Scott Brown: How online grass-roots movements can be a double-edged sword

"We read into things, therefore we are human?" we wrote in the comments to Dan Riehl's "The New Missile Defense Agency Logo Looks Familiar." It seems folks are getting all in a tizzy about the logo's resemblance to both the Obama 2008 icon and the Muslim crescent and star. The hysteria over the unfortunately named 'Crescent of Embrace' design for the Flight 93 Memorial design (above) came to mind. Much the same could be said of how Scott Brown supporters are reacting to his young voting record (see below). 

"The fracas served as a reminder of how online grass-roots movements can be a double-edged sword," writes James Oliphant in the LA Times, reporting on the funny thing that happened when politician Scott Brown shocked the devout by following his political instincts three weeks into his tenure as junior Senator from Massachusetts. Conservative icons Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck were not amused. Oliphant explains:

Literally overnight, the fledgling Republican senator who ended Democrats' filibuster-proof majority by winning a special election in Massachusetts has gone from being the darling of America's conservative activists to being their goat.

Monday night, Brown announced that he would join four other Republicans in voting to block a GOP filibuster and move forward with a $15-billion jobs bill designed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Almost immediately, the political blogosphere exploded.

We watched the drama unfold on our desktop in TweetDeck yesterday, as folks we normally agree with on just about everything became outraged that the man they helped send to Washington had not met their personal litmus test. The Anchoress was a voice in the wilderness, as Instapundit observed:

THE ANCHORESS IS GLAD SCOTT BROWN IS VOTING FOR THE WATERED-DOWN JOBS BILL, says it wrecks the “party of No” and “broken government” narratives at comparatively low cost.

We couldn't help but love reading our own words [!] expressing much the same thing in Oliphant's column this afternoon (We'd granted him a phone interview yesterday afternoon. It seems we're his go-to Bay-State reliable source since the election.):

Sissy Willis, a tea party blogger from Chelsea, Mass., who supported Brown's candidacy, said many of her compatriots in the nascent anti-big-government movement were "overreacting.""They expected him to be a conservative when he's always been an independent," Willis said. "He's representing his constituents," she said.

Willis said she expected Brown to follow through on trying to block the Democrats' healthcare plan, a signature issue of his campaign.

She compared the mania over Brown to that which surrounded President Obama's campaign, saying that with both, there was an inevitable letdown.

Supporters "weren't using their brains, they were using their hearts," she said. "When he didn't turn out to change the world, they felt betrayed."

Yes. Like that. As we twittered this morning in the wake of Brown's rousing rejection of Obamacare II:

Inoculated by his canny jobs-bill vote yesterday, Scott Brown "rejects Obamacare II as ‘nuclear option’ that will increase taxes."

Related: Professor Jacobson of Legal Insurrection offers a most concise, terse, pithy explication of the nightmare that is Obamacare 2.0 in his must-read "Now Is Not The time For Weakness.

This just in (via Norsu on Twitter): Scott Brown in his own words on Howie Carr's Boston radio talk show.

Comments

[goomp]

Senator Brown's explanation on the Howie Carr Show sounds reasonable in the light of what is happening.

[Tom Seeman]

Did people actually think that Sen Brown was going to toe the hard-conservative line? The guy was known as a moderate from day one of his senate campaign. Amazing.

[Steve]

Hi Sissy,

I noticed in the Eugene Register Guard (2/25) that the Associated Press used your words from the Oliphant piece above pretty much verbatim and without attribution to Oliphant though they did use your name.

Maybe that's ok but given how pissy the AP is about their material I thought it was a bit weak.

I've been meaning to drop you a congratulatory note for all your work on the Brown campaign...time slips though.

Steve
Modulator

[Sissy Willis]

Steve:

Thanks for your wonderful, kind words. In my book attribution is the classy -- in fact the ONLY -- thing to do. Didn't realize AP had done that. Hmmm.

I hope all is well with you. I actually did a cat post today, maybe you can use in next week's Friday Ark?

Stolen moments

'Hope all is well with you.