June 25 showdown.

As optics go, not a bad look for the Republican Party in this usually reliable blue state. Perhaps another young, vibrant military man with an independent streak can surprise everyone there. He’s interesting enough to grab the lead in the Boston Globe, despite the R beside his name: Will he be the next Scott Brown? [...]

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Weld says no thanks.

With Scott Brown backing out of the special election to the Senate in Massachusetts, some wondered whether former Governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mitt Romney might take a shot at filling the rest of John Kerry’s term in office.  Instead, the Boston Herald reports that the task might go to the next generation of Romneys: [...]

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Blue.

Alternate headline: “Lone popular Republican in extremely liberal state not seizing opportunity for some reason.” In fairness, he’s had to push the electoral boulder up Massachusetts’s blue mountain twice in three years, the last time with the House GOP’s unpopularity tied to his ankle. The guy must be exhausted. Scott P. Brown said on Friday [...]

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Temp job.

Soon-to-be Secretary of State John Kerry’s formal bowing-out via resignation letter of the U.S. Senate seat he occupied for 29 years will officially trigger the special election to fill the vacancy in Massachusetts. After indicating that he was looking for an “out of the box” candidate who hasn’t run for political office before to act [...]

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Wide open.

Democrats in Massachusetts found a lump of coal in their special-election stocking on Christmas Eve this year.  There had been some speculation that Ben Affleck might jump into the race to replace John Kerry, now the official nominee to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and save Democrats from the specter of another Scott [...]

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Safety.

According to the Washington Post, Barack Obama will make an announcement this afternoon confirming what everyone already knows. John Kerry will leave the US Senate and move to Foggy Bottom, replacing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State: President Obama will nominate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as secretary of state this afternoon, according to a White [...]

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His specialty?

Maybe Scott Brown will become the Manny Mota of politics — the guy who excels at pinch-hitting. After having just lost a statewide election to hold onto the seat he won in a January 2010 special election, Republicans want him back as their nominee if John Kerry gets his expected Secretary of State appointment.  And [...]

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Replacements.

It’s looking increasingly likely that Sen. John Kerry has the nomination for secretary of State pretty well locked up, and in the event that he steps down, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will have to appoint an interim replacement to steward his Senate seat before the Bay State can hold a special election later this spring [...]

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"I am nobody's senator except yours."

The Senate race in Massachusetts between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren has certainly been one of the more dramatic of the election season (Fauxcahontas, hem hem), and while the polls have generally tended to indicate a lean towards Warren, the race is still squarely in the toss-up category. There comes a time in every campaign, [...]

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Round two.

7 p.m. ET airing live on C-SPAN and WHDH.com. You already know why this is important so I won’t belabor it, but here’s the poll trend just to drive the point home. The question tonight: On what ground will this battle be fought? Another round over Warren’s phony Native American status, no doubt replete this [...]

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Character.

Video emerged on Tuesday showing supporters of Senator Scott P. Brown making tomahawk gestures with their arms and yelling Indian war whoops at supporters of Elizabeth Warren, his Democratic challenger, outside a pub on Saturday. The gestures were meant to mock Ms. Warren’s assertions, for which she has offered no documentation, that she has Native [...]

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Family lore.

I didn’t think that exchange over her heritage at the debate last week had drawn any blood, but evidently it did. There’s no way her team would waste resources in addressing this subject unless they didn’t like the feedback they got afterward. And if that doesn’t convince you, check out the second clip below: Brown [...]

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No unicorns zone

A week ago we talked about the evolving media storyline which predicted that the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth warren might be turning nasty. Apparently the press corps in the Bay State is bound and determined to see this script play out come hell or high water. There’s plenty of hand wringing [...]

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Identities.

Via BuzzFeed, five minutes of fun at the start of tonight’s debate. I agree with William Jacobson: In some ways, this is a tough subject for Brown to broach. To make the case effectively he’s got to get into details about the debunked genealogy, her dubious explanations for identifying as Native American, and her insistence [...]

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What could go wrong?

Via Legal Insurrection, the show starts at 7 p.m. ET. Why should you watch if you’re not from Mass? Two reasons. One: Obviously, we’re all interested in seeing how a moderate Massachusetts Republican fares in a debate against a prominent “you didn’t build that” liberal. Consider this an undercard for the main event on October [...]

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"The ads suck"

If you’re active on Twitter, Facebook or political discussion forums around the web, you might be tempted to think that the MA Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren was already one of the nastiest, down and dirty, rolling in the mud campaigns in the nation. Conservatives not only have a vested interest in [...]

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Genius.

Alternate headline: Unemployment in Massachusetts Ticks Up By One Job.  Seriously, how dumb is this?  It’s so dumb that the last candidate who ran against Scott Brown for US Senate did the same thing, as the Weekly Standard reminds us.  How well did that work out for Martha Coakley again? The Republican staffer holding the [...]

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Issues

We all know the election of Scott Brown to the United States Senate from Massachusetts was an aberration, right? It was just one of those freak accidents… a perfect storm of a wild ride election cycle, a lucky – if very personable – Republican and a deeply flawed Democrat who didn’t give much thought to [...]

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Whoa.

Well, what do you know — maybe there’s some hope for Massachusetts after all.  Democratic pollster PPP applied a likely-voter test for the first time in the Bay State, and discovers that incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown has a small but significant lead over his Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren.  The bad news?  Brown didn’t build [...]

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Never mind!

With all of the talk about tax returns dominating the national news, Massachusetts Senate candidate  Elizabeth Warren undoubtedly figured she could make some hay against Scott Brown on the topic, and get a little national media attention in the process.  Why she thought that Brown, an attorney who has spent 30 years in the National [...]

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"Let America be America again."

So, which Senate candidate in Massachusetts is running on the Kennedy legacy? Don’t be too quick to answer — because the man who scolded a debate moderator in the 2010 special election for referring to the Senate seat as “Ted Kennedy’s seat” does some Kennedy-invoking of his own to shame his opponent.  Scott Brown’s new [...]

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Advantages.

As Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren tries to unseat Republican incumbent Scott Brown, she’s opted to go on a talking tour this week….of MSNBC. Warren appeared on Hardball June 13 and Morning Joe June 14, hammering the populist anti-business, pro-government spending themes contained in a new ad her campaign released on Monday, June 11. Although [...]

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"On behalf of the people of the Commonwealth, we don't care about that subject."

As smug and annoying as he is when he tries to shut down the question by presuming to speak for the public, wouldn’t you have thrown yourself between her and the mic if you were him? She’s a rolling disaster, from the “high cheekbones” inanity to today’s verrrry belated admission. In a state less blue [...]

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Plus: "Cherokees Demand Truth for Elizabeth Warren."

Via Legal Insurrection. As you might expect, New Jersey bar administrators have no idea what she’s talking about. Maybe she meant to say she’s the first fake Native American nursing mother to take the bar exam in New Jersey? Because that might well be true. “I was the first nursing mother to take a bar [...]

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"If Elizabeth Warren turns down the debates, it looks bad, like she is shirking."

A few months ago, no one would have predicted that Elizabeth Warren would have to battle for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate in Massachusetts.  After Republicans in the Senate blocked her nomination to the Consumer Finance Protection Board that she helped create, Warren became the darling of the Democratic cognoscenti.  She claimed to [...]

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