Vander Plaats: ‘I am not the voice of the tea party’

As GOP presidential prospects prepare to announce their candidacies and eye the Hawkeye State for supporters, members of Iowa’s tea party movement are vetting which candidates will best carry their message of regaining fiscal responsibility and limiting government.

Yet, a highly decentralized movement and diversity of political interests within Iowa’s More…

FBI Files Show Bureau’s Interest in Ted Kennedy’s Pre-Senate Politics

FBI documents released today reveal the bureau had been gathering background information on the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) pre-Senate dealings with people on the left and the right as early as 1954.

Among the 2,352 pages the FBI released today, which mainly concentrate on death threats made More…

The New ‘Taint of Incumbency’

In the wake of Scott Brown’s astonishing Senate win in Massachusetts last week, GOP leaders took no time to spin the outcome as an indictment of Democratic leadership that can only help Republicans in November’s mid-term elections.

[Congress1]“There’s not a seat in America held by a More…

Boehner: Voters ‘Don’t Trust Either Party’

Mixed messages coming today from Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader who is spinning last week’s GOP Senate win in Massachusetts as a repudiation of the Democratic majority, while at the same time conceding that voters don’t really trust anyone in Congress at the moment.

“I do think More…

The Irony of Scott Brown’s Opposition to Health Care Reform

Scott Brown, the Republican newly elected to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), has been surprisingly forthcoming about his vote in favor of the health reforms adopted by Massachusetts a few years back — reforms that include the same individual coverage mandate that many Republicans More…

Brown: ‘It’s Important for Everyone to Get Some Form of Health Care’

BOSTON — At his first press conference as senator-elect from Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown hued pretty closely to the rhetoric of his campaign and welcomed questions about what his win meant for the future of the GOP. And asked what parts of health care reform he wanted to pass this More…

MA-Sen: The Coakley Difference

BOSTON — This, from the Boston Globe, provides a little evidence of how Democratic candidate Martha Coakley’s lackluster campaign (not even the people attacking national Democrats fro blaming this on her disagree about that) created the space for Republican Scott Brown’s 52-47 victory.

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Conservative Grassroots Strategy Propels Brown to Senate

BOSTON — The volunteers, journalists, and donors who entered the ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel on Tuesday were greeted by enthusiasm that didn’t usually belong to Republican campaigns in Massachusetts. The room was packed–no one else allowed in–only an hour after the polls closed. And among the throngs were More…

David Weigel vs. Ezra Klein on Bloggingheads.tv

From a rental car in Massachusetts, TWI’s intrepid David Weigel sat down with The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein yesterday for a Bloggingheads.tv session to talk about — what else? — the Senate special election in the Bay State and its potential implications for health More…

MA-Sen Video: Brown’s Crowd Control

Here are two quick video examples of something BlueMassGroup blogged yesterday–the Brown campaign busing in support for its “People’s Rally” and running some serious crowd control. In the first part of the clip, supporters stream off the bus. In the second part, an angry Brown supporter is pulled away More…