Beltway Confidential? Love it. (ap photo)
The Boston Herald has a column today about Sen. Scott Brown, the Massachusetts Republican getting “whacked” by both sides for votes he’s taken on “don’t ask, don’t tell” and financial regulation. Oh, and the tea partiers are threatening to revoke his secret handshake authorization if he doesn’t straighten up.
At issue: After saying he would keep an open mind on gays in the military, Brown indicated he would probably vote against repealing the policy. Then Brown got his own party all agog by voting with Democrats to end debate of financial regulation overhaul and move the process along to a vote. Sacre bleu!
Per Wayne Woodlief, Herald political columnist:
An incensed Shelby Blakely, one of the national leaders of the Tea Party, went ballistic. “The general mood of the Tea Party is, ‘We put you (Brown) in and we’ll take you out in 2012.’ ”
What a jerk. That’s about as arrogant as it gets. There are a lot of good people in the Tea Party (response to Brown’s vote in Boston was much milder) but it isn’t Brown’s boss. As somebody said during the special election campaign, “This is the people’s seat.”
Brown echoed those sentiments in a phone interview yesterday on the two issues.
“I’m not a foot soldier for either Mitch McConnell (the Republican Senate leader) or Harry Reid (the Democratic majority leader),” he said.
Apparently independence is out, as a political philosophy. Certainly, Arlen Specter would say so. Brown came to mind the other day listening to an NPR report on Terence Samuel’s new book, The Upper House, a behind-the-scenes look at three freshman senators negotiating their way around Congress.
Samuel followed the new U.S. legislators from the floor of the Senate all the way back to town hall meetings in their home states. He says it was interesting to track senators who hadn’t — as they say in the Senate — “gone purple” yet.
“It’s the royal purple, because there’s always staff around you,” Samuel explains. “You walk down the hall and doors open.”
Isn’t that a good thing when senators are all fresh and new and independent? Brown is also not “gone purple” yet, and seems more like an affable small-state governor than a puffed-up, self-important member of the Senate. And as the Herald points out, seems to keep his own counsel. Will it last?
This post was not an excuse to plug Samuel’s book.
