2 snarky opeds on the smaller senator : )

[MBS]

1. today's Boston Globe (Metro section, local columnist Yvonne Abraham). . . "Scott Brown's Golden Touch". .dripping with sarcasm
Here're some excerpts
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/01/scott_browns_golden_touch/

Now more than ever, it truly rocks to be Scott Brown.
The freshman US Senator, a Republican, is this blue state’s most beloved politician — more popular than even the president, according to a Globe poll this week. Our pollster didn’t ask how Brown’s favorables compare to God’s, but my bet is it would be a pretty close call.
. . .
Five months on the job, and already he’s parting legislative seas.

With all of that love and power, you can’t blame Brown for getting a big head. And as an interview he gave two of his fans on WEEI last Friday made clear, it is pretty darned big.

“So, last night I got off the plane and I’m driving through Wrentham saying, ‘Man, I just can’t believe I’m a United States Senator,’ ’’ he crowed to his adoring interlocutors. “And then Tim Geithner calls me on the phone and says, ‘Scott, I just wanted to go through some things that we’re working on right now . . .’ He just called me a minute ago, too . . .

“Obviously, I am the key vote. They know they have to keep me in the loop.’’

No matter what Brown does, he’s a populist hero.

For example, repeatedly voting against an extension of unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, and for extra money to preserve services for the mentally disabled, makes him a hero because he’s holding down the deficit, saving the Average Guy taxes down the line.

Nobody seems to care that lots of folks, including some respected deficit hawks, think that’s a shortsighted, destructive stance in a recession.. . .

Voters sent Brown to Washington partly because he promised an end to backroom dealing. But it turns out he’s rather an ace at it himself: Holding his vote over Democrats’ heads, he got them to weaken restrictions on the kinds of risky bets that led to the financial crisis.

Having secured that gift for banks and hedge funds, Brown voted for the Senate version of the bill — even though its cost would add to the deficit.

Then, after House and Senate negotiators found another way to pay for the bill — namely, $19 billion in charges imposed on the biggest financial institutions themselves — Brown jumped ship. He wasn’t protecting banks, Brown said. It’s just a coincidence that they hated the charges. He was looking out for the Little Guy, since the banks would just pass along the $19 billion to customers in higher fees.

It didn’t matter that the new rules would make it harder for banks to raise those fees. And it didn’t matter that any other way of funding the new system would also use taxpayer money, only more directly.
Brown’s balk was praised as another heroic, populist move. . . .

2. Gail Collins, in today's NYT--mostly about John Boehner (and secondarily on Reid) , but there's this delicious paragraph on the smaller senator.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/opinion/01collins.html?_r=1&hp

(Reid) is trying to get a commitment on finance reform from the newest Republican senator, Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

Brown ran as a sort of populist man of the people, but in April, he told The Boston Globe that he couldn’t support the then-current version of the bill. When asked what he wanted changed, Brown said: “Well, what areas do you think should be fixed? I mean, you know, tell me. And then I’ll get a team and go fix it.”

It was at this point that we began to suspect that Massachusetts’s junior senator is not a deep thinker. (:rofl: -ed.)

Brown came around and voted for the bill when it passed the Senate. Then he backed away when it came out of conference committee because the conferees had added a tax on big banks.

Which Brown claimed he could not support. This was at the same time that he was refusing to give the Democrats a final critical vote on extending unemployment benefits. We have here a populist man of the people playing the role of friend to the big banks while not being particularly helpful to the long-term unemployed. What can I tell you? The guy is extremely popular in Massachusetts. Maybe it’s because he drives a truck.