Scott Brown: Model Republican?

Republicans across the U.S. are celebrating the upset victory of Senator-elect Scott Brown in heavily Democratic Massachusetts. Brown said he was part of a "new breed of Republican coming to Washington," and Rep. Pete Sessions, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote at RedState.com that the party can make big gains in November elections if it can recruit more candidates "who, like Scott Brown, have also had enough of the spending and taxing and heavy-handed governance." Is Scott Brown showing his party how to make a comeback? (Watch a Fox report about Scott Brown's Republican agenda)

Yes, Brown's fiscal conservatism is the key: Scott Brown's "historic victory" proved that America is sick of liberals and ready for new conservative revolution, says Jeffrey T. Kuhner in The Washington Times. "Brown ran on sweeping, Reagan-style tax cuts, slashing government spending, restoring political accountability, and opposing having terrorists tried in civilian courts and as a skeptic of man-made global warming." Brown, the "conservative insurgent," is now the model for Republican candidates in the 2010 midterms.

"Conservatism on the march"

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The message is that the GOP needs a big tent: In the Republican Party's majority days, it was "a center-right coalition representing a broad range of views," says David Frum at TheWeek.com. "In more recent years, Republicans have seemed determined to neaten their party by narrowing it." Brown, who's record suggests he will break with the party line on such big issues as abortion, showed that Republicans can win again, even in liberal states, if they stop putting their candidates into an ideological straitjacket.

"Has the GOP learned its lesson too?"

Brown's election proved that independents rule, not Republicans or Democrats: Scott Brown's appeal to independents was the secret to his success, says Nicolle Wallace in The Daily Beast. "The vast majority of Americans reside somewhere in the political center. Most people want the same things from Washington: a federal government that is efficient, competent, transparent, and frugal." And the party that can stake a claim to those causes, without turning off moderates by trying to demonize the other side, is the one that will win the hearts of independents.

"The GOP's new roadmap"

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SEE MORE OF THE WEEK'S COVERAGE OF SCOTT BROWN

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