Brown Hype And Irony

Conservatives, when it comes to citing information in order to push a specific school of thought, often reference material that is too closely linked to their own self-interests. More plainly put, when you reference a poll that you conducted to prove your point, it pretty much invalidated from the jump.

Fox"News" is notorious for doing this. And now, Pajamas Media has a poll out that says the Scott Brown in some 15 points ahead of Martha Coakley in the special Massachusetts election to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. However, Nate Silver provides the context to this that shows this isn't something Democrats should worry about.

Worry about Suffolk. Worry about what PPP and Rasmussen are going to have to say over the weekend. But for the love of God, don't worry about the Pajamas Media poll which reports a 15 point lead for Scott Brown, which I'm not going to do the favor of posting a link to.

The poll was conducted by a firm connected with the Black Rock Group, which bills itself as a "strategic communications and public affairs firm" and whose chief spokesman/strategist, Carl Forti, just so happens to be the spokesman for this polling firm that nobody has ever heard of and just so happens (as David Dayen dutifully reports) to be the spokesman for a big pharma lobbying group that's pushed the death panels meme and just so happens to be the lead PR flak for Pajamas Media.

This bizarre bizarre Mobius Strip form of political strategy plagues Scott Rasmussen as well, considering his former ties to the Republican Party.

One important thing to remember about polls is that they reflect a person's feelings at the time of the poll, not what they are going to do once at the "ballot box". As of right now, the race is well within the margin of error, so it's anyone's game at this point.

But let's take a look at what is likely to happen is Brown wins.

One of his key, if not THE key, pillars of his campaign is blocking healthcare reform. If Brown wins and becomes the "41st vote" - his current moral boosting chant - that will in effect help to derail healthcare reform, he will be profiting from the taxpayer due to the healthcare coverage that is offered to elected members of government. The taxpayer pays their salary and that salary is used in part to pay for healthcare coverage. It's a rather ironic place Brown could potentially find himself in - as a member of the government that conservatives continually rally against. Then again, conservatives only rally against government when they aren't in the catbird seat.

Not only that, but Brown is hardly the "man of the people" he claims to be, as his campaign coffers have been filled in these final hours by the financial sector. It seems that those that favor profit over the consumer are more than willing to back a candidate for his stance that would favor them. After all, another conservative pillar is massive deregulation, the same that got us into the greatest economic disaster not seen since the 30s.

As of this writing, it could be either Brown or Coakley. If it's the former, be prepared for more of the same from conservatives, and be prepared for Brown lay willingly in the arms of his masters - the special insists that care nothing about the tea-bagging masses that oppose them. If it's the later, be prepared for conservatives to cry foul play. Either way, there's still a great fight ahead of us that are for the betterment of this country.

The Zapruderization Of Conservative Memes

Much in the way that an SEIU member allegedly "beat down" a member of the tea-bagger movement, this non-story is being touted as proof positive that Democrats are resorting to violence in the face of opposition.



While the video doesn't really show an attack, what you can see - through restarting the clip from around the 5 second mark is a hand up in the air, another hand, a flash and then you hear the clang of the guard-rail. Immediately following that you see a man - the person that shoved the arm out of his face? - picking up the man with the camera and asking, "are you ok"?

If one were to look at this honestly, it's likely that the person running toward Martha Coakley, once having his arms removed from another man's face, was off balance and wasn't shoved into the rail due to some "thuggish" act as it is being portrayed.

Secondly, after the man is picked up, he gets in the other gentleman's face again. What's important here is that we can't hear what they are saying to one another - in as much as what words we can hear have any context to the situation. After all, the people that are using this as some Zapruder-esque footage that validates multiple specious claims that the Democrats party has turned into a bunch of gangsters.

If you see a man claiming to be a "reporter" go lunging after a political candidate, and in light of threats made against members of the Democratic party, what would you do? Would you attempt to block this person - who is obviously not wanting to be stopped and is intent on running up to the candidate - until it was clear they meant no harm? Most sane people would. Let's try running up to Scott Brown mumbling some incoherent statement flailing our arms around and see if we aren't tackled by someone by FreedomWorks.

Conservatives are likely to dismiss all this by claiming that Martha Coakley heard the question asked by the reporter and that serves as his identification, that he posses no threat. That, in and of itself, is a rather disingenuous statement. After all, the man that successfully threw two shoes at George W. Bush in Iraq was a journalist that was apparently cleared by security.

In the end, conservatives are more than willing to inflate a story to it's most illogical end just so that they can say they are being bullied, that votes are being stolen, that the government is doing all it can to take away every freedom you have.

Brown's Only Takeaway

I missed the debate last night between teabagger candidate Scott Brown and Democratic challenger Martha Coakley.

Considering the Right is already claiming victory for Brown simply because he raised $1mil plus yesterday ( and I'm suspecting that more than just the average conservative chipped in a few bucks ) they really shouldn't be cheering this man on. Why? Just take a look at the one clip of the night that is making the rounds within the conservative blogging realm.



Let's take note:

Job killer talking point - check

Start over on healthcare reform - check

Inflate actual cost of bill - check

Distort Medicare cuts - check

Scare vets - check

The only thing that Brown seems to have done in this debate that is worth repeating ( as it was in the clip ) is the poor attempt at being clever by claiming that the Senate seat once occupied by Ted Kennedy was and is the "people's seat". Once again, sort of clever, but ultimately understandable by anyone - even the non-teabaggers in the audience - as the statement that it was "Teddy Kennedy's seat" is nothing more than a rhetorical statement, as he was the last one to occupy it. And honestly, it technically still is Teddy's seat until someone else sits in it. The truth of the matter is that Brown, or any tea-bagging conservative, seems to have trouble understanding rhetorical statements.

In the end, Brown will more than likely come close to Coakley's votes, but I'm not working myself up into a lather thinking that all hope is lost and that she will lose. She's running for a Senate seat that has remained staunchly Democratic for longer than I've been alive.

The spin for Brown's loss is already being formulated. Even after next weeks special election, this story won't have a pretty conclusion for the Democrats. The tea-baggers will see to that.

Nice Try Ed or Grammatical Projections

Conservatives are literally falling over themselves trying to find a way to declare that Scott Brown has already won the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. From attempting to parse the language of polling from Rasmussen to Ed Morrissey's latest attempt - blame a grammatical error on the candidate when she didn't even produce the ad.

Maybe Coakley ought to know how to spell her state’s name before asking voters there to send her to Washington to represent them. At the very least, it’s an answer to Democratic zingers about Dan Quayle, who managed to spell Indiana correctly even if misspelling potato on an infamous occasion.

Morrissey's drooling assertion is predicated on this bizarre notion that every political candidate produces their own advertising material. Even though this has the standard "approval" stamp at the end of the ad this does NOT mean that Martha Coakley produced the ad herself. That task falls to a media relations company that is contracted by the Democratic party for he state where the campaign is taking place.

To follow Ed's faulty logic, one would then have to assume that John McCain new how to use an AVID machine or video editing software in order to create all the ads from his presidential campaign.

However, if one were to claim that this entire piece was created at the hands of Martha Coakley, and he is really wanting to use grammar as a weapon, perhaps he shouldn't be pointing fingers at people that know how to catch their mistakes. Has he even seen the rampant bastardization of the English language on the multitude of tea-bagger signage the past year?