"Washington Is Rigged." So said Elizabeth Warren last week in announcing her bid for the Massachusetts senate seat now held by Scott Brown.
Well, she certainly has already caused a stir. Robert Kuttner notes:
"Elizabeth Warren’s surprise lead in Massachusetts polls only days after she got into the Senate race to oust Republican Scott Brown has thrown GOP operatives off balance.
Their first storyline was that Warren was either a creature of the Beltway or a pointy-headed Harvard professor. Neither seems to be sticking.
On Tuesday, when the Democratic-affiliated polling firm, Public Policy Polling, reported Warren narrowly leading Brown, 46 to 44 among likely voters, Brown spokesman Colin Reed put out a statement contending that "we have always known that Scott would be the underdog against whichever candidate wins the Democratic primary next September."
But this past summer, before Warren enjoyed decent name recognition, Republicans were touting early polls showing Brown leading Warren 53-28, and declaring him a winner."
The establishment GOP is scrambling. Scott Wong and John Bresnahan carried some of their water in a borderline hit-piece over at Politico yesterday. The article casts doubt on Warren's integrity by alleging a "lack of transparency" during her tenure as the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel which controlled TARP. Wong and Bresnahan should be ashamed. The fact that the panel adhered to all of the requirements placed upon it by congress and that congress has all of the information she is portrayed as having kept from the public is spun to the margins. It's not on a website for the masses, you see.
One wonders if the Wong/Bresnahan piece hadn't been ghost-written by longtime foe, Rep Patrick McHenry (R-NC).
This week also saw the GOP's fear of Warren exposed elsewhere in the form of some truly frantic antics, as Julie Ryan Evans points out:
"When it comes to politics, we've seen so many crazy moves and outrageous tactics, we're almost numb to them, but I have to say I'm shocked by the Massachusetts Republican Party's latest attack. They are demanding that Harvard University stop paying Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren her salary for doing her job as a professor there.
Their reasoning, according to the Boston Globe: It sends a message that Ivy League schools support Democratic candidates. Can you say desperate?
The salary is in exchange for her services to the university. She will certainly be busy campaigning, but lots of professors have outside employment. She will still be expected to fulfill her obligations to Harvard, and the salary is just in exchange for those obligations, not to fund her campaign."
They don't have much to work with. That fact leads me to expect new lows in both ugliness and innuendo as the campaign heats up.
Quite coincidentally, I am sure, Rush Limbaugh found it necessary today to breathlessly warn his listeners that Elizabeth Warren is a "parasite." One might surmise from this that the Kochs are now involved.
via Media Matters
via Media Matters
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