Brown campaign a model for GOP this year

Boston Globe:

National GOP strategists say the unexpected tightening in the Massachusetts Senate race has demonstrated the potency of the electorate’s antipathy for the Democratic health care legislation, and that Republican Scott Brown’s campaign could become a template for Republican challengers across the country in this year’s midterm elections.

“He’s making health care a front-and-center issue in the most liberal state in the country, and it’s working for him,’’ said Whit Ayres, who cofounded Resurgent Republic, a group of conservative pollsters and strategists formed to shape the national debate. “That’s the major message - that this bill is an albatross around the necks of the Democrats, and if it works this well in Massachusetts, just imagine how well it will work in less liberal states.’’

Brown has portrayed the Democratic health care bills as bloated, tax-stuffed mistakes that would do little to solve Massachusetts’ biggest health care challenge - controlling costs - while forcing its residents to sub sidize insurance for people in other states. He has called for Congress to “go back to the drawing board’’ and come up with a new plan. And he has capitalized on speculation about whether Democrats might try to delay his confirmation if he wins in order to ram the health bill through, stoking concerns about transparency and fairness raised by special deals Democratic leaders made last year to entice fence-sitters to vote for the bill.

“Threatening to ignore the results of a free election and steal this Senate vote from the people of Massachusetts takes their schemes to a whole new level,’’ the Brown campaign said in a recent statement, in a burst of rhetoric that has been typical of his camp. A spokesman for Brown declined to comment for this story.

...

Even some Republicans who had been predicting big gains in the 2010 elections can scarcely believe the seat that was once occupied by US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a revered liberal who held it for 47 years and called universal health insurance “the cause of my life,’’ is suddenly vulnerable. This in a state whose landmark 2006 health care law became a model for the federal legislation under discussion, a law that remains popular today.

“I think Republican strategists are certainly taking note of that and saying, ‘We thought it would work in a lot of the country, but the fact it’s working in Massachusetts tells us that it will really work,’ ’’ said Rob Gray, a GOP strategist based in Boston. “The big thing is that the health care bill is a big empty vessel into which people can assign their pet peeves or anger . . . [about] how the federal government is being run and the state of the economy.’’

...

Brown is tapping into a general dissatisfaction about the state of the country and what many view as the Democrats’ misplaced response to its problems, said Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter covering national politics and campaigns.

“I think the focus on health care has been so heavy for so long, and the public looks around at all these other problems and says, ‘Why the heck don’t you do something about jobs?’ ’’ he said. “It may not be Obama’s fault that the economy hasn’t rebounded, but politicians are held responsible for how people feel. I think you’ll see Republican candidates around the country just taking advantage of all this.’’

One lesson GOP challengers nationwide might take from the Brown campaign, analysts say, is to frame their complaints about the health care legislation in economic terms, rather than on health policy or ideological grounds. Brown has avoided the battle cries of last summer’s Tea Parties about a Canadian-style government takeover of health care or so-called death panels, which would probably not resonate as well in a traditionally liberal state like Massachusetts.

Instead, Brown has lumped the proposed tax increases in the health care bill together with Coakley’s support for other Democratic initiatives, such as allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire and the cap and trade bill, to assert Coakley supports $2 trillion in tax increases.

...

The Democrats' love of tax increases is hurting Coakley and it will hurt other Democrats this year. Republicans do not have to run on new tax cuts, but on restraining Democrat tax increases. By lumping all the Democrat tax increases into one package Brown has found away to defeat all of them.

The fact is that Brown has run a surprisingly effective campaign attacking the weaknesses of liberalism and Coakley has been on the defensive and not handling it well. Some have described it as the liberal sense of entitlement.