What Deliberative Body?

I'm beginning to wonder if election to the Senate automatically induces the inability to think clearly. You've got Ben Nelson (D-NE) who changes his mind like Imelda Marcos changed shoes and now you've got the latest boy wonder of the right, Scott Brown, who seems oblivious as to why he was elected.

These two items showed up in my reader. Both are from Senatus.

Senator-elect Scott Brown’s (R-MA) “stunning victory for the Massachusetts Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy has many Republicans hoping he’ll make a White House bid,” ABC News reports.

When Barbara Walters, in her EXCLUSIVE This Week interview, asked Brown if he’d rule out a 2012 run, he said he found it humbling, but he wouldn’t say no.

Don't worry, he found another way to say he wasn't running:

Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) “says he opposes federal funding for abortions, but thinks women should have the right to choose whether to have one,” the AP reports.

Brown tells ABC’s "This Week" that he disagrees with his party’s position that the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion should be overturned.

Brown says the abortion question is one that’s best handled by a woman, her family and her doctor.

This position may be OK when you are literally THE marginal GOP Senator, but you have to really be delusional to think that this stance would work in a national race. I mean if Rudy Giuliani's record on other matters wasn't enough to overcome his pro-choice attitudes, does anyone really think Scott Brown has a chance?

The Reality of Scott Brown

Lance Burri, writing at Fox Politics.net, does his readers a service by attempting to temper (even slightly) some of the enthusiasm surrounding Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy.

While a Republican in Kennedy's seat would no doubt be an enormous victory for the Republicans and may even be enough to stop the Obama healthcare reform, a closer look at Brown only leaves me wondering: at what cost?

Burri reports:

Still. Enthusiasm for Brown is off the charts. Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Partiers – everybody's in love with the guy. His rallies are overflowing. His campaign can't keep up with its volunteers. He raised a million dollars a day last week.

But guess what? He's not a core conservative.

He's pro-choice. He voted for a regional version of Cap-and-Trade. He voted for RomneyCare – an early version of what we now call ObamaCare.

Three big strikes, where conservatives are concerned.

In most other states, these three strikes would be enough to send you back to the dugout, but that doesn't seem to be the case for Brown. Strange it should happen in such a baseball-crazy place as MA.

The @TAC blog highlights this criticism of Brown:

Massachusetts anti-tax activist and former Libertarian Party candidate for state office Carla Howell points out:

“Career politician Scott Brown is an 11-year Big Government Republican state legislator who regularly and repeatedly voted FOR bigger state government budgets, voted FOR expanded and new Big Government programs, voted FOR tax increases, and voted AGAINST tax cuts.

A friend in MA was agonizing over the possibility of voting for Brown because he is pro-choice. An issue that many of us find non-negotiable.

While I understand the existence of regional differences and the need to build a broad coalition of interests in order to advance a larger agenda, I can't help but be a little baffled by the relentlessly positive coverage of Brown from many on the right.