Well, Someone Damned Well Better Get Cocky

Having read Glenn's item and then Ed's at Hot Air, Glenn's may be being cautionary, but in an entirely different context from Ed. It doesn't matter to me a great deal if Scott Brown gives the Republican response to the SOTU Address. But, why shouldn't he? Republicans just won a huge victory in Massachusetts, so it's time to go under the radar, as opposed to give Brown an opportunity  to make the case that a larger tent GOP can have significant benefits for everyone on the Right? He may not be up to that, which is fine. But to suggest it isn't worth contemplating is fleeing the battlefield after you've won. It makes no sense.

Update: Glenn Reynolds writes a long-form essay to sound a cautionary note as well:

He only mentioned the word “Republican” once, in a pledge to work with both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. Brown’s smart; he knows his audience and his state, and he isn’t likely to make himself the national face of the GOP in his first week on the job.

OTOH, Glenn is issuing a word of caution to the GOP, not the base. And it's a critical one they need to hear.

But while Scott Brown could get elected as the anti-Obama figure — and while others will be able to pull that off in the fall — the GOP needs to be sure that it doesn’t just look like it’s lining up for its turn at the trough. Polls show that most Americans want smaller government, even with fewer “services.” Running on a platform that money’s better kept in voters’ own pockets, rather than handed over to special interest logrolling and vote-buying, will work: If it’ll work in Massachusetts, it should work pretty much anywhere.

Finally, as for Ed's linking Jazz Shaw at the Moderate Voice. Get there via Ed, I won't link a blog that mischaracterizes itself as moderate, when it's not. Shaw either doesn't know much about NE Republicans, or paid no attention to Scott Brown. While Brown seems far from an arch conservative, suggesting he's representative of the type of Republican regularly pilloried by the conservative base is bunk. His campaign rhetoric was well to the Right of Snowe, Collins and others. It's only if he drifts too far Left in DC that he'd be pilloried. NE Republicans have not been big, or genuine in talking the type of fiscal sanity and strong defense Brown talked for decades.

Scott is actually quite typical of the kind of Republicans we elect to various offices in the Northeast all the time and have been doing so since the days of Eisenhower. Call him a moderate. Call him a RINO. Call him whatever you like. But he came to the race knowing exactly what he had to do in order to win as a Republican in this part of the country. Plenty of Republicans do the same thing every season. And they are consistently pilloried for it across the conservative blogosphere.

If moderates want to make nice with the establishment GOP by taking the pressure off individuals like Snowe, Collins and others, fine. But then maybe it's time to call your self an establishment Republican, as opposed to a voice of the conservative base.

While I never expect to see every thing I might want from a national GOP, if the base isn't cocky right now, it'll simply allow the GOP to continue playing the squish in DC. And that's the last thing both the base and the GOP need to do right now. We need to be moving forward for a change, not worrying about being afraid. We've been on defense for far too long, including under Bush. Lead, follow, or get out of the way!

Comments

[serfer62]

Brown is right of those including McNasty & Gramnesty...(if McCain had won Cap & Trade would already be law).
He hits the right key points and thats good enough.

[Lightwave]

The real message here is that the Tea Party Movement is correct.

If the Republicans who are swept into office in 2010 expand the federal government instead of ridding the budget of trillions in pork, we will sweep them OUT of office.

[Mr. Sauce]

I'd like the response to come from Michelle Bachmann.
Not much chance of that, though.

[Jeff]

Va, NJ and now Mass. ... there is a huge hole in the Liberal battle lines and now is the time to drive a big truck through it and get behind those enemy lines ... we have a template for victory and the key is NOT to have Republican candidates who will adapt to the template but to find Republican candidates who have always had those characteristics and get them to run ... any current elected GOP political who needs to move to the right to fit the template should be challenged by a candidate who doesn’t have to move right ... moving left is fine ... arch conservatives can moderate ... lefty moderates can't be trusted to stay on message once elected ...

Hammer them hard now and everyday until November 2011, they are against the ropes, don't let the ref (the MSM) stop the fight ... we have a whole basket of bad votes to hang around the neck of every single elected Democrat in the House and the Senate and we should make them wear those votes like a bloody shirt ... retire these bums to work as lobbyists or at Fannie and Freddie and write books and give speeches ... anything but allow them to continue on a "representatives" in Congress ...

what is the template ?

I would say it is the following, your mileage may vary:

1) real health care reform with market based ideas (the dems have opened the door, lets drive thru it)
2) deficit reduction thru spending cuts
3) tax cuts or at least no increases
4) aggressive national defense
5) forceful America first foreign policy

[rrpjr]

Right on. I'm tired of these apologies for winning which, in a way, the fear of "cockiness" represents. I saw Rick Moran bleating about it yesterday. Something about having to fear and face the "expectations." In my view, it's just part of the years of conditioning by a liberal culture to accept the shuffling, second-class status of conservatism.

[Jack Okie]

I think the "fiscal conservative" / "social conservative" template applies in Senator Brown's case. His positions during the campaign were pretty much fiscally conservative, but he is allegedly pro-choice.

Works for me.

[Jeff]

nothing wrong with being pro-choice as long as you are not pro government sponsored abortion ... abortion is legal and I see no reason to push for it to be regulated or paid for by the government in any way ... given the amount of private money spent on campaigns to expand the governments role in abortion funding I'm confident a fund could be setup to pay for abortions for poor women thru PRIVATE donations ...

I apply the pro-choice concept to more than reproductive rights ... I consider it something that applies to gun ownership, cars, TV shows, health care and pretty much everyday life in the US of A ...

What I don't want is the government making choices for me or funding my exercise of those choices, that my job ...

I'm mean should'nt the government fund my right to keep and bear arms as well then ? I'd love a nice new 1911 every couple of years with some ammo ...