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Some Comments on the Scott Brown Hannity Interview

By: Swamp_Yankee (Diary)  |  January 8th, 2010 at 11:59 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

If this race were based on effort, Scott Brown would trounce Martha Coakley. Brown is working himself ragged. He has a cold. He is losing his voice. And it still seems like he is doing more events in one day than Coakley is doing in a week. You’ll notice it in the clip below, but he still has his charm and wits about him.

We should be mindful of his talking points. Scott Brown has won nine straight races as a Republican in Massachusetts. He knows how to win up here and he is doing it again.

You’ll notice that he won’t go negative on Coakley. A couple of times, Hannity tries to bait him into red meat topics, but he deftly eschews them. He also makes an explicit plea for outsiders to stay out. He wants a one on one with Coakley. It creates the most advantagous playing field for him.

As Scott says in the interview, “this race is about taxes, terrorism and health care.” He’s focused on taxes and fiscal issues. He is capitalizing on his thirty years in the National Guard as a military lawyer. He is attacking ObamaCare as a bad deal for the residents of Massachsuetts. He is promoting himself as an independent man and thinker and Coakley as another robotic, liberal, yes person. And he is trying to stay rooted as a regular guy and family man.

He’s a natural talent. Let’s get behind him and give him our weight, but let him lead. He knows better than anybody the path to victory:

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  • aesthete

    I can’t blame him… Brown did a great job of not embarrassing himself and not making statements that could come back to bite him, which is good for him, but bad for ratings. I think he did a great job in the interview, and he came across as a really down-to-earth non-ideologue. If that’s what he was going for, mission accomplished.

    • aesthete

      “I classify as a Reagan Conservative…” What does that even mean? Brown was smart not to fall for an undefined question. I have only a vague idea of what it looks like on the ground (my aunt lives there), but I really hope that Brown wins: Mass and the country could use him.

      • Scope

        and pushes the Heritage Foundation all the time. Then he has guests like McCain, Rove, Morris et al, and they spin their talk all around his head, and, he isn’t smart enough to counter their words, and, winds up agreeing with them. There was something in the recent past where he thought the Obamacare bill was made better, maybe it was the Stupak amendment. He doesn’t seem to understand that the entire bill is anti-Regan conservative. As to Michael Steele, he promoted his book on Hannity’s show, the night he said that the Republicans probably would not regain the house. Many higher up in the GOP are furious at Steele for writing a book, while he is the RNC chair, and using his position to promote his book, which no other RNC chair has ever done while in office. Steele has also been criticized for making speeches, and personally profiting from those speeches. That is a direct conflict of interest, and seen to be an echics violation, along with the book sales, of the RNC. Hannity has helped Steele promote his book, not understanding that it is unethical. I don’t think he is giving him a pass. I think he is just not intelligent enough to understand the implications. I believe Hannity calls himself a Reagan Conservative, but, doesn’t understand what it means.

        • aesthete

          Hannity seems like a nice guy, but he’s definitely not the brightest candle on the menorah.

        • AceInTX

          His a one man talking point machine with a pull toy ability to repeat the same phrases over and over again with the same words and voice inflection that he used 3 years ago….listen to his show for a week and you have his talking points for the next year

          I like the guy but I can’t think of a more unimaginative conservative out there.

          • aesthete

            and Hannity would endorse him. Again, seems like a nice guy, but waaaay too reliant on talking-points and way too unimaginative.

          • JSobieski

            The water is quite shallow at his end of the pool. I have no idea how he attracted Rush’s attention to become a guest host on his show.

            I definitely prefer the Mark Steyn’s of the movement to the Sean Hannity’s

          • Third Street

            In his New York Times Magazine interview a few years ago Hannity’s name came up, and I recall Rush’s reponse being rather curt.

          • JSobieski

            i do think Rush and Levin bring a lot to the table that Hannity does not. To me, Hannity is 100% derivative—in my view, Ringo Starr brought more to the Beatles than Hannity brings to the conservative movement

      • Swamp_Yankee

        I agree its stupid to embrace labels because it means different things to different people and some people tune out just based on label.

        If you want to win votes and minds, you have to embrace them on issues, especially in blue states.

        If you walk into a bar in Boston and start talking a group of people about taxes, they’ll listen. You can talk about security, pensions, affirmative action, corruption, gay marriage and you can find eople who will listen to you, if not agree with you.

        But if walk into that bar and say, hey, I’m a Republican, they tune out. Its like walking into a sports bar and saying your a New York Yankee fan. People assume the worst, then you have to win them over. In Blue states, its best to hit them on issues and personality first, win them over then its easier to break thatpartisan barrier.

        What some people forget is that if Te Kennedy was alive and running, he’d beat Brown by a healthy margin. If the election wwere held today, Obama would still beat McCain by double digits. Brown has to win Democrats, the same ones who vote for Obama and Kennedy.

        Being a gung-ho, red meat Republican partisan will not accomplish that.

        • aesthete

          Talk about specific issues without rancor or bitterness, like taxes, and you can find some kindred spirits. Advertise yourself as a “Reagan Conservative” or a “Bush Conservative”, and you’ve got yourself an argument in the making.

