Scott Brown has officially joined Fox News.
Fox fires Sarah Palin and Dick “Landslide” Morris, while picking up Scott Brown?
Looks like the unofficial GOP Press Office has chosen their side in the Republican Civil War. The ‘baggers will be unhappy — that is, assuming they’re smart enough to see what’s going on.
(via reallyfoxnews)
Denial is a river that runs through Boston.
The newly-elected head of the Massachusetts Republican party says the GOP remains optimistic that it can win an upcoming special election for the U.S. Senate, even though former Sen. Scott Brown won’t be running.
Kirsten Hughes said in a statement that there are “many potential candidates” who are weighing possible candidacies on Friday following Brown’s announcement that he would not run in the June 25 special election.
Hughes did not mention the names of any possible candidates in the statement.
As soon as the Massachusetts GOP finds someone to run, they’re totally going to beat the pants off the Democratic candidate. And they’ll get 70% of the African-American vote, 90% of the gay vote, and 100% of unmarried women.
You wait and see!
Scott Brown rules out MA Senate run.
Do you remember those months Democrats spent panicking that Scott Brown would rise again if John Kerry’s Senate seat opened up? The panic that started roughly three weeks before Brown even lost his old seat to Sen. Elizabeth Warren?
All for naught. Brown tells Howie Carr, via text, that he will not run in the June special election to replace Kerry. In doing so he bows to the growing conventional wisdom (which I was trying to gin up a month ago) that the circumstances of summer 2013 will be far, far worse for a Northeastern Republican than the circumstances of Obama’s winter 2010 nadir.
Actually no, Dave, I don’t remember any “panic” at all. When someone loses an election, you don’t start freaking out at the possibility that they may immediately run for the same office. The problem at the time was a shameful attack on Ambassador Susan Rice by Republicans interested in getting Brown another chance. They’re the reason that Kerry’s the new Secretary of State and now it seems their little plot failed miserably. Once again, the brilliant strategic mind of John McCain cooked up a political strategy equally as effective as choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Anyhoo, Brown might take a shot at governor — it’d be Mitt Romney’s old office, so a Republican wouldn’t be unheard of — but Brown’s original senate win was a fluke in the first place.
![Sen. Scott Brown retreats to safety of imaginary world.
Buzzfeed:
With a post to his Facebook page Thursday, Sen. Scott Brown sent Washington scurrying to determine whether the White House had presented an offer to Senate Republicans to avert the fiscal cliff.
[…]
But the reports came as a surprise even to people who were closely involved in the ongoing negotiations to avert the looming austerity crisis.
Indeed, across Washington, press secretaries, communications directors, and other political staffers wondered if they’d been kept out of the loop on a new offer, before rushing to shoot down the report.
“Sounds like an over-interpretation of our readout of the president’s call,” a Senate Republican leadership aide responded. “While we’re expecting Democrats to finally act, I don’t have a specific time frame.”
An aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was more blunt. “Not true,” the aide responded.
Hard to believe this canny legislator was booted out by voters after only one term, huh?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/07f8c57de3fef8de5e033000029d995f/tumblr_mfpmxn14nH1qfengno1_1280.jpg)
Sen. Scott Brown retreats to safety of imaginary world.
With a post to his Facebook page Thursday, Sen. Scott Brown sent Washington scurrying to determine whether the White House had presented an offer to Senate Republicans to avert the fiscal cliff.
[…]
But the reports came as a surprise even to people who were closely involved in the ongoing negotiations to avert the looming austerity crisis.
Indeed, across Washington, press secretaries, communications directors, and other political staffers wondered if they’d been kept out of the loop on a new offer, before rushing to shoot down the report.
“Sounds like an over-interpretation of our readout of the president’s call,” a Senate Republican leadership aide responded. “While we’re expecting Democrats to finally act, I don’t have a specific time frame.”
An aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was more blunt. “Not true,” the aide responded.
Hard to believe this canny legislator was booted out by voters after only one term, huh?
Politico provides excellent example of shitty polling reporting.
Sen. Scott Brown is locked in a tie with his Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, according to a poll released Monday, with Warren’s popularity slipping over the past month.
Brown and Warren are neck and neck with 47 percent each, according to the Boston Globe poll. Without including voters who are leaning toward one candidate, Brown has a slight edge, 45 percent to 43 percent.
Most of the polls conducted in the past month have shown Warren gaining an edge on the incumbent, who is trying to hold on to the seat he won in a January 2010 special election. A WBUR poll released last week showed Warren with a 6-percentage-point edge, 50 percent to 44 percent.
The piece goes on to report in extremely definite terms how Warren’s favorables have plummeted and her campaign is suddenly shrouded in doom. Remember how I warned to to watch out for headlines like “LONE POLL SHOWS SURPRISING RESULT; RACE TURNED ON ITS HEAD!”? This would be one of those headlines.
If we head over to FiveThirtyEight, we see that Warren has led in the last five polls by between 2 points and 9 points. The polling average for the race is Warren +4.5. It’s rated not as lean democratic or likely democratic, but as safe democratic. Warren is given a 95% of victory.
