STOP ME if you’ve heard this before.
A telegenic state senator with an attractive wife, two daughters and an intriguing personal narrative is elected to the U.S. Senate.
His parents separated when he was young, and he spent parts of his childhood living with his grandparents. He plays basketball, works out religiously and keeps himself in impeccable shape. He studied law in Boston and appeared shirtless in tabloids.
His election immediately puts him on the national radar, so he runs for president before the completion of his first term, taking the nation by storm.
Barack Obama?
No, Scott Brown.
Don’t laugh. The irony in the Bay State is that the insurgent GOP victory now causing President Obama so much consternation is one that bears a striking resemblance to his own path to the White House – right down to the central campaign theme of “change.”
And here’s what I’m wondering after Brown’s out-of-nowhere rise to the Senate: Where has the Republican Party been hiding this guy, and how many more of him are there?
After all, the final margin – Scott’s 52 percent to state Attorney General Martha Coakley’s 47 percent – looks a lot like the president’s general-election victory in 2008.
So does the geography of that tally. Obama ran hard in suburban communities across the country and won 50 percent of the voters from those areas. In Massachusetts on Tuesday, Brown maximized votes from independents in the suburbs outside Boston, while the Democratic share of the vote dropped in every town across the state.
That a little-known Republican state legislator like Brown could get elected in a state where independents make up a majority of the electorate (51.2 percent) is evidence an ability to blur party lines and shake up traditional voting patterns – much like Obama did little more than a year ago. One underappreciated reason for this success – the social issues that have proved so divisive for the GOP were a nonissue in this race. This campaign was all about the pocketbook.
But perhaps most striking is the similar state in which Obama and now Brown have left their opponents.
In the wake of President Obama’s inauguration last year, I lamented in writing that “the GOP continues to flounder onward with the same irredeemable leaders touting the same exclusionary politics. Limbaugh, Gingrich, and Palin are important voices for the base (only). But they’re the wrong people to lead the GOP out of the political badlands.”
Read the full Daily News column here
Tags: Michael Smerconish
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