Brown Needs to Set Record Straight on Maddow

Rachel Maddow has denied Sen. Scott Brown's claim that she was being recruited to run against him in the next election. Yet, a senior Brown strategist continues to push the story.

I kept an open mind when Scott Brown was elected senator in Massachusetts where I reside, though I confess I didn’t vote for him. Nonetheless, I encouraged my Democratic friends to put their cynicism aside. “He may surprise us,” I insisted, because the truth is his campaign promise to be an independent thinker appealed to something deeper in me than partisan leanings. I have a profound belief in the necessity for a functioning two-party system. Politics aside, as an American, I worry about the GOP’s scorched earth strategy. So, like Olympia Snowe, I welcomed Scott Brown to the United States Senate, imagining that this moderate Republican would help break the stalemate. His vote for the jobs bill seemed like validation and frankly, it was easy to live with his vote against healthcare since we in Massachusetts already have it, thanks to Romney’s program for which Brown voted.

I am having a harder time, however, understanding a recent action, which confounds me.  The new senator sent a fundraising e-mail to GOP donors claiming the Democratic machine is trying to recruit television pundit Rachel Maddow to challenge him in the next election. Maddow’s response? “I was just surprised because it’s a factual assertion that they’re making that is just not based in reality.” To set him straight, she tried repeatedly to reach him by telephone but the senator returned none of her calls, which I readily believe, because he also returned none of mine. In the Boston Globe, senior strategist Eric Fehrnstrom denied that Maddow tried to contact Brown and continues to assert that Maddow is being recruited.

What to make of this?  After the election, Brown’s daughter revealed that her father’s famous truck was actually purchased to transport her horse to equestrian events. I rationalized this misrepresentation as a political tactic, perhaps even a symbol for a populist heart. But what spin do I put on Brown vs. Maddow? And why does a line from Joseph Conrad keep playing in my head?  "You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie,” Conrad wrote, “not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me.”