My guess is that Scott Brown is bound to disappoint conservatives, and it will happen sooner rather than later. As Boris Shor points out in his analysis, Brown is conservative — for Massachusetts. Just as Dede Scozzafava was considered to the right of most New York Republican legislators even though the perception of her outside of the Empire State was quite different, so too is Scott Brown considered a man of the right even though many of his votes would be seen as conservative apostasy outside of New England.
The Massachusetts Senate race is bringing into stark relief the choice faced by movement conservatives in 2010: pragmatism or principle? Supporting a Brown victory will probably kill ObamaCare and slow the liberal tax-and-spend agenda, if not destroy it altogether. But supporting Brown means backing a candidate who won’t always vote the way conservatives wish on a wide variety of issues. Some conservatives, as Andrew Ian Dodge points out, are sitting out the race, refusing to vote for someone who clearly doesn’t support their positions on some issues. Others are swallowing their differences with Brown and are working to send him to Washington.
Who’s right?
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