        • AceInTX

          when he’s probably the biggest anti-Reagan Republican out there today…He’s a statistic with no understanding whatsoever of what Reagan believed about the dangers of increased nanny government!

          every RINO in the country get’s elected donning the mantle of Reagan….I’m really getting tired of the term…not because I don’t consider myself a Reagan Conservative…but because it’s been stripped of any meaning what so over by people who wouldn’t pee on Reagan to put him out if he were on fire!

  • JadedByPolitics

    this is NOT about me this is about MA residents and he appears to be the perfect guy for them! There is a DIME’S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE between the leftist’s and the rest of America and I would rather have someone who agrees with me at least 1/2 the time that NOT AT ALL!

    Mr Brown seems to be the best candidate for the people of MA and the ever important 41st vote to STOP this “healthcare” atrocity that is about to be INFLICTED on our fine citizens. I never thought I would say that about any candidate but there is something different about this candidate then say an Arlen Specter who EVERY chance he got SMACKED us in the face and rarely stood with us on the BIG ISSUE’S.

    This is guy is against the “healthcare” bill, for a STRONG military and posture on the War on Terror….those are 2 winning positions right there and from there EVERYTHING is local!

    • gekster
  • Swamp_Yankee

    A couple of new web ads. Man of the people type of stuff.

    This event happened today in the conservative Democratic stronghold of Southie, made famous by the Irish Mob and such movies as Good Will Hunting and The Departed. I heard cars were going crazy for him. In my opinion, the second guy in the clip represents the key to this election; win him and conservatives win can win in the bluest states:

    Here’s another on shot on Landsdowne Street after the Winter Classic held at Fenway Pahk:

    • aesthete

      I hope that someone in the GOP is writing a check for Scott’s ad team to work on some ads for ’10.

  • Third Street

    Reliant on streams of cliches (he tells us he’s a “Reagan Conservative” approximately 53 times a day between the TV and radio shows) and easily flustered when things go off script. Dammit, Scott Brown, didn’t you know that when Hannity set up the toddler-rape incident you were supposed to foam at the mouth at Coakley over it, and that because you didn’t, the fact Hannity set it up in the first place is somehow your fault?

    Brown didn’t bite, of course, because he’s a smart politician. This was a counterproductive interview, as the lines of questioning Hannity was setting up could potentially hurt Brown’s chances. Hannity has never struck me as being particularly bright enough to understand things like this.

    His radio show’s even worse. Sometimes I have it on when I’m in the car and there’s nothing else to listen to, but I almost always have to turn it off again before long due to his insistence on taking around 50% of his calls from liberals. He prides himself on “taking more calls from the opposition than any other host”, but it’s beyond me why he thinks his audience wants to hear from this leftist scum in the first place. His “Hate Hannity Hotline” was humiliating and pathetic. I dial into conservative shows to escape this evil crap, Hannity.

    I’ll never forget him bringing Arlen Specter on as a guest during the ’04 primaries, and practically begging Snarlin’ Arlen for a promise that the latter would start acting like a Republican and support Bush’s judicial nominees. (As I recall, he never got a straight answer.) Five years later, after Specter switched parties, Hannity brought on Ed Rendell, of all people, as a guest, and conducted a whiny, oh-why-did-Arlen-do-this-it-just-isn’t-fair interview with the governor who had helped engineer the switch, and you could practically see the vicious, satisfied grin that saturated Rendell’s responses. I wanted to put my fist through the radio that day.

    This is the conservative radio host who frequently allows himself to be used, on-air, by his get-along, we’re-all-good-friends-at-the-end-of-the-day chum, Lanny Davis.

    Tell me again why his show is second in the ratings? (Other than a primo time slot right after Rush, whose entire three hours serve as Hannity’s show-prep?)

    • aesthete

      Hannity, along with Lou Dobbs and O’Reilly, are probably the least thoughtful and intellectually able of the conservatives associated with the American right. If it were up to me, Walter Williams would be given Hannity’s slot to do whatever he wants with it; he’s clearly intelligent and entertaining enough to do it, judging by his guest hosting of Limbaugh’s program.

      • Scope

        I haven’t heard Williams filling in for Rush before a week or so ago. It seems that Mark Steyn has been on the most. I didn’t enjoy Williams, especially when he took the first caller. The caller barely got his point out, and Williams broke in with Alright Alright, as though he was bored or frustrated with the caller. He sounded very arrogant and uppity to me. Steyn on the other hand is very entertaining, smart, and handles the callers very well. I’d like to see Steyn take Hannity’s radio spot. The only reason Hannity is number 2 on radio is because he has the prime time, when everyone is on their way home from work.

  • http://vbushmills.blogtownhall.com/ vassar

    …I spent a lot of time there in the 90s.

    He was a smart-lipped, fast talking kid, who spent way too much time talking about himself.

    He’s matured a lot since moving to NY, as has his ideology. He’s still growing….but yes, not as deep, or able as some of the others. But neither is the format.

    When he subbed for Limbaugh, Tony Snow was the best of the bunch (How I miss him now), and Andrew Napolitano is the brightest bulb at Fox, and just behind him, John Gibson.

    Sometimes format and style alone can turn a person off, and I’m cool to both when it comes to Sean, but I think he’s a good conservative…only, as long as he is at Fox, he won’t be allowed to pursue some conservative avenues as they have with Beck (whose style I’m also cool to). He’ll have to make nice with the M’Cains of the world.

    I don’t know if his radio show is different. Don’t listen.