His Globe piece is presumably a good way to assess his platform. And it highlights all the bankruptcy of the current conservative establishment. Take a couple of issues. He starts by listing national problems:

Public debt has reached $12 trillion and counting, and Washington politicians want to borrow trillions more.

His solution?

My plan for the economy is simple: an across-the-board tax cut - in the tradition of John F. Kennedy - for families and businesses that will increase investment and lead to immediate new job growth. More tax increases will hurt our recovery. That’s why I have taken a no-new-tax pledge. My opponent will raise taxes.

Does anyone see the contradiction here? Without any tax increases, indeed with more tax cuts, the spending reductions required to reduce the debt will be fantastic: massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. Where does he outline these spending measures? Nowhere. Fiscally, he's as fraudulent as Bush.

More absurdity here:

It’s time to admit that while the $787 billion stimulus had the best of intentions, it failed to create one new job.

Even if you believe that stimuli are wasteful or inefficient, I know of no sane economist who believes that $800 billion did not create one new job.


Then he's in favor of the Massachusetts universal health insurance reform, on which Obama's is based, but for some reason against the one for the country. Why?

But the healthcare bill under discussion in Washington is not good. It will raise taxes and increase spending. If you are a senior on Medicare, it will lead to a half trillion dollars in cuts to your care.

So Brown supports health care exchanges, a mandate, and universal care ... but opposes healthcare exhcanges, a mandate and universal care. He is worried about the debt but actually opposes the proposed cuts in Medicare that can make universal insurance affordable - let alone the cuts necessary to bring us back from the fiscal abyss.

He is, in other words, a parody of the brainless bush Republican, mixed with Romney-like cynicism.

Cavuto asked Brown why he'd supported an expansion of state involvement in health care, but he's opposing the same thing now. (As we noted, the Massachusetts health care plan passed by the state legislature and signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney is similar to the Democratic federal plan in many ways, including the individual mandate to purchase health insurance.)

"No, that's not true, they're two different programs. What we have here is a free-market enterprise where we're providing insurance in various levels to people in Massachusetts," said Brown. "The plans in Washington are a one-size-fits-all plan that's gonna cost almost a trillion-plus dollars, raise taxes, at a time when we don't need it. Why are we subsidizing, why would we pay more, for something we already have? It makes no sense."

I'm with you in thinking that Obama is the best thing the Democrats have going for them right now. But I also think that in having the supermajority, they actually undercut him. They don't have to compromise and so they don't try to. Instead, what passes as legislation is a horrid mismash of corporate interests and traditional, not progressive, balms of the Democratic Party. I know this country can do much, much better. And I think Obama needs a less powerful Democratic party to make it happen, like Clinton did.

For all the reasons you cite about Coakley, I'm voting for Brown. But let me add a few more.

I'm a split-the-ballot kind of guy. I don't think the dominance of the political system by one party is ever good for the country. Too much changes too quickly and without the necessary compromises to slow the pace and make it more realistic. We all agree that the GOP is a mess. But we also all agree that we need a stronger GOP. And despite the rhetoric, I can't think of a better candidate to help than Scott Brown. He's not perfect, but if he thinks he can go along with the national GOP and keep the seat in the next election, he's going to be out of a job. In voting for him, I hope he'll moderate that party. And that's what's funny to me about the rush of support he's getting from the Right. If a Republican from Massachusetts isn't a RINO to them, I don't know who is. It also helps that Brown has already voted for a health care plan with a public option. So to someone like Malkin who was ready to toss away a Congressional seat in NY for "purity", I now laugh at their support of Brown

My only hesitation in voting for Brown is how that vote will be spun by the mediots in the Beltway. Let me say emphatically that my vote for Brown isn't a vote against Obama. It's a vote against the Democratic Party, and hacks like Coakley, but also a vote to help moderate the GOP. One more New England Republican is necessary. Of all the places the GOP might find it's path again I hope it's from where it was born.

Rotogurupie liberals pretending to be heartfelt saviors of the republican party offend me.

Anyone who thinks Obama isn't a hardcore Marxist or is willing to vote for him anyway is BS crazy.

Certainly any leftwing pundit these days fits one of those two conditions in #60 is BS crazy which is why 'moonbats' works so well as their moniker.

Cannot hear the music but he jerks kinda like a Seinfeld episode.

Indiana Dem Evan Bayh

A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality and maybe it's for the best that Massachusetts has already been mugged by state run healthcare.

First off 10-30 percent of Massachusetts doctors are so angry with state run healthcare that they have already left the state.

In a 2006 report from the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, nearly half of all doctors polled said they had stopped accepting or limited the number of new Medicaid patients.

Forcing 40+ million more patients into a medical system hemoraging doctors will not work as well as you libs imagine. Make that 40+ million on top of an entire population who suddenly believes doctor visits are now free.

Marxism is the death of the individual, motivation and autonomy. And thus the death of quality of life and quality services. It does promise a more equal distribution of misery however.

Tell it to the blue dogs.

Words are cheap so...

...this is one Republican who is not going to get checked too closely for conservative bona fides.

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The dem majority is quite illusory in that their majorities hinge on blue dog dems who are only dems because they are in conservative states with historically strong Dem party machines that carry forward from decades past when there was an entirely different dem party.