It’s Not the Kennedy Seat, Except When It Is « The Washington Independent

The big, Drudge-approved video from last night’s Massachusetts Senate debate is this one, in which GOP candidate Scott Brown says the seat he’s running for is “not the Kennedy seat and it’s not the Democrat’s seat — it’s the people’s seat.” I’ve been following the race for a while and this struck me as odd for two reasons.

Reason No. 1: Democrats have fretted for a while now that Martha Coakley’s sleepy campaign hasn’t sold Democrats on the necessity of voting on Jan. 19 to preserve Ted Kennedy’s legacy. And here’s a viral video of the GOP candidate dismissing the idea that voters should preserve Kennedy’s legacy. A fist-pump moment to Kennedy-haters, but there are far fewer of them in Massachusetts than Kennedy-lovers.

Reason No. 2: Back on December 29, Brown launched his general election ad campaign with a commercial called “Different People, Same Message.” It began with President John F. Kennedy — who held this seat from 1953 to 1961 — talking about his 1962 tax cuts, and continued by fading into Brown finishing Kennedy’s speech, in his words. Not only did it give away the fact that the Kennedy name remains very, very popular in Massachusetts, it gave Democrats an opening to thwack Brown when he turned around and said, as he did in this debate, that it was unfair to compare him to George W. Bush (“I’m Scott Brown!”) and unfair to call this the Kennedy seat. Coakley, who’s missed a lot of opportunities, missed that one too.

Brown then:

Brown now: