Scott Brown says he's open to Obamacare

http://blog.masscitizensforlife.org/2010/01/pac-says-electing-brown-will-defeat.html


Our PAC has been supporting Scott Brown because he will be a pro-life vote in the Senate. Scott Brown will also vote against the health care bill.

Here's what Brown had to say one day after election:



http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2010/01/22/its_all_scott_brown_on_capitol_hill/?page=2

Brown was asked several times about the health care legislation, which he ran against in his campaign.

“The bill that was being pushed in Washington was not good for Massachusetts,’’ Brown said. “It may have been good for other states but we already had everything. Am I open? Certainly, I’m open to looking at every single bill on its merits and making a decision based on that. My first interest is looking at whether it’s good for my state.’’

Obamacare was good for other states, just not Massachusetts because we already "had everything" -(including publicly funded abortions)






I've also taken the liberty of collecting a few thoughts from around the internet.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1227960&format=comments#CommentsArea

June Newman of Braintree was one of the few allowed into the low-pitched “Assembly for Life” in the Great Hall with a sign, and exuberantly clutched a crinkled “Scott Brown (for) U.S. Senate” poster.

“He always voted pro-life,” Newman gushed of the Wrentham Republican, “and I believe he will continue to vote for life.”

http://www.ncregister.com/register_exclusives/massachusetts_catholics_bank_on_scott_brown/

“Brown, though pro-choice, has always sponsored our legislation. He checks in with us,” said Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, a key pro-life group with a political action committee that funded a series of statewide mailing, media advertising, and telephone campaigns for Brown. For Fox, it was an uphill battle until the Senate vote to pass the health-care bill — then Massachusetts voters gave Brown another look.

“People in Massachusetts are pretty liberal on Catholic issues like immigration, but everybody is scared that health-care reform means rationing. Once they could see that Brown was the 41st vote and that Massachusetts could save the rest of the county, his candidacy took off,” recalled Fox. “Though I’d love to say it’s because he’s pro-life, for most voters, health care was the issue.”

“The National Right to Life Committee asked me, ‘Why didn’t you call us?’ But I knew they would have questioned supporting him last fall,” Fox recalled.

[Brown voted in favor of forcing Catholic Hospitals to hand out abortifacients, he voted to expand the buffer zone, he voted for Romneycare which publicly funds abortions.

I'm confused. Were these MCFL sponsored legislation?]

http://www.wickedlocal.com/needham/news/x1689190524/Brown-I-dont-owe-anybody-anything

While abortion coverage proved a sticking point lawmakers developing federal health care reform, Brown said the positions he and Coakley take on abortion aren't pivotal to the Massachusetts Senate race. Both support Roe vs. Wade, but Brown opposes late-term abortions and lowering the age of consent to have one.

"Abortion really isn't a large part of this race. It's not something that is important at this point, because the major issues are dealing with taxation, deficit spending and where our national security interests are in terms of keeping our country safe," said Brown.

Brown also noted that whether a candidate for a federal judgeship was pro-life or pro-choice holds "very little importance to me" and would have voted to appoint Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. He would not want a judge "legislating from the bench."

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/24/did-pro-lifers-sell-their-souls-for-scott-brown/

As Ruse noted, almost as an aside, Scott Brown (who is Protestant) is also a firm supporter of Roe, which Brown has said is "the law of the land, and I don't plan on overturning it."

At the Catholic blog Vox Nova, Henry Karlson generated a heated discussion when he wrote that pro-life supporters of Brown could now be considered "fake pro-lifers."

"It is one thing to suggest people can make prudential decisions, it is another for groups founded on the issue of life to give direct support to candidates whose policies are completely contrary to the pro-life cause. Any advocacy group which supports a candidate directly in contradiction to their advocacy has been compromised. What happened? When and how did many of the pro-life movement become compromised? Can those pro-life groups which, as a group, promoted and supported Brown be taken seriously again?"

