Changing one’s home state to win a Senate seat is not unusual; Hillary Clinton changed her domicile to get into a Senate race she could win. Changing an address to lose a Senate race is probably not unusual either, but it’s less helpful to one’s party.
Scott Brown has decided that he can’t win in his home state. In fact, he refused to run in the last Massachusetts US senate election. And the last time he did run, he was defeated by Elizabeth Warren, a weak candidate with several high-profile faux pas, including pretending to be an American Indian.
Now Scott is considering a run in New Hampshire. What would this Massachusetts politician bring to New Hampshire that we can’t get in our native candidates?
1. A record of supporting Romneycare, the model for the disastrous Affordable Care Act that is in the process of kicking several million Americans off of their health insurance plans. Romney and Scott Brown told Americans that what we need is a health care system directly run by government.
That is not the position of any New Hampshire Republican, and probably won’t be a position publicly held by most Democrats by the time the 2014 elections are held. The cure for health care is more freedom, competition, and innovation, not less.
2. A record of opposing the 2nd Amendment. Scott Brown wants to ban our semi-automatic rifles. He also wants to increase licensing and registration requirements.
New Hampshire has one of the lowest crime rates in the United States. Our state is far safer than Massachusetts, where the citizens on the street are safely disarmed yet the criminals remain fully equipped.
3. A record of supporting the Dodd-Frank anti-community-bank bill. Brown thinks the solution to problems caused by too-big-to-fail banks is to regulate the small banks out of existence.
The New Hampshire candidates (e.g., Jim Rubens for one) see the solution to too-big-to-fail banks as restrictions on bailouts and subsidies for big banks, not more restrictions on small banks.
4. A record of supporting Obama’s expansions of Orwellian surveillance on ordinary Americans. When a Senator, Brown voted to support the expansion of the Patriot Act.
The New Hampshire candidates have a more live-free-or-die attitude to the NSA.
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Scott Brown does have something to bring to New Hampshire that we can’t get locally: a belief that Obama’s government isn’t big enough.
So, what is Brown’s goal? He can’t win the general election by running on his record; anyone who wants more government is always going to vote for the incumbent Democrat, no matter how Obama-friendly the Republican’s platform is. The GOP base won’t turn out to vote for gun control and Obamacare, the Independents aren’t going to turn out to vote for NSA spying and crony bank bailouts. There’s no winning strategy in NH for a “bigger-government Republican”. And why should there be? That’s why we have Democrats.
Apparently, Scott has decided that it’s worthwhile to move to New Hampshire just to lose a Senate election. The fact is, I think he’s right. He may have no chance of winning the 2014 election or even the primary. But at least he won’t have to live in Massachusetts, a state run by big-government politicians like Scott Brown.
Bill Walker is a member of the Sullivan County Republican committee
