Scorched Earth
Boston Herald’s Howie Carr with some harsh tactical advice for Massachusetts GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown. “Two words … Merry Christmas.”
That’s it, just those two simple words. Throw them in at the end of a TV spot, a postscript, just to give the networks some B-roll when they run their inevitable stories about this despicable outburst of . . . Republican hate speech.
Merry Christmas.
The moonbats will go bonkers. Within hours, Scott, you’ll be denounced by every snore-monger at the Globe. First bow-tied bumkisser to compare you to Dick Cheney doesn’t get laid off next month! MSNBC will demand your immediate extradition to The Hague to stand trial in the World Court for . . . something.
But who cares? None of these blow-in, trust-funded drifters from New York was ever going to vote for you anyway, Scott. What you need to do is get Martha Coakley on record, coming out against Merry Christmas, because you know damn well she doesn’t dare utter those two horrible words.
Brutal, heartless. Probably a violation of everything that’s decent. But sound advice. Brown is in no position to run a conventional campaign in the few short weeks before the Jan. 19 special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. He’ll have to use guerrilla tactics if he wants to come out of this as anything but a sorry also-ran. Surprise assaults, seemingly out of nowhere, that confuse his adversary and leave the opposition flailing. Dastardly, stealthy attacks like the utterance of “Merry Christmas.” Or something equally explosive. In fact, many things equally explosive. Faced with a vast conventional army of unions and state hacks, plus the Emily’s List irregulars, Brown also needs to tap into the energy that drew thousands of angry Massachusetts voters to Boston Common last Tax Day.
Anything less than that is a capitulation to the conventional wisdom, which is that Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is the Liberal Lion’s annointed, unassailable successor in Blue Mass.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino just did Brown a big favor, BTW. After a tough race to win a fifth term, he’s raising taxes. Boston Herald.
Brown comes out the gate with a no-tax vow. Good idea, right? Oldest failed gimmick in the book. Boston Herald again. You’d think it would work in a state where voters just yawned their way through a ballot initiative to eliminate the state income tax, then watched the governor and Legislature hike the sales tax and booze taxes to save hack jobs while everyone else lost theirs. But it takes a lot to wake people up around here. “Merry Christmas.”
The Boston Globe reports Brown intends to go at it with “everything he had.” Hey, why’d they put that in past tense? Meanwhile, Coakley “indicated she would do all she could to ignore him.” It’s up to Brown whether he’s going to let her.
Here, by the way, is why the national GOP should give a damn:
Democrats, though, seemed unworried that they would lose a seat they have held since 1953.
“There is no way in hell we’re going to elect a Republican to Ted Kennedy’s seat,’’ US Representative Michael E. Capuano, Coakley’s chief primary rival, said at the unity event in the Kennedy Room of the Omni Parker House. “Period.’’
Thanks to drastically diminished expectations, even coming close would be a national story, and a shot across the opposition’s bow, going into the 2010 congressional races.
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Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:40 am Comments (1) on Friday, December 11, 2009
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December 13th, 2009 at 10:56 am
[...] 13, 2009 Posted by taoist in Politics. Tags: Congress, Massachusetts, Senate trackback Say “Merry Christmas“. It’s an interesting [...]