of charges including mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the federal government, etc. DiMasi was the third consecutive Massachusetts house speaker to be federally indicted) than dissatisfaction with Washington. Conflating the two, however, was fairly easy given the collective nausea caused by the double digit national unemployment numbers, paired with the just announced size of bailout barons, Goldman Sachs, bonuses, the lack of leadership or clarity on the health care reform package devolving in DC, the administrations missteps with the Detroit underwear bomber, and Obama's decision to expand the war in Afghanistan that got praise from Scott Brown and the Congressional Republicans and disgust from many Congressional Democrats, including Senator- in -waiting Martha Coakley.
To hear the national take away on the Brown-Coakley race is to assume that voters have rejected Obama and all things democratic, that they long for a return to conservative republican values with its emphasis on no taxes, small, less intrusive government and the delay, denial, can we say it???? - Defeat of national health care reform. If you can't avoid the crowing of Rush, Beck, Savage, O'Reilly, Howie, etc., Scott -41 -Brown has been anointed the Republican Savior, who, with the blessing of the voters, will single hand idly kill Obamacare.
The real reason for the Brown victory is much more nuanced and does not fit conveniently in a headline. It had more to do with:
1. A history of Massachusetts’s voters who have time and again rejected the democratic machine that thinks it controls Massachusetts’s politics (see Gov. Weld, Romney, Cellucci, etc.).
2. A faulty assumption that the Democratic Party owned the Kennedy seat and therefore once the democrats chose their candidate in the primary, the race was over.
3. A concern that Massachusetts universal health care reform that had been ushered into the state by Republican Governor Mitt Romney with the support of State Senator Scott Brown would put the state of Massachusetts at an economic disadvantage if the national reform of health care was passed (As Brown said over and over again: "We have insurance here in Massachusetts... I’m not going to be subsidizing for the next three, five years, pick a number, subsidizing what other states have failed to do.”); and
4. Last, but not nearly least: a savvy decision by a tireless campaigner to package himself as the commensurate outsider who never mentioned his party affiliation only his desire to challenge the out of touch party machine. Works every time, don't it?
But as we learn in Political Science 101, politics has always been more about perception than reality. What does this race mean on a national level? Whatever Merck, Wal-Mart, ConAg, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, State Farm, Verizon want it to mean. Now that the "corporate citizen" can wield billions in any direction in the context of political campaigns thanks to the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, these "citizens” can pick the scenario that serves their interest and serve it to the American voter in the form of a political ad, a purchased and or blackmailed political candidate and the rest of us noncorporates will have to live with the new paradigm. Scott Brown is their pin up, get used to him, there are plenty more out there a comin'.
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D. Arnie Arnesen is a radio and TV commentator based in New Hampshire. She has lectured at Harvard, Dartmouth, UNH, SNHU, Vermont Law School, St. Olaf, and other colleges. She is a former NH Legislator and a former democratic nominee for Governor and Congress. Arnie has been a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics at Harvard and has trainied women who want to run for office throughout the United States and future NH Leaders. You can hear Arnie every Wednesday on Talk of Iowa on IowaPublicRadio.org and every Friday on the Dan Mitchell Show on WKBKam.com. politicalchowder@gmail.com
RED
Scott Brown Victory in Massachusetts
By Michael Krull
Following Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the special election held to replace Senator Edward Kennedy in Massachusetts, some Democrats have argued that the result is a continuation of the “change” election that brought Barak Obama to office and expanded the Democrat’s majority in Congress. It is difficult for me to take seriously this argument – how does a vote for a Republican in Massachusetts perpetuate the “change” against the policies of George W. Bush?
Other Democrats think that Scott Brown’s opponent in the race, current Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, was a bad candidate. This ignores the fact that she won a primary campaign with 47 percent of the vote against three other Democrats, including popular Boston-area Congressman Michael Capuano, by consistently stressing traditional liberal Democratic themes and being backed by the unions in a pro-union state.
Many Republicans think that the Brown victory in Massachusetts is a repudiation of the policies of President Obama and his allies in governing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Maybe. However, Republicans shouldn’t think that Brown’s victory means that the public is enamored of their agenda. More often than not, the Republican policy in Congress is to say “no” rather than to offer better solutions to the problems that face our nation.
