It seems so…:
The federal legislation Brown opposes is not that different from the Massachusetts bill he supported. He sees the federal bill as a fiscal disaster, so how can he really say that he still supports the state system when it shares some of the flaws of the federal legislation he rejects? He says this because he assumes MassCare is popular enough in the state and because he is on record supporting it, but he also knows that he cannot possibly win Republican and conservative backing if he gave any hint that he might support Democratic health care legislation in Washington. The trouble here is that he does not admit that supporting MassCare was mistaken, as he might, nor does he say that he has learned from the flawed product the state legislature created, which might help make sense of his record and his current position on the federal bill. Instead, he wants to have it all by retaining his moderate Republican record to assuage uncertain independent voters while affirming his party-line opposition to the federal health care bill.
Come to think of it, this is not quite Romney-like cynicism, because at least Romney has pretended to change positions as electoral circumstances demanded. Brown is trying to occupy both sides of the health care debate at the same time even as he seems to claim that there is no contradiction in doing so. Both Massachusetts voters and national Republicans have reason to wonder which side he will eventually take when it comes time to vote on the bill. Most likely, as a freshman Senator he will fall in line with whatever the leadership says. He is being quite plain about his opposition to the federal bill, but I wonder whether voters will find his inevitable party-line voting to be at odds with his claim to represent “all independent-thinking citizens.”
Heck, I am surprised that someone from that Magazine has not claimed that Scott Brown is a part of the so-called Jewish Neo-Conservative cabal.