Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown has had trouble focusing in recent months. Last fall, he wanted to keep his U.S. Senate seat. Then Brown expressed fleeting interest in John Kerry’s Senate seat. He then looked at the Senate race in New Hampshire. Two weeks ago, the gubernatorial race in Massachusetts caught Brown’s eye.
And over the weekend, we learned that the former half-term senator now has yet another office in mind (thanks to reader B.D. for the tip).
Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts is traveling to Iowa on Sunday to check out the big boar and the super bull at the Iowa State Fair – and to size up whether Iowans might take a liking to him.
“I’m going to be coming out more often to try to determine whether there’s an interest in my brand of leadership and Republicanism,” Brown told The Des Moines Register in a telephone interview this afternoon.
Asked about his presidential ambitions, Brown said, “I want to see if there’s interest in my brand of politics, being a strong national security hawk and a fiscal conservative. The way I see it, hey, there’s plenty of room for people in the party like me and Sarah Palin and Rand Paul and Chris Christie, yet we’re always attacking each other for not fitting some ideologically pure mold.”
The lobbyist and Fox News contributor soon after confirmed with the Boston Herald, a conservative tabloid that supported Brown, that he’s “curious” about the presidential race. “There’s a lot of good name recognition in the Dakotas and here — that’s pretty good,” he said. I imagine from Brown’s perspective, dipping his toe in the 2016 waters is a cost-free endeavor. It won’t affect his lobbying gig and it certainly won’t hurt his standing at Fox News, and if there’s a tiny contingent within the party that wants a relatively moderate standard bearer, Brown might look in the mirror and say to himself, “Hey, why not me?” I tend to think the radicalized Republican Party would probably give Brown the Jon Huntsman treatment, and he’d win about as many 2016 delegates as I would, but that doesn’t mean the accomplishment-free, half-term senator won’t seriously pursue this. On the other hand, maybe Brown enjoys the occasional ego exercise, and is floating this trial balloon as a way to generate some headlines for a couple of days, and perhaps charge a little more on the speaking circuit. I suppose we’ll find out for sure soon enough.
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