Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mad Libs

Scott Brown is a natural who really knows how to handle the media. That's becoming more apparent now that he is under siege by liberal reporters desperate for a gaffe. Some of the questions indicate they are likely to go into a feeding frenzy if he offers them one. From what I've seen so far they very well may starve.

This is a new phenomenon. For the last two years the foremost candidate with a monopoly of air time is such a carefully groomed, packaged and guarded product that having a guy who can speak without a prompter and answer questions with such deftness and earnestness is not just refreshing, it is shocking.

My point is that although so many have heard the perfect slogan from Scott's campaign, "the people's seat" comment wasn't speech-written in some calculated manner. Unless you saw the debate what you don't realize is that Mr. debate mediator and not so surreptitious lib operative, David Gergen was trying to put Brown in a tight spot when he asked him about the legacy behind the Kennedy Seat. Watch and you will see he doesn't pause after delivering his response like someone gauging the impact of his delivery. Instead he goes straight into the rest of his answer, countering with the substantive part of his response to Gergen's loaded question.

Scott did have an actual slogan for his campaign though. One that was probably tossed around with half a dozen variations, tested, rehearsed and then inserted in various speeches.

That slogan may not have been planned out with the careful intent of working like a Mad Lib riff off of the tired Obama slogan of '08 but I can certainly see how it does.

"Yes We Can!"
"___ We Can!"
"We Can . . . Do Better!"

We eliminate the "yes" because Scott, the 41st No vote in the Senate dismantles the Democrat super-majority and blocks Obama's socialist we can-isms with a potential filibuster. The "we" now becomes "We the people" and the assertion that we "Can Do Better!" is an indictment of what the royal "we" of Obama and his regal court of Pelosi, Reid et al have been doing so poorly for the last year.

Scott's slogan is so catchy Martha "Marcia" Coakley even used it in her concession speech, albeit unwittingly when she said in closing, "as a nation and as a commonwealth, we can do better in the future."

Not an hour later Scott Brown got the chance during his victory speech to hammer his slogan home. He also spoke repeatedly of "Independents" (perhaps a pun on "Independence" - a declaration being made Tuesday night indeed).

Someone deeply immersed in a campaign is naturally thinking of "independents" in terms of a polling category and the analysis will support the idea that this category of voters were very significant in determining the outcome. But Scott responded to every Coakley claim that he was a "lock-step Republican" with the assertion that he was an "independent" thinker.

This year I believe we are witnessing an emergence and Scott Brown seems to have recognized it early and tapped into it often. The change that is coming and the voter that future candidates need to engage are the most independent of Americans . . . Americans as individuals; freedom's purest vessel.

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