When Scott Brown was elected to the Senate as the key 41st vote against health care reform, GOP and Tea Party activists nationwide thought they'd dealt a death-blow to Obama's domestic ambitions. But now that Democrats have regrouped and passed their bill, Brown has been getting "slammed by irked conservatives," the Boston Herald reports. Is he being scapegoated — or did the right back the wrong man?
Brown was oversold: The conservative "buyer's remorse" is real, both emotionally and literally, says Joe Gandelman in The Moderate Voice. Tea Partiers got worried when Brown "voted like a RINO" (Republican in Name Only) on his first big Senate vote. But his real downfall is that his election didn't, as hoped, bury health care reform or derail the Democrats.
"Republicans de-hero Scott Brown: Soon just another 'RINO?'"
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There's no buyer's remorse: It's hardly Scott Brown’s fault ObamaCare passed, says La Shawn Barber in Michelle Malkin's blog. And even if he's more liberal than we conservatives had hoped, "he’s one more Republican in the Senate, and that’s good enough for now." He'll be joined by others after the next election. "So gloat on," Democrats — you'll be crying in November.
Brown's win gave the Dems some backbone: "Brown may on occasion be useful to the GOP as a 41st vote," says Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden in his blog, but his unlikely victory actually hurt his party on health care. Shockingly, it was the Democrats who learned the "real Scott Brown lesson" — "don’t let the other side tell you whether you have a shot" — and they "out-Browned the GOP."
"What goes Brown comes around"
Brown has to pick his team now: It's "unfair" to blame Brown for the Democrats' stiffer spine, says Joan Vennochi in The Boston Globe, but he brought this on himself. Brown can't be both an "independent voice" for Massachusetts and the property of "Mitch McConnell and assorted Tea Party activists." Would he rather "enrage" the right, or his voters?
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