Scott Brown, Just Another Republocrat

I first heard the name of Scott Brown at a local political mixer, and several folks had mentioned they were going to send a few bucks his way just because he might be able to help stop the current health care tax if he won the special run-off election against a Democrat, Martha Coakley. Not knowing much about Brown, I took a closer look at him this week.

Brown is a career politician who has been in the Massachusetts state congress for 11 years. His Issues page is full of run-of-the-mill generalizations (although briefer than mine, something I am working on). There is zero mention of the most important foreign policy topic – the simultaneous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while he absurdly devotes a section to support Israel's border walls. Even on health care, while taking a direct stance against the Democrat plan, he supports nationalizing health care and has voted for the Romney health care tax solution which he offhandedly ADMITS is ailing, as I pointed out in my health care plank last summer.

During his victory speech (starting at about 4:30):

“We're past campaign mode. I think it's important for everyone to get some form of health care. So, to offer a basic plan for everybody, I think is important. It’s just a question of whether we are going to raise taxes, we’re going to cut a half a trillion from Medicare, and we’re going to affect Veteran’s care. I think we can do it better. And to just be the 41st Senator and bring it back to the drawing board. There are some very good things as you just pointed out in the national plan that is being proposed."

The message cannot be any clearer – while those who oppose a health care takeover may have won a battle, they will still lose the war with poor choices like Brown. As Massachusetts voters are 51% independent/third party, Brown promoted himself as the independent's candidate, and successfully marginalized Coakley as an incumbent and made it into a single-issue election. Tea parties across the nation donated funds to his campaign's coffers, ignoring a true independent candidate, Joe Kennedy, who really did stand for removing the government from health care. Kennedy ran an non-establishment, liberty-minded platform but only garnered 1% of the vote, and per his website raised just $18,000, which even my US House campaign has surpassed.

Here are my observations on what Brown's win means for congressional races, both as a voter and independent candidate:

• Supporters need to get the message out far earlier than one month prior to an election, especially due to the biased media. The closer to the election, the more voters will tend to choose an Establishment candidate. The website traffic statistics for all three candidates suggests that most voters did not bother to visit until the week prior to the election.
• The political climate is becoming more chaotic as voters react violently to the status quo. Voting for the underdog was really a protest vote against the Establishment, even though Brown himself is a career politician. Economic unrest breeds political change, though it is not necessarily for the better. In my race against two career Republocrat politicians, to say my candidacy stands out to an informed voter is an understatement.
• The Tea Party movement is a viable source of support that can help win races.
• However, more and more people, including those in the Tea Parties, need to learn what the true choice between the Republican and Democrat parties truly is. They need to spend the time necessary to inform themselves about the candidates running. In the past, it has been referred to as the choice between the lesser of two evils. Now, with the country's economy in a fragile state, the Democrats are death by cyanide and the Republicans death by arsenic.  Perhaps the most useful thing Brown can do for his country is vote for the health care tax, and expose the whole charade.
• Barring a fortune, or some national name recognition like a Jesse Ventura or Dr. Ron Paul's son Rand in Kentucky, an independent US Senate race is still untenable even in a small state geographically like Massachusetts. US House and state congressional races are the largest representative races where independents have a chance.
• Mainstream media still plays an important role in deciding races, even if their focus is rarely political issues at stake. The media, instead of INVESTIGATING or REPORTING the news, CONTROLS the news. I did not understand this for myself until I moved to China, where at least there every single citizen recognizes their media is not only controlled, but deliberately censured.  For instance, Coakley was widely berated for not knowing which baseball team a prominent player pitched for, while Brown's nude centerfold shoot for Cosmopolitan was not widely discussed. Meanwhile, Kennedy's website was by far the most detailed on the issues. I commented on the media's effect on my race in my latest press release.

I remain resolute in my faith in the people of my district, and all those I've met door-to-door and at campaign events. If, while running as an independent, I can free this district from the gaping maws of the Republocrats in 2010, it will be a harbinger of prosperity, peace, and liberty for the rest of the nation, unlike the election in Massachusetts.

Perhaps it is worth quoting Quigley's 1966 passage ad nauseum for the rest of my campaign:

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.... Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."

In Liberty,

Jake Towne

January 22, 2010   (Mike, thanks for the interview the other day and the arsenic and cyanide analogy!)