Posts Tagged ‘scott brown’

A Story for GOP Members of Congress considering supporting Gun Control Laws

Posted: August 7, 2019 by datechguy in elections, media, politics, Uncategorized
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Once upon a time nearly a decade ago in a New England State where Republicans never won national office and whose senior member of congress was considered the liberal Lion of the Senate even though he had run away and left a young lady to die (but nobody talked about that until years after his death because to do so might hurt Democrats) there was a state senator in a Republican district. He was a nice guy a soldier who had a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters. His seat was pretty secure and while he would have liked to have advanced further, the nature of the state made it unlikely he would ever be more than a state senator.

One day the Senator died and there was a special election to fill that seat and the Democrat managed to get into internal squabbles and nominated a candidate even worse than Hillary Clinton.  At the same time Democrats were trying to push through Obamacare and that Senate Seat turned out to be the 60th seat which would allow Democrats to break a filibuster and get any bill that the Democrats in the house and senate could agree on passed.

Well to everybody’s surprise thanks to the special election, the bad democrat nominee and the unpopularity of Obamacare the GOP candidate a state senator nobody had heard of by the name of Scott Brown won the special election and became a US Senator.

While he was a good US Senator and had time even for those who disagreed with him during his re-election campaign his consultant told him that the only way to win re-election, even though he was one of the most popular pols in the state was to run away from the activists who had showed up to vote for him. So he did so doing his best to compromise on issues dear to those tea party activists and when election day came he lost to a Harvard Senator who pretended to be an Indian.

After narrowly losing re-election and getting his pick for GOP chair rammed though the state convention he decided not to run in a 2nd special election made open by the new Senior Senator replacing Hillary Clinton in the Obama Cabinet even though his pick for state chair was picked specifically to help him win.

Instead he began considering running for Senate in New Hampshire.  He thought that his combination of being a “moderate” on social issues would be a good fit for election in the granite state but in addition to his positions on abortion that troubled many activists he took a soft line on Guns being open to gun control measures.

Gun rights activists in the state took notice and even before he announced his candidacy protested his appearances in the state and a blogger who covered the protester (who outnumbered those viewing the speech) in the freezing cold noted:

If you are drawing 300 people standing out in the cold on Dec 19th to protest Scott Brown how many are going to show up when the weather is warmer and they don’t have to stomp down the snow to make room for people to stand.

And that very year when a gun control measure came up for a vote in the state the overwhelmingly Democrat legislature voted against it and the blogger in question noted:

I’m confused:

Didn’t Democrats take the NH in an incredible landslide in 2012 winning over 110 seats from the majority republicans?

Didn’t everyone tell us the state was turning blue permanently and Senators like Kelly Ayotte were doomed unless they changed their tune on guns?

Didn’t Scott Brown himself come to NH and ignore a pro-gun rally of 300 people in the ice and snow emphasizing his support for gun restrictions.

I mean it’s one thing for Wendy Davis to flip on guns but Texas is about as far from NH as you can get, how do you get a totally lopsided victory for the pro 2A forces drawing over 60 democrats to their cause in a state in NE that we are told is turning blue.

The explanation will sound familiar to anyone who read the blog yesterday and saw the votes switch at the last minute.

A source in the state tells me NH Democrats wanted to pass this bill but with an election year that is looking poor they needed members of the house willing to bite the bullet & risk their seats.

And later on when covering Brown at the NLRC event notedNLRC event noted:

Nominating Brown takes the gun issue off the table that the GOP should be able to beat the Democrats over the head with and will put Kelly Ayotte who voted on the right side of the bill on the spot two years before her re-election campaign.

Well the NH party apparatus didn’t listen to those voter and that advice and nominated Scott Brown as their candidate in the US Senate and in a year where GOP senators won all across the country Scott Brown was the exception losing his election and ironically giving the Democrats the extra vote they needed to save Obamacare and Planned Parenthood funding during the early days of the Trump presidency and the former state senator from Massachusetts never held public office again.

