Honeymoon Ends for Scott Brown: David Loftus

Though I lived in Massachusetts for ten years and must have voted in some statewide races (since that was where I came of voting age and I’ve never missed a national election), that was a long time ago and I haven’t paid attention to what has transpired on the political front in the Bay State since. (I find it amusing that the TNT cable show “Leverage,” a comedy thriller that stars Timothy Hutton, is starting to shoot its third season here in Portland, Oregon, and pretends it’s set in Boston; of course I can tell the difference.) Republican Scott Brown’s election to fill the late Edward Kennedy’s old seat last month was a big blip on the national radar, but a blip nevertheless.

Now it would appear that Brown actually has a head on his shoulders and is willing to look at votes and issues on their individual merits . . . and, what do you know, that has enraged conservative pundits and supporters, who seem to think governing should operate on no more complex a basis than junior high school popularity contests and gang membership. Critics have ripped into Brown on Facebook and other Web sites as a traitor. “Republicans from Massachusetts from time to time will disappoint [conservatives], if you thought you were electing somebody from Texas,” snarked conservative activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. What Mr. Norquist is saying is that Texas Republicans are lockstep, unreflective, knee-jerk-voting morons, apparently.

Brown has at least enough sense to know that he won’t get re-elected in fairly blue-state Massachusetts (which went for Obama in 2008, Kerry in 2004, Gore in 2000, Clinton in 1996 and 1992, Dukakis in 1988, Carter in 1976, and -- alone among all 50 states -- McGovern in 1972) if he votes the straight conservative Republican line. “I’m willing to work with anybody,” Brown told the press after he voted for a $15 billion jobs bill crafted by Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Brown said he supported bill because “it’s filled with tax cuts that will create jobs in Massachusetts.” Good for him, I say. That’s kinda almost sorta like . . . what was that principle that everybody talks about but that appears to have gone extinct? You know: bipartisanship.