GLOUCESTER — Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the East Coast has catapulted the debates over climate change and federal disaster relief, largely ignored in national campaigns this year, back into prominence in the contentious race between Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren.
Warren, a Democrat, and Brown, a Republican, declined Wednesday to draw a direct link between the hurricane and global warming. But both called climate change a problem.
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"Justice Scalia." Brown's answer to the question "Who is your favorite Supreme Court Justice?"
Seems Brown never can give a straight answer to... anything. A Republican Senate would have a neanderthal Inhofe as the head of environment. Another reason not to vote Brown, besides the biggie... outlawing abortion through a Republican recommended Supreme Court justice. Brown cannot side step that one.
So, now that Brown avoided the final debate and toured some of the storm-ravaged areas of the state in his, ahem, "official capacity" as a US Senator, what did he learn and what will he now do? He spent the whole day looking, ahem, "senatorial" (whatever that might be), and did he actually help anyone out? You know, besides offering to assist some people with moving their sofas and furniture? (Best Scottie comment of the day, to a resident who was cleaning out a flooded house, "You don't want us to help you move that couch? Hey, you snooze, you lose." Scottie's empathy is simply breathtaking.) Will Scott go right back down to D.C. and work the phones to get federal assistance to the residents? Will he pressure his insurance company buddies (he knows many of the CEOs personally, since they contribute so much to his campaign) to expedite damage claims? What, exactly, will Scott Brown do now that he wasted, er, I mean, "spent" the day touring the damage areas? His time would've been better spent back at his office or his own home, working the phones to get help for the residents, then wrapped that up in the early afternoon, and headed off for the debate. But, noooooooooo . . . . . . . . . .
Brown tried again to have it both ways here -- riding the fence on climate change and then arguing that he would somehow be able to ameliorate the anti-science direction his party leadership is taking. By trivializing Warren's objections to Senator Inhofe, he reveals that he would continue to do nothing about the extremists in his party. I wish it were not the case that moderates have been completely outmaneuvered in his party, but they have been.