The Tea Party Should Primary Scott Brown? That’s Ridiculous.
We’re already starting to hear grumbling about Scott Brown. He’s not conservative enough. He supported the START treaty. He voted to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He voted for Wall Street Reform. Man, he’s no Jim DeMint! The Tea Party got rooked when they supported that RINO! We’ve got to primary that guy in 2012!
Hello, you hear that knock on the door? That’s called reality. It wants to come in and have a conversation with you about the real world. Reality can sometimes be harsh and say things you don’t want to hear. But when it talks, you should listen.
Here are two pieces of reality that should tell politically savvy people all they need to know about whether Scott Brown’s someone worth supporting.
* Massachusetts: Democrats: 37.2% vs. Republicans: 12.6% (2008 numbers from the Almanac of American Politics)
* “So far Brown has voted with the GOP leadership 81.1 percent of the time, according to The Washington Post.”
Folks, Scott Brown is a center-right Republican in a very liberal state and as such, he is a huge success story, not a failure. I can tell you definitively: You will not elect someone who is more conservative than Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Period. It’s just not going to happen. If anything, I’m surprised Scott Brown has voted with us as often as he has so far.
Let me go a little further. Not only should we not primary Scott Brown; we should point to his behavior so far as an example of how Blue State Republican senators should behave.
“But, Hawkins, how can that be? He’s voting against us on some important bills!”
If Scott Brown votes with us on everything, he loses his job and we end up with someone who votes like Ted Kennedy. People like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins deal with that in their state being center-left, not center-right. Center-right is what we should be shooting for ideally and that’s already where Scott Brown happens to be.
Listen, folks, I wish Massachusetts had the same partisan breakdown as say, South Carolina — but, it doesn’t. Instead, it’s a very Democratic state. I wish we could change that, but until we do, we just have to deal with the state as it is instead of as we’d like it to be.