Mr. Brown Goes To Washington

One of the things that people may have noticed during the coverage of the special Massachusetts Senate election last month was that I didn't actually have much to say about Scott Brown. I had a lot to say about Coakley, but not much of substance on Brown. There are a couple of reasons for that.

1. I had legitimate strong feelings about Coakley, for legitimate reasons.
2. I didn't know a lot about Scott Brown's record.
3. I expected, based on the little that I did know, that Brown was going to be a disappointment to me fully half the time, if not more.

So this doesn't surprise me at all.

Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass) broke with his party this afternoon and voted with the Democrats on an important procedural vote on the jobs bill, boosting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s chances of passing his $15 billion jobs package.

“I came to Washington to be an independent voice, to put politics aside, and to do everything in my power to help create jobs for Massachusetts families,” Brown said in a statement. “This Senate jobs bill is not perfect. I wish the tax cuts were deeper and broader, but I voted for it because it contains measures that will help put people back to work.”

...


Three other Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Me.), Olympia Snowe (Me.), and George Voinovich (Ohio) also voted for cloture.

That last line speaks volumes.

I'm not outraged, of course. I don't know the details of this bill's contents, but I'm quite confident that any bill coming out of this particular Congress is going to be bad for the country, so I'm disappointed, but not outraged and not surprised. Scott seems like a pretty good guy, but I don't see any evidence that he's a real conservative, not even a real fiscal conservative. Is he the ideal Senator for me? Absolutely not, and I had no expectation that he would be.

He might, however, be the most conservative Senator that I can reasonably expect the citizens of Massachusetts to elect...