In endorsing Martha Coakley, the Boston Globe makes the case for Coakley:
Voters who want to cast a critical eye on Washington without destroying the Democratic coalition should go for Coakley. Her quiet diligence in pursuing some of the most thankless, but deeply important, tasks in prosecuting child abusers, scouring the fine print of Big Dig contracts to bring back hundreds of millions of dollars, and securing $60 million from Goldman Sachs for its subprime mortgage abuses, contrasts sharply with Brown's five-year record of voting no in a state Senate run by the opposite party.
She is by far the more qualified candidate, in experience and judgment. She has prosecuted hundreds of criminals and helped coordinate plans to protect the state from terrorist threats. As attorney general, she's returned $1 billion to state coffers.
And they make the case against Brown:
A vote for Brown is hardly a symbolic protest against congressional gridlock and the ways of Washington. It's a vote for gridlock, in the form of endless Republican filibusters, and for the status quo in health care, climate change, and financial regulation. That's what will happen if Brown gives the Republicans the additional vote they need to tie up the Senate.
But two of the Globe's columnists take on Brown's record even more directly.
Joan Vennochi:
He is allegedly for health care reform, except he doesn’t support the historic health care reform legislation that is on the brink of passage in Washington and was Kennedy’s life quest.
He supports Roe v. Wade, except that a prominent anti-abortion advocacy group backs him as a "pro-life vote in the Senate."
He dispatched his 21-year old daughter to attack Coakley for stating the truth: In 2005, Brown sponsored a legislative amendment that would have allowed medical personnel to deny emergency contraception to rape victims if it "conflicts with a sincerely held religious belief." The amendment didn’t pass, but Brown owned it. It was attached to a bill that he ultimately voted for, which required emergency rooms to provide contraceptives to rape victims.
Yvonne Abraham details Republican response to that anti-emergency contraception amendment:
"I can’t believe what we’re doing to this bill," said then-minority leader Brian Lees, who called it, "a poison pill amendment. . . . I can’t believe that you’re going to say [this] to your constituents who’ve been through a traumatic experience."
Senator Richard Tisei said: "I can’t recall another instance where we’ve basically said, ‘This is the law, and it’s OK not to follow it.’ . . . It doesn’t make any sense."
Now, you’d think a state senator would remember being publicly reamed by members of his own party, right? Or recall his own shaky defense of his proposal, which he said he put forward "just for conversation."
Nope. On Tuesday night, When Janet Wu of WCVB-TV asked him if he’d sponsored the amendment, Brown said: "I have to check. I don’t know. It was so long ago."
Give him points for taking enough of a break from hiding behind his daughters to say that much, I guess, but it would help if it had been anything other than an obvious lie to cover for pushing unpardonable legislation just 5 years ago.