Why am I telling the GOP this tale, because of this headline at Drudge:

REPUBLICANS COALESCE AROUND GUN CONTROL

Which links to a NYT story saying that the GOP is considering supporting new gun control laws:

Gun violence has been one of the most divisive and intractable issues in Washington, and even gun control advocates conceded that getting the House bill through the Senate would be a heavy lift. Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Monday that he was reviving his background checks bill, which fell to a filibuster in 2013, and that he intended to press Mr. McConnell to bring it up if Republicans were convinced they had the votes.

“I think we need Manchin-Toomey,” Mr. Toomey said, referring to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, his co-sponsor. “I think it’s overdue. This is a common-sense, very broadly supported measure that would fully respect the rights of law-abiding citizens, fully respect the Second Amendment.”

This has been the siren song of Democrats anxious to disarm their political foes for 40 years and every time the GOP members fall for this nonsense pushed by the left and the MSM it costs them elections, which is exactly why the left is so anxious for the GOP to go along with it.

I urge the GOP not to fall for this nonsense and leave them with this tweet…:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

and this warning. If you manage to win a primary when you run on gun control don’t expect 2nd amendment voters to turn up for you in the general election.

One year ago today Massachusetts elected Scott Brown…

Posted: January 19, 2011 by datechguy in congress, economy, opinion/news, politics
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…in an attempt to stop Obamacare. In a broadcast by 73wire with Stacy McCain and Ali Akbar (Brown’s new media guy) we talked about the healthcare bill and there was an interesting exchange. I stressed how important this election was because it was necessary to stop obamacare BEFORE it was passed prompting the following:

Ali: “And if it does pass, we will repeal it!”

DaTechGuy: “No we won’t.”

It was very telling that Ali (who is a really smart young man) didn’t argue the point with me and changed the subject.

Well Scott won, but the democrats realizing that the only chance to get the bill passed now was for the house to pass the version that had already gone through the senate did so avoiding both a conference and the chance of a filibuster.

So the repeal bill is now coming up and we will find out who was right. I think Ali knows the its very hard to repeal a law once passed. He knows businesses and government have already adjusted their plans based on it. A lot of favors were done for a lot of people in that bill and those lobbyists who had those favors inserted want them preserved. Most importantly as a rule it’s easier to stop something than to do something in congress. A determined minority and frustrate the majority every time.

Yet there are real reasons to think he might be right. The left and the media are declaring that effort dead and phony but are doing their best to discourage this vote. If my original thought was right why would they bother? After all the senate is still a majority democratic institution. Very little chance on any change there is there?

The dirty little secret is until the house passes this bill the senate doesn’t have to even pretend to care, but once it IS passed than it is before the Senate. There are quite a few democratic senators who are in a tough spot. They either ran against Obamacare (WV) live in states where it is unpopular (MO) or face uphill reelection fights (Va). The retirement announcement of Kent Conrad in ND actually hurts the repeal effort because he can now vote to preserve it while the democrat who does run in his state can claim opposition.

However there is another factor involved. Every single democratic senator was the deciding vote to the passage of Obamacare this means that every vulnerable senator on the democratic side has that vote hanging around their neck. Those senators desperate to retain their seats and the power and privileges thereof will not want to run on Obamacare. A repeal vote would give them a chance to vote against it saying they’ve “reconsidered”.

Harry Reid might, in order to increase the chance of holding his senate majority allow a vote. If a democrat filibuster blocks it then vulnerable dems can clam they voted against said filibuster and if he allows it to reach the floor he can either “Fishbait Miller” the vote (let the three most vulnerable dems vote against it) or allow it to pass and let the president veto it.

This is the position that the White House least wants to be in. The president casting a very prominent vote to preserve a law that he pushed for against popular opinion. This would be a great gift to Republicans going into 2012 and represents (along with the rising price of gas and oil and high unemployment) the best chance for this president to lose re-election.

This is the importance of the house vote. It turns 2012 into a referendum on Obamacare. The closer these actions come to election day 2012 the worse the situation gets for democrats. The second best move for them would be to allow a Senate vote ASAP and get this whole thing over with early. The best option for democrats? That I’m not saying until the day after the presidential election.

