newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MURRAY SABRIN

COMMENTARY

Republican state Sen. Scott Brown's stunning come-from-behind victory over his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Martha Coakley, in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate special election last week to fill the unexpired term of the late Ted Kennedy has sent shock waves through the political landscape.

According to exit polls, independents voted for Brown 58 percent to 30 percent, giving him a comfortable victory of 52 to 47 percent to overcome the Democrats 3-to-1 registration advantage.

For a Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in the "deep blue" Bay State, where Democrat Barack Obama beat Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election by 26 points, shows how the electoral pendulum can shift dramatically in just one year.

So who is Scott Brown? Longtime political analyst Lew Rockwell wrote: "New Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., is clearly a neo-con, ostensibly opposed to big government when it is Democratic and loving it when it is Republican. He brags about helping to write and pass the Mitt Romney socialized medical scheme, and he holds that "rights" are bestowed by the government, and do not apply to people branded as subhuman by the state. The key part of his campaign, aside from opposing Obamacare as inferior to Mittcare, was promoting torture as a positive good..."

More criticism about Brown was posted on the blog, Right Condition: "[Scott is] a man who voted for a property tax hike in his town of Wrentham, purposely overriding Proposition 2½ [which was] designed to keep property taxes limited.

"A man who went on air to publicly speak out against ending the state income tax on the 2008 ballot and returning $12 billion back into the pockets of Massachusetts citizens. Claiming that depriving $12 billion from the state coffers is reckless, despite knowing full well that the state spent almost $49 billion in 2008!"

Even before Brown has been sworn in as the junior senator from Massachusetts, some pundits are touting him for the presidency in 2012. The GOP establishment may be so desperate for a new face with "star power" it is ready to embrace another presidential nominee who supports the welfare-warfare state.

If Brown makes it to the national ticket in 2012 as the presidential or the vice presidential nominee, independents will have a lot to say about the outcome of the 2012 presidential race. If independents think that Brown is a "small government" Republican, think again. He thinks health care is a "right."

In other words, Brown is not an in-your-face big government politician, but a "compassionate conservative" — a "phony philanthropist" who believes that using taxpayers' money to solve social ills is noble.

Despite his rhetoric about limited government, Brown was able to tap into widespread discontent, especially among independent voters, revealing that they are the most important voting bloc in the country. In fact, independents are not enamored with either the Democrats or the Republicans. They turned on the Republicans in the 2006 congressional races and gave the Democrats control of Congress and then voted for "change" in 2008, giving a neophyte to national politics the power of the presidency.

But last November, for example, Republicans won the Virginia and New Jersey governorships primarily because independents gave the GOP a two-to-one advantage over to their Democratic opponents. In New Jersey, Chris Christie's 4 percentage point victory over incumbent Jon Corzine showed how the political winds shifted from four years ago, when Corzine trounced Doug Forrester by 10 percentage points.

So for Chris Christie to win reelection in 2013, he has to govern as a fiscal conservative. It is not enough to talk about fiscal discipline as both McGreevey and Corzine did when they campaigned in 2001 and 2005, respectively, appealing to independents as fiscal moderates. Independents are not forgiving. They will punish the party in power at the polls in the next election if it fails to deliver.

For decades both Democrats and Republicans have failed miserably at the national and state levels in being good stewards of the public's money. If independents conclude that neither party is competent to govern, will independents rally around a new political party in the near future?

Or will they cling to the notion that throwing the bums out and giving the party out of power the opportunity to do the right thing will make life better for New Jerseyans and the American people?

Murray Sabrin is professor of finance at Ramapo College. He was the Libertarian Party nominee for governor in 1997 and a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2000 and 2008.