I can only think of two reasonable theories to explain why US Senator Scott Brown, Jim Barnett (campaign manager), Eric Fehrnstrom (campaign strategist), Brad Garrett (Republican Party staffer), Greg Casey & Jack Richard (Brown staffers) have chosen to question Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry: 1) there’s something in their internal polling and focus group data that suggests this is a winning issue for Brown, or 2) they’re all racist a**holes. For the sake of argument, let’s go with Door #1.
To review: Early this summer, the Boston political media spent weeks digging into and speculating about the Brown campaign’s claims that Warren had lied about having Native American ancestors in order to get “preferential treatment” for hiring by law schools. After chewing all the meat off that particular bone, it turned out that the voters of the Commonwealth…didn’t much care about Warren’s ancestors or about how she got hired—at least not enough to have it affect whether they’d vote for her. The whole story had died down and disappeared by August (coincidentally, the month when scores of Massachusetts reporters and editors go on vacation “down the Cape”).
At the candidates’ first televised debate, Brown led off with, and kept as the centerpiece of his argument why Warren should not be the next senator from Massachusetts, that “Prof. Warren claimed that she was a Native American…and clearly she’s not.” What’s not clear is why Scott Brown thinks he has been appointed judge and jury of Elizabeth Warren’s racial heritage. It’s even less clear why he thinks it will help him get re-elected.
But clearly he does, as does his campaign staff. Because after the debate, Brown’s new campaign ad, “Who Knows?”, was all about…Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry.
That was followed by Brown’s aides and campaign staff doing the “Tomahawk Chop” and “Indian war whoops” at a campaign event (as well as—inexplicably to all but a somewhat bizarre subset of Boston Red Sox fans—chanting “Yankees suck!”).
Remember, we’re operating on the assumption that Brown’s people have some reason for thinking this is not a good issue, but the best available issue for the incumbent senator to campaign on.
At this point, it’s worth recalling the exact words of legendary Republican political consultant, Lee Atwater (and yes, Lee Atwater is a hero to and role model of Jim Barnett’s): “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it.”
And in 2012, presumably, you try to make your opponent the poster child for affirmative action and “racial quotas”.
The problem for Brown is that he’s got a political reputation as a “nice guy”—the kind of “nice guy” Republican that Massachusetts Democrats can safely vote for without feeling like they’re voting for not-nice-guys like Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry or Mitch McConnell. “Nice guys” don’t make nakedly racist attacks…especially when the person they’re attacking is a woman.
By making that attack, Brown exposed himself to this kind of counterattack:
Warren gets to use a great tagline, “Scott Brown can continue attacking my family, but I’m going to keep fighting for yours” that’s utterly consistent with her overall campaign strategy.
She also gets to tell her parents’ story: “But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part-Cherokee and part-Delaware, so my parents had to elope“.
Now every undecided voter in Massachusetts who ever married, or even just dated someone their parents disapproved of—because he was African-American, or she was Chinese, or Catholic, or Jewish, or Irish, or Portuguese, or from the wrong side of town, or any other damn fool reason—has a really good reason to vote for Warren and against Brown. So does everyone in Massachusetts who has a friend or relative who’s had to deal with the kind of arrogant, intolerant and disgusting attitude (and behavior) that Brown and his campaign have put front and center for the past week.
This is still a close race. Warren is still a political rookie running against a skilled campaigner (and “nice guy”). But given how the demographics of Massachusetts have changed since Scott Brown was in high school, we may look back on this as the week that Brown lost the election.
Crossposted at: https:/masscommons.wordpress.com
Good grief and Scott Brown sits in Ted Kennedy’s old seat its a sin. People in Massachusetts are too smart for this kind of crap. He lost on issues so its off to Carl Rove land. Repugs are not a political party they are a gang of mindless thugs.
Like McCain/Palin using Bill Ayers against Obama. Didn’t work but gave them something to say.
Scott Brown has sold himself, as you say, as the nice guy who can play well with others. But there’s an underlying smug jerk, who’s peeked out before:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/scott-brown-replies-to-warren-thank-god-she-didnt-take-her
-clothes-off-audio.php
Let’s hope he keeps letting the mask slip.
I don’t disagree with you at all. But not all of their constituents are like you and I. He’s counting on the insecure-white-guy vote. And he may well get it. But he could lose the women if he keeps this up. And if “Sweet Professor Warren” takes this from him, she could lose.
I’d like to see Elizabeth Warren come right out and loudly call him a racist misogynist pig and demand that he immediately fire the staffers he’s hiding behind that pulled this shit. But she should do it in a way that doesn’t make herself look like a victim. “She’s a fighter and he’s a coward” is what needs to be left in people’s minds.
My 2 cents, FWIW.
Warren’s latest TV ad was cut before the “war whoops” tape went viral, but the ad does a good job (in my view) of striking the right balance: giving a credible answer to Brown’s attacks, and then pivoting to a “I’ll keep fighting for you, regardless of what he does” message.
Warren doesn’t need to win the votes of lefties who hate the jerks on Brown’s staff. She needs to win votes in two places: 1) pile up an overwhelming lead in Boston and other cities, and 2) persuade enough suburbanites in the towns around Rte. 128 and I-495 to allow her urban margin to hold up.
Here’s the ad — I think it’s very effective:
Swinging back hard risks getting embroiled in what looks like a pissing contest and that can easily backfire and that may be exactly what Brown’s team is hoping for with this attack.
It’s technically too late in this race to rake the lying, whiny, angry, resentful (what I got out of reading the first two chapters of his ghostwritten memoir a few days ago) Brown over the coals. But as loser GOP candidates are like zombies, exposing the real Brown after the election would be well-advised.
I have never seen a comment by Scott Brown that didn’t end with “so whatever.” This is a public-speaking genius who thinks that calling Warren “professor” will turn us dolts against her.
Apparantly every republican believes that everybody else is stupid. I know Massachusetts is smart enough to correct its mistake and replace him.
MA voters only have to demonstrate that they are as smart as RI voters were in 2006 when they ousted their well-liked GOP Senator in favor of the Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse because that seat may have made the difference in which party controlled the Senate.
A very worthy read on this issue at dKos by otherwise – Scott Brown’s Tomahawk Strategy.
There is a bit of an odd couple mix to KG Urban. The principles James D Kuhn and Barry M. Gosin, major New York commercial real estate investors (and large money donors to Democrats), in a joint venture with Las Vegas Sands, the company that made Sheldon G. Anderson a multi-billionaire.
Scott Brown is an ass whistle.