Obamacare will not be repealed before the 2012 election but this vote might be the first step to insuring its repeal with a new person in the White House.

Will Scott Brown become the Fishbait Miller of the Senate?

Posted: November 8, 2010 by datechguy in politics
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When heading toward re-election pols tend to take the feelings of the voters back home a lot more seriously.

In Maine for example Republicans swept statewide elections pretty solidly. It should have an interesting effect on Maine two liberal republicans and the day of their next race comes closer.

In Massachusetts the clean sweep of offices for democrats will likely not be lost on Scott Brown when election day 2012 comes around. The same turnout machine that pushed Patrick et/al will still exist, and may even be aided by national money.

But the dynamic in the Senate has changed dramatically as George Will puts it:

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had 40 or 41 senators in his caucus, he usually had 40 or 41 votes when he felt he urgently needed them. Beginning in January, with at least 46 senators, he will always have 41 votes when he really wants them.

There are going to be times when Scott Brown is going to want to demonstrate his “independence” from the GOP caucus. With 6 votes to give McConnell will be able to do without Brown, or Collins or Snowe and still stop anything he needs to.

The question is this. Will he gain more sympathy at home opposing the GOP or not. Or to put it another way. We know the machine will be against him no matter what he does, so will he make more points with the electorate with the electorate going left or going right?

Of course he could just do the right thing and do what he thinks is right…

On Tuesday evening we are going to find out who is right on O’Donnell

Posted: October 28, 2010 by datechguy in elections, opinion/news, politics, tea parties
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Tuesday at the debate I was talking Big Red Wave with an aide to a republican candidate for statewide office, although he was feeling highly confident on his local race when I said to him that the wave would be even bigger.

I started mentioning the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen in district after district he was unimpressed.

When I brought up Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coon’s sudden Volte Face he immediately dismissed me as ignorant and my opinion unworthy.

Well if all he sees are polls like this that’s one thing, but then there is stuff like this:

Yesterday, a poll went around showing Christine O’Donnell just five points behind Commie Coons in Delaware’s Senate race. This SORT OF explains the weird amount of time the White House has been spending in a slam dunk blue state.

But, Democrats are ferociously attacking CoD as hard as they attacked Scott Brown in Massachusetts. If she is so far behind, what is the point in beating up on this woman?

This is anecdotal, but I think I know why they are doing this…just like with Hottie McAwesome there are internals showing O’Donnell ahead.

Today I talked to a friend from Team Hillary who is a big Dem fundraiser. He told me that for the last week or so the DNC has been at DEFCON 1 leaning HARD on the rainmakers because they are terrified of a CoD win in Delaware.

and this:

We have seen reliable polling that shows O’Donnell is within single digits, and Coons can’t break 50%. What is more, these polls rely on a turn-out model that is relatively conservative and, contrary to what pundits think, a much higher than normal turn-out could mean the polls are off by as much as 5-6 or more points. In the primary, most polls showed O’Donnell down by a few or tied, however she won by 6 points, a figure higher than most of the pre-vote polls and outside of their margin of error.

Why is this happening, and why might the pundits, once again, have egg on their face on election day?

Voters in Delaware are learning from reliable internet sources, despite a near blackout by the elite political press, more and more about Coons and his record.

One is right and one is wrong, but I can’t forget the Globe polls that showed Martha Coakley up 15 points:

Coakley’s lead grows to 17 points – 53 percent to 36 percent – when undecideds leaning toward a candidate are included in the tally. The results indicate that Brown has a steep hill to climb to pull off an upset in the Jan. 19 election. Indeed, the poll indicated that nearly two-thirds of Brown’s supporters believe Coakley will win.

and of course my favorite of all newspaper quotes:

The Mainstream media knows all

Somebody is right here and somebody is wrong here, by this time next week we will find out.

Update: Of course liberals always use these tactics when up 15 pts don’t they?

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