Scott Brown – the Right guy?

Massachusetts State Sen. Scott Brown has been surging in the polls lately in his campaign to fill the Senate seat formerly held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy.  Twitter and the blogosphere has been brimming with excitement of the prospect of  Republican winning the seat that has been in the hands of the Democrats since 1979.  For you history buffs out there, the last Republican to hold the seat was Senator Edward Brooke III; the last African American elected to the U.S. Senate from the Republican Party.

Brown has made it clear that a vote for him is a vote to stop the national health care plan that the Democrats are pushing.  Thus, the election is being seen as a proxy for the health care bill.  Both parties and special interest groups across the spectrum have begun pouring plenty of cash and volunteers into the state in an effort to elect their candidate and in effect buy that crucial vote for or against the health care bill.

Other than the vote against the health care bill, there is not a lot to excite the conservative base of the Republican Party.  Brown is pro-choice and supports expanded stem cell research while promising to be an independent thinker.  Concerning abortion, Brown has stated that “It’s not something that is important at this point” and that whether a candidate for a federal judgeship was pro-life or pro-choice holds “very little importance to me”.

While Brown is against the current health care legislation in Congress, he is not completely against the expansion of state involvement in health care.  As a state Senator in 2006, Brown voted for the universal insurance bill in Massachusetts that contained an insurance mandate similar to what is included in the proposed legislation.

Brown has attracted the endorsement and support of potential 2012 candidates Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.  While Brown’s chance have definitely improved over the last couple of weeks, he still faces an uphill battle to overtake Coakley.  Time will tell if he is everything the Right is hoping for.

Tags: Massachusetts, Scott Brown

This entry was posted on January 13, 2010 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.