Added another Vox Nova poster, "I'm not saying pro-lifers had no good reasons to support Brown over Coakley, but their victory today could undermine their cause down the road."

http://markshea.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html

Two-fer

Scott Brown (R, MA) is pro-abortion and pro-torture. Why wouldn't Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorse him?

Too catty?

Scott Brown (R, MA) is pro-choice and pro-enhanced interrogation techniques. Why wouldn't Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorse him?

Better?

I'm not among those who insist an advocacy group ought to endorse only those candidates who endorse the group's whole platform. I get that the least bad choice is better than the greatest bad choice. I get that, in a place like Massachusetts, the least bad choice is likely to be pretty bad, and anything even approximating an electoral victory for a right-to-life group is likely to be pretty rare.

What I don't get is why you'd be giddy over the least bad choice's electoral victory. MCFL is daydreaming about the dreamy signs they'll bring to the March for Life tomorrow. Tomorrow, as in the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which MCFL's dreamy new senator endorses.

During the last presidential campaign, Zippy argued that political endorsements corrupted pro-life groups; he particularly had in mind how embryonic stem cell research disappeared from the list of life issues when a pro-life group endorsed John McCain. The same thing happened with MCFL in its endorsement of Scott Brown. What are the odds?

It's worse in the latter case, of course, since MCFL couldn't even bring itself to list "legal abortion" as a life issue.

Nor did it mention "constitutional amendment," even though just last month MCFL president Anne Fox wrote that being pro-life "implies support for a constitutional amendment" as a reason for not endorsing Jack E. Robinson -- who calls himself "personally pro-life" and agrees "that the law should protect the right to life of each human being from conception to natural death" -- in the Republican primary...

And prolifers let them. Indeed, with the election of Scott Brown, we now see the spectacle summed up on Tom's combox:

I do appreciate the irony of taking a detour after the right-to-life march to demand a pro-choice senator be seated.

o it's come to this: the election of a porn star who supports Roe v. Wade *and* torture is gushed over as a "prolife victory" by multiple prolife talking heads while the GOP talking heads are already floating trial balloons about making the pretty-face Giuliani-lite candidate into President. Meanwhile, the Big Thinkers of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism at NRO are commending Massachusetts voters for not being held "hostage to extremists who would rather lose than support a pro-choice candidate" and concluding that the takeaway message from Brown's victory is "Waterboarding wins". Translation: Elect pro-aborts--as long as they're also pro-torture. What could be more prolife than that?

http://vox-nova.com/2010/01/20/congratulations-brown/

“Brown, on the other hand, despite not being opposed to abortion, has the endorsement of pro-life groups in the Bay State,” As Kathryn Jean Lopez said.

Again, how can this be? If the groups were about life, how can they endorse someone who is not pro-life and show that they have lost their essence as a group for life?

This is not to say individuals and people cannot do so for prudential reasons. The issue is how one is to accept an advocacy group which endorses someone whose position is contrary to their own. There has been all kinds of talk about groups with the name Catholic in it as not being Catholic.

I think many groups with the claim of being Pro-Life must now being fake pro-lifers. Again, we are talking about the group and their advocacy. This is not about private individuals making decisions based upon how they reason out their ideals in a given election. This is about how groups reason out decisions to act contrary to their advocacy policies.

http://congress.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/01/22/pro-lifers-revel-in-the-election-of-brown-on-anniversary-of-roe-v-wade/

"No public servant in office who can't tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public should not be in office," said Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests For Life.

http://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2010/01/why-i-would-never-support-scott-brown.html

The local pro-life group has endorsed Brown as a "pro-life" vote. Which simply illustrates that the pro-life movement is so corrupted at this point it's hard to understand what many groups actually stand for.


http://blog.masscitizensforlife.org/2010/01/congratulations-now-lets-finish-job.html

Each and every one of you can be so proud! You got with Scott before anyone else and never took your eye off the prize! I heard Pat Buchanan say today what we have been saying all along, that we have literally saved this country.