I live in Boston, grew up in Massachusetts, follow politics very closely and I gotta admit, if someone had asked me around the start of 2012 my opinion of Scott Brown I probably would have said I would never vote for him, because I'm a very committed Democrat, but he seems like a decent guy and certainly one of the least objectionable Republicans I was aware of. I would have conceded he had made some good votes against his party, and was hardly hateable to me. I certainly didn't agree with a lot of his voting record, but it was not the 100% horrible record you see from a lot of modern day Republicans. He seemed...I don't know....somewhat of the nice guy his reputation said he was.
Boy was I wrong. As the winter wore into spring and the spring into summer and now the summer into fall, he revealed a darker, uglier, bad side to his personality. He revealed himself to not be so nice afterall, in fact to be a jerk. A frat boy. Not all that well versed on the issues and oblivious to running a campaign on what's good in his record. And now...here in October once and for all.....he has blown any chance he had left of being re-elected.
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I've known of and been impressed with Elizabeth Warren for several years now. I thought she was a great choice by Massachusetts Dems to take on Scott Brown. Because of his general popularity at the begining of the year, I probably started out a bit skeptical of her chances due to her being pretty unknown to most voters. But, the more I heard, the more I followed, the more I saw she was focused on the positive and what she could do, the more confident I became in her prospects. She's never attacked Scott Brown personally. Not once, despite his off-base charges (he now with an ad saying Elizabeth Warren has attacked him featuring his well-know newscaster wife Gail Huff). But its simply not true. Warren has focused on the people. Her campaign has been about her positions, policies and beliefs. What attacks she has leveled against Scott Brown have been strictly focused on two things and two things only. One....his voting record. Two.....countering any off-base charges he has made about her heritage, work or character. Besides that, she has spent most of her time running a very positive campaign.
As the campaign season really got rolling several months back, Brown's campaign focused more and more on simply trying to bring her down. I have not seen one, not one, ad by Brown focused on what he plans to do. On what's positive about him. On why he deserves a 6 year term. Not one. I see ad after ad after ad attacking Warren....her character, her career, her heritage. His slogan is essentially "Elizabeth Warren is not who she says she is" That is his campaign SLOGAN for all intents and purposes. He runs ads with that slogan repeated several times in the ad that every citizen of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hears day after day, hour after hour if they watch TV or listen to the radio. That's not what a nice guy with a good record does.
In the first two debates, from the opening question literally, he lobbed personal attack after personal attack while Elizabeth Warren stuck to reciting her beliefs and analyzing Scott Brown's actual votes. Nothing personal came from Elizabeth Warren.
Then a funny thing happened. The attacks didn't work. Warren's lead grew and Scott Brown's once amazingly high favoribility and likeability ratings began to plummet. People began to see him as a bitter, nasty, partisan, bully who couldn't run on his votes, plans, agenda or record. He had nothing but grenades to throw at a woman who didn't really have anything to personally attack other than made up, exaggerrated and ridiculous invented issues. Nobody seriously believes Scott Brown has discovered character flaws in Elizabeth Warren for crying out loud. If she won't make a good Senator, fine, make the case. But to simply attack her personally? It backfired.
So lately I've notice he's taken a slightly different track. Oh the attacks have continued. In fact they've intensified. His campaign went from 90% focused on personal attacks on Elizabeth Warren to basically 100% now as he gets more desperate. With one exception. Scott Brown laid off on them for the most part in the third debate. And in largely watched appearances, he lays off them as well. Now he leaves it to his TV and radio ads, his Karl Rove Pac (Crossroads USA) running ads and making robo calls, his surrogates and his own, low profile, appearances to attack her. He mostly lets advertisements and others do his dirty work as he thinks this may help his spiraling downward likeability ratings.
But on Wednesday, he screwed up. And he lost the election or any remaining shot he had at it. He revealed himself to be the fact challenged, desperate, say anything, low standards, typical lying, make it up as you go along politician everyone always said he wasn't.
In a campaign appearance at the Taunton Fire Department on Wednesday, he was asked by a firefighter why so many asbestos workers or their families were supporting Warren and even appearing in commercials supporting her if she had worked against their interests as a lawyer as he repeatedly, falsely, has claimed? Why?
Now keep in mind that Taunton is a very blue collar old mill town. Its no surprise working class firefighters there would ask this question of him. Why are the asbestos workers or their families making commercials supporting Warren if she worked against them as he claims? His response:
"A lot of them are paid. We hear that maybe they pay actors. Listen, you can get surrogates and go out and say your thing. We have regular people in our commercials. No one is paid. They are regular folks that reach out to us and say she is full of it.”
Really now? We hear? From who?
Nobody, that's who. Scott Brown made it up. He lied. He made up a malicious, false, slur against not only Elizabeth Warren but the families who appeared in commercials with her. They weren't "paid actors" they were real people who lost family members as asbestos workers. And they were supporting Elizabeth Warren because they know who was on their side.
And now they're speaking out against Scott Brown's made up lies.
Now, Scott Brown has been forced to aplogize. Forced to acknowledge he lied. Made it up. Slander people who had lost loved ones in the name of winning an election.
And in the process, with one despicable act to top off a despicable lie-filled campaing of untruthful attacks, on October 17th 2012, he blew any chance he had left of being a United States Senator ever again.
http://www.boston.com/...
Wed Oct 17, 2012 at 10:30 PM PT: UPDATE: The newspaper in Taunton, where this lie was perpetrated by Brown has more on the story:
http://www.tauntongazette.com/...
This is powerful from a victim's son, Scott English: "Let Scott Brown tell me to my face that I am nothing but a paid actor, and I'll set him straight on what it was like to watch my father suffocate to death"