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Should Scott Brown run for Miss Teen USA 2007?

04-18-south-carolina-2

Zoinks! That was fast.

For someone who campaigned as an outsider, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown sure sounded like an established Washingtonian insider on Sunday.

Appearing on his first-ever "Face the Nation" on Sunday morning, Brown did what politicians do: not answer the question.

And he was good at it. Robert Gibbs good. Well, at least when the tea party came up.

Brown, as you recall, chose not to attend a tea party rally in his....

...home state earlier this week. That led to some grumbles, but he was largely spared from too much criticism as the Senate was in session.

But you gotta ask him about the no-show. And Bob Schieffer did.

This is where the newly minted senator displayed some impressive moonwalking skills.

"What is your relationship to the tea party?" Schieffer asked. "Do you consider yourself a tea partier, as it were?"

Instead of answering either, Brown blabbed about what he thought a tea party member was before identifying them as "Democrats, Republicans, independents, young, old, happy, sad, rich, poor."

And then he mentioned he was grateful for getting elected.

When asked if he would have gone to the rally if the Senate was not in session, Brown said he had "been to rallies before."

And then, of course, adding in the default "great respect" line. Most politicians do this when speaking of another politician -- whether they have great respect for that politician or not.

"I have great respect for Sarah [Palin] and what she's doing," the robot inside Brown said, not answering the question.

Brown saved the best for last. Schieffer asked him if he agreed with a CBS News poll that showed most people identified with the tea party movement believe the president was pushing the country toward socialism.

Get Brown's meandering response:

Well, I know that the president should start to focus on jobs and job creation, and that hasn't been done.

Since I've been here, we've done healthcare, which they obviously rammed through by using a parliamentary procedure that has never been used for something this big, ever. And then the bill, as we're finding out, is flawed, seriously flawed. It's going to cost medical device companies in my state, you know, thousands of jobs.

But then we're taking -- we're talking now about regulation reform. We're politicizing that. Maybe -- I've heard illegal immigration is going to come forth.

When we were in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only thing they talked about, from the presidents all the way down to the poorest farmer, were jobs. Since I've been here, I've heard zero talk about jobs.

So I'll leave that up to the political pundits, but I know, from what I've seen, that we need to focus on jobs. And the president has just got to do so.

Wow. It might be a stretch to say he could have put on a tiara at this point and run for Miss Teen USA 2007. But his response and Miss South Carolina's timeless answer have some similarities.

Remember? She was asked her thoughts on a poll showing that a fifth of Americans couldn't locate the U.S. on a world map.

Her meandering response?

I personally believe, that U.S. Americans are unable to do so, because uh, some, people out there, in our nation don’t have maps.

And uh … I believe that our education like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like such as …

And, I believe they should uh, our education over here, in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.

Fair comparison? Well, neither of them answered the question. Although only poor Miss South Carolina really tried to.  Brown just didn't want to.  Watch the videos and decide for yourself. (Brown starts not answering the Tea Party questions about halfway through).


Watch CBS News Videos Online

-- Jimmy Orr

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Comments () | Archives (6)

The comments to this entry are closed.

Part of the problem is here is that people are judged by their answers and not their values. That is what makes every politician or beauty pageant contestant sound so vanilla. They all say the right thing instead of what they really think. The answers are all really safe and geared toward offending nobody. I think sometimes they might be better of speaking their mind, perhaps gaining stronger support from their target audience.

I started reading and said to myself ..here goes Johana again.I guess J.Orr
shares J.Newman's propensity to never find something right with republicans.
The way Schieffer was framing the questions did not throw off sen.Brown,who
contrary to most liberal pundits avoids cheap partisan below the belt shots.
Sen. Brown is a problem solver,not a sectarian ideologue like so many of the
democrat tenors.Brown wants to focus on jobs,fiscal accountability and
defeating terrorism.What is it about theese 3 prioritys that liberal dems cant
understand ?

Connoting is a favorite weapon of the lame stream media gofers.To link the
garbled south Carolina bit with Sen.Scott Browns comments is dishonnest
and ridiculous.Only a writer with ulterior motives could fall so low.

You know Brown is doing the right thing. I don't know how many videos I have seen with tea partiers throwing out people who are supporting health care or are against the tea party candidates. But I have never seen people with the signs and the bigoted posters getting thrown out like everyone else. So this notion that there are a few bad apples or SEIU plants is stupid and a lie. Sarah better get her act together and denounce these freaks that claim Obama is a communist nazi and get on or she will not be viable in the future, check the story

http://bit.ly/brVSs1

"What is it about theese 3 prioritys that liberal dems cant
understand?"

You're right! Why didn't they think of jobs, fiscal accountability, and terrorism? I guess they've just been too busy pressuring women to have abortions. And healthcare? That's one elitist program that doesn't do anything for anyone. We're freaking Americans, if we get sick we should fix ourselves on our own.

This has gotten to the point where even I, a legitimate independent who votes for both parties, am so disgusted with Conservatives that I would probably be unwilling to even vote for a moderate Republican to represent me since a vote for them is a vote for the strategy of factual misrepresentation and literally no ideas.

Does anybody know what the Republicans are proposing to create jobs, foster better fiscal accountability, and stop terrorism? Not what their ideology is (tax cuts are apparently the tylenol of the political world- they make you feel better for a bit but don't fix anything), but literally typed-out proposals.

Scott Brown should go back to nude modeling.


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About the Columnist
A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Andrew Malcolm has served on the L.A. Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four. Read more.
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