While he talked about traditional Republican themes, Scott Brown ran as an independent outsider who happened to be a Republican. He won by tapping in to the public’s dismay with traditional politics, extraordinary and unprecedented deficit spending, fears over the economy and jobs, and concern over the seeming rush by Congress to take over one-sixth of the nation’s economy through the healthcare bill. He consistently stated that he would be an independent voice and that he would be the 41st vote against the healthcare bill, thereby denying the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority.
This one issue effectively nationalized this race, but lost on most observers were his other consistent statements: That he would work to cut taxes, and that, as a retired Lt. Colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard, he was in favor of protecting and defending American citizens rather than ensuring that terrorists were read Miranda rights before being provided with taxpayer-funded defense attorneys. He talked about subjecting terrorists to enhanced interrogation techniques and trying them in military tribunals rather than in civilian courts. In fact, his internal polling showed that national security was the second most important issue to Massachusetts voters.
The real lesson of Scott Brown’s victory for Republicans is the same as the elections in November which vaulted Republicans to the governorships of New Jersey (Chris Christie) and Virginia (Bob McDonnell): Republicans need to be “for” something. In both New Jersey and Virginia, Christie and McDonnell ran positive, issue-focused campaigns and spoke directly to voters about issues that concerned the average citizen: jobs, education, housing, transportation, public safety and taxes.
Christie and McDonnell explained to voters that they had superior ideas to those being offered by their Democratic opponent, and then communicated these ideas clearly. They showed voters that they were sincere in their convictions and willing to work hard to win their votes and to earn their trust. Neither they nor Scott Brown resorted to negative attack ads, but rather remained positive and issue-focused.
The real work, however, is delivering on the promises made during the campaign. That is the difference of being a governing majority rather than a political majority. Delivering on election promises: Quaint notion, wouldn’t you agree? The promises must be real and the solutions must directly address the issues that the voting public really cares about. These are the issue sets that Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell and Scott Brown talked about in their campaigns.
In Massachusetts, Republicans comprise less than 12 percent of registered voters; Democrats make up about 37 percent; the rest are Independents. It is the Independent voters who swung the election in Scott Brown’s favor. In fact, the Independent vote moved 26 points between Obama’s election in November 2008 and the special election some 14 months later in January 2010. It is also clear that Brown received a sizable number of Democratic votes. There was a dual sense that Democrats in Washington, DC were moving too fast and with too many secret deals which resulted in a distrust of government and Democratic politics – and a vote for Scott Brown.
Specifically, recent polling consistently shows that fully 75 percent of voters think that the $787 billion stimulus bill passed in February 2009 achieved very little, and this has increasingly turned voters away from traditional Democratic solutions – the very solutions offered by Martha Coakley in her campaign.
It goes a bit deeper, I think, to the fact that American voters are increasingly cautious and fearful of the power of government – that it is getting too big. Might government be the next bubble? Consider the last decade: the tech bubble in 2000; the home mortgage bubble of 2007; and the financial bubble of 2008.
If, as many both in and out of government have argued, firms such as AIG, Citi, GM and Chrysler are too big to fail and too big to manage, then why do we think government, with its antiquated work rules, paper-based bureaucracy and underinvestment in information technology coupled with a byzantine management structure, will be nimble enough to save the day? Or to provide healthcare to 305 million Americans?
No, rather than grow government, we need to decentralize and dismantle the nanny state. We should instead make investments in the productive sector, innovate, experiment, liberate capital, and rediscover the foundational values and traditions that have formed the basis of American civilization for more than 400 years.
That, and find more candidates like Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell and Scott Brown.
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Michael Krull is a graduate of Luther College and Iowa State University. He has worked on disaster relief for the State Department, a major Washington, DC public relations and political consulting firm, and is currently working for American Solutions for Winning the Future. He is a member of the Council on Emerging National Security Affairs.
| Comments |
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I appreciate that Mr. Krull doesn't seem to be boasting about the Republican victory and I would hope that Mr. Brown can transcend politics to really do what is right and improve not deny health care. I want a better America.
G. T. German
| gtgerman@hotmail.com
| Jan 27, 2010 12:57 PM
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