In short, judging from the history of the race and the polling, this is almost certainly an outlier. Politico is hyping a poll result that turns the race on its head — mostly to get you to click on the link. The odds of this race going the way this single poll shows are extremely slim.
This isn’t reporting, this is a traffic strategy. I provided the link to the story to be thorough and because of best practices — there’s no reason you should reward this sort of behavior by following it.
Latest poll has Brown at 38% in Massachusetts.
Which explains why the campaign has turned insanely racist in recent days.
Saw this on Facebook today. If you didn’t know already, Scott Brown is a racist asshole. Lets hope Massachusetts have the conscience to vote this asshole out.
Wow. Just fucking wow.
This shit is not cute.
THE FUCK IS THIS
Filed under “things that are really fucking racist.”
(via stfuconservatives)
If you like your debater to be condescending, snide, repetitive, off topic, rote, eager to get personal, willing to toss out extraneous comments and charges, and full of phony manners (thanking the host for every question), then Sen. Scott Brown is your man.
New poll has Elizabeth Warren up 6 in Massachusetts.
“This may be not just due to her speech, but the overall enthusiasm Democrats have had coming out of their convention,” says Tim Vercellotti, professor of political science and director of the Polling Institute at Western New England University. “The data shows that Democrats are more fired up right now than independents or Republicans.”
Scott Brown, Mitt Romney, and Expelling Truth from Politics
Since the comments and ratings have been disabled, we have no way of knowing whether Scott Brown’s new reelection ad has gone viral in a good way or a bad way. I suspect it’s probably six of one and half a dozen of the other. It doesn’t have the absurdity that other viral ads bring to mind, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ridiculous.
The big problem with Brown’s ad is that it hitches a ride on Mitt Romney’s “you didn’t build that” smear. And undermines that same smear.
“Just as Romney’s Web video does, the audio is edited to remove the chunk of the speech in which Obama talks about our ‘great American system’ and ‘roads and bridges,’ misleading listeners into believing that the ‘didn’t build that’ line was an insult to business owners,” writes Greg Sargent. “Any listener would reasonably conclude that the language quoted above is exactly as Obama delivered it.”
But then Brown includes the words of the woman vying for his Massachusetts Senate seat, Elizabeth Warren — and Warren supplies the context that Romney’s smear cuts out. In fact, it was that speech by Warren that Obama borrowed from in his own speech. The lie only works if the context is removed, which means that Brown is presenting the absolute, 100%, undeniable truth that goods travel by road as an attack on free enterprise.
And this is pretty disturbing. The Republican Party began moving into its present post-truth phase when Rush Limbaugh whipped up Clinton Derangement Syndrome. This post-truth attitude cemented itself into the base with charlatans like Glenn Beck. It’s moved into the political system with fringe nuts like Michele Bachmann — and now it’s infected moderates like Brown.
What’s happened is that we’ve reached a stage of taboo truths. Yes, goods do travel on roads. And yes, people who get rich selling goods do get rich using public tax dollars in the form of those roads. But no, you aren’t allowed to say that. It’s heresy to the myth of the Self-Made Man and must never, ever be uttered. Romney and Brown can’t answer Warren’s and Obama’s argument, so Brown takes Romney a step further — don’t change the context, but censor the argument. Talking about the commons is something no Patriotic American should ever, ever do and that little bit of truth is now politically taboo — like pointing out that burning a flag is a celebration of freedom in the form of free speech, not a condemnation of it.
When you get people into this post-truth mindset, you can get them to believe (or insist they believe) anything. Sure, argument X sure sounds convincing, but no Good American Patriot would ever think such a thing. It may be true, but you aren’t allowed to think or say it. This is a frame of mind more suited to North Korea than a free nation.
And this frame of mind explains this:
Pew finds that despite being as constantly debunked as birtherism, the “Obama’s a secret Muslim” conspiracy theory is not only strong among Republican voters, but grows stronger the more often it’s debunked. Why?
“I suppose it’s possible that if Pew asked these folk if Obama was a Zoroastrian, an Animist, or a devil-worshiper, the numbers would be similar. Anything that sounds vaguely bad sounds vaguely good as a description for Barack Obama,” explains Ed Kilgore.
In other words, if it’s something that sounds like it’d hurt Barack Obama politically, then it’s politically correct to believe it — or, at least, espouse it. So, Obama’s a Christian? That belief is taboo to conservatives. Employers, not consumers, are “job creators?” Well, the math doesn’t really work but if Reagan said so… Businesses use roads that taxpayers provide? You take that back!
I’d almost prefer that conservatives were actually brainwashed cultists — then all this selective believing wouldn’t be their own fault. Giving up independent thought and even the acceptance of truth isn’t what free people do. And as much as they wave around the flag and use words like “liberty” as buzzwords, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that conservatives don’t want to be free people.
Of course, I’m probably not allowed to say that.
-Wisco
