Scott Brown's Closing Argument: Collected and Can-Do

Well, it’s no Rape Mail (the closer from the politically gifted minds at Camp Coakley), but Scott Brown’s counting on his calmer argument being more effective: “There’s only one tax cutter in this race, and it’s not Martha Coakley.”

But the message is more subtle than just “taxes bad.” It attempts to defuse the Coakley criticism of Brown over Obama’s bank fee (he’s against it) by turning it into a working-guy tax issue by pointing out the tax gets passed right down to bank customers. Brown’s ad isn’t an ideological crusade against all taxes, but a plea for restraint on a federal level. He asks Washington to take responsibility for its spending before soaking taxpayers to fill gaps.