Left Side of the Aisle #77 - Part 5

Scott Brown turns nasty

I don't often talk about election campaigns. I don't. But I have to say something about the Senatorial campaign in Massachusetts between Elizabeth Warren and our own Scat Brown.

This was a relatively reasonable campaign early on. The two agreed "no outside PAC money" - not that that would affect what those PACs would do anyway, but at least they agreed - and most of the campaign had been what most of us at least say we would like to see in a campaign: A lot of it had been "This is why you should vote for me" and criticizing the other person's votes and record but not anything personal.

That continued until Elizabeth Warren caught up to Scat Brown, until she began to pass him in some of the polls. At that point, his campaign turned really nasty and really personal, really fast. Lies, innuendo, smears, have been everything he has done since.

"Look at her - you can tell she's not Native American."* What is this, 1952? We're going to go around telling what people's heritage is by "the way they look?" Maybe we can go into Boston and Brown can pick out all the Jews based on "how they look."

Scat Brown has proven more about himself in this campaign than he has about Elizabeth Warren.

*For those of you outside Massachusetts who might not get the reference, at some point in her career, Warren, based on what she had been told by her parents and grandparents, identified herself as part Native American. In their first debate, Brown said she had lied about who she is, infamously saying "You can see she's not [Native American] - just look at her."

That was followed, incidentally, by Brown staffers, including his constituent service counsel and deputy chief of staff, firing up supporters at a rally by making "war whoops" and "tomahawk chops." Brown responded by saying he had told his staff not to do that again, but didn't discipline anyone in any way - and in the same statement said Warren was the one who should apologize to Native Americans.

Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/20/the-first-scott-brown-elizabeth-warren-debate-four-takeaways/
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13080577-senator-scott-browns-red-racismot
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170147/massachusetts-senate-race-gets-ugly-fast?rel=emailNation#