How Scott Brown is executing the perfect GOP Senate campaign

Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who changed his residency to take a crack at Congress from neighboring New Hampshire, is within striking distance of embarrassing New England Democrats once again.

Recent polls have found Brown surging in his bid to unseat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), an upset that would greatly increase the GOP's chances of retaking the Senate. A CNN survey released Thursday put Brown just two points back in the race, and poll aggregators paint a favorable trend line for him:

Though Brown is still a longshot to win, his campaign has clearly been effective. And his strategy of fearmongering and misdirection is a perfect template for other Republicans running in an election year favorable to the GOP.

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Republicans this year have the luxury of running against an unpopular Democratic president at a time of intense fear and uncertainty. The economy still stinks. Ebola and ISIS dominate the daily news cycle, spooking voters into (falsely) believing they could be blown up or infected at any minute. And President Obama's approval rating continues to hover in the low-40s, in part because Americans fret he — and by extension Democrats — can't handle the aforementioned issues.

Much as the GOP was able to latch on to an ObamaCare backlash to thump Democrats in 2010, Republican candidates this time around are seizing on these new fears to flog their candidacies. And in doing so, they're able to spend less time defining themselves, and more time defining their opponents.

Brown exemplifies this strategy.

President Obama's approval rating in New Hampshire sits at a dismal 39 percent, according to the same CNN poll. Seeking to capitalize on discontent, Brown said that if Mitt Romney were president "we would not be worrying about Ebola right now," and has repeatedly tied Shaheen to Obama, claiming she "voted with the president over 99 percent of the time."

We've seen this same strategy in other key Senate races, too, with Republicans producing favorable results by painting Democratic candidates as extensions of the president. Kentucky's Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is vying to unseat Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), awkwardly refused to say if she voted for the president. And Alaska Sen. Mark Begich inadvertently dissed the president by affirming he voted for Obama while calling him "irrelevant."

On the fear front, Brown has, like many other Republicans, warned that ISIS militants are ready and able to infiltrate America. And he even nailed the fear Triple Crown earlier this month by saying that Ebola, ISIS, and the border were "all connected."

So Brown is anti-Obama and, unlike his opponent, anti-Ebola and anti-ISIS. Got it. However, finding out where Brown stands on less explosive issues is far more difficult.

Brown launched an "ObamaCare isn't working" tour earlier this year, and has vowed to repeal the law. Yet as a state lawmaker in Massachusetts, he supported ObamaCare's template, RomneyCare. And on the campaign trail, he's repeatedly danced around the crucial specifics.

Brown refused to say whether he supported one of ObamaCare's most popular components, a vast expansion of Medicaid. He claimed ObamaCare beneficiaries could be "grandfathered in" should the law be repealed, though he declined to say how that would work. (He later candidly remarked, "I'm not going to get into any particulars" regarding an alternative health care plan.) And in his latest fudging on the issue, Brown endorsed central ObamaCare provisions while still calling for a full repeal.

Opposing ObamaCare but supporting a state-run version of it is certainly a legitimate policy. But Brown's muddled waffling is at best a spineless bastardization of that position.

Another revealing moment in Brown's campaign came in a debate this week when the candidate was asked about climate change, and how the U.S. could regulate carbon emissions.

"I'm not going to talk about whether we're going to do something in the future," he responded.

In the very same debate, when asked how he would know the border is secure — an issue Brown has made central to his campaign — Brown gave the empty answer that we'll "know it's secure when people don't come across it."

Brown is quite comfortable accusing his opponent of being an Obama puppet who can't save you from Ebola and ISIS. But when it comes to offering a clear vision of himself, Brown hedges and hides. Why say what you stand for when you can simply spook voters with stuff they dislike?

A fitting slogan for the GOP this year would be, "Look over there!"