Sunday, January 17, 2010

"I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I’m asking for your vote"

(From speech at the People's rall-NRO)."....Our campaign is going strong, and the finish line is in sight. The day of decision is almost here. The whole nation is watching, but the choice on Election Day belongs to you and no one else. Friends and fellow citizens, I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham, I drive a truck and I’m asking for your vote.

When we started this campaign just a few months ago, the political machine wrote us off. A Senate seat in Massachusetts, we were told, was already spoken for – and this special election was just a minor detail that wouldn’t get in the way. The political machine already had a short-term placeholder in the Senate. Now all they needed was a long-term placeholder, and everything had been arranged.

Well, there was just one little problem with that plan – the independent-thinking people of Massachusetts wanted a real choice, and they – and you — have made this a real contest.

The voters are doing their own thinking, and the machine politicians don’t quite know how to react. So they put in a distress call to Washington, and the next thing you know, Air Force One is landing at Logan.

My first response is very simple: Democrat or Republican, the president of the United States is always welcome in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Now, it wasn’t exactly a scheduled visit. Sort of a last-minute thing. The political machine controlled that Senate, he was told, and it was going to stay that way.

Well, the party bosses gave the president some bad information. This Senate seat belongs to no one person and no one political party – it belongs to the people of Massachusetts.

Maybe they also told President Obama that I had no chance at all. After all, who ever heard of guy from Wrentham getting elected to the U.S. Senate? But as the president might remember, upsets like that have been known to happen.

The president may recall as well how much he used to talk about a new kind of politics – about campaigns based on conviction, instead of just false and small-minded negative ads. Well, as long as he’s paying a visit, he might want to talk to Martha about that. Not only are her ads negative, they are malicious. How quickly the politics of hope have become replaced by the politics of desperation. Shame on Martha.

Before the president rushed to the scene, we saw my opponent standing with a former president, the governor, the senior senator, the appointed senator – the whole party establishment, right on down the line.

At the beginning, it felt like me against the machine. But guess what? I was wrong. It’s us against the machine.

I don’t need an establishment to prop me up. I stand before you as the proud candidate of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents across Massachusetts, north and south, east and west.

The party machine is in high gear for my opponent. The establishment is afraid of losing their Senate seat. You can all remind them that this is not their seat, it is yours.

Should I have the honor of representing our state in Washington, D.C., I will serve no faction but Massachusetts. I will pursue no agenda but what is right. I will be nobody’s senator but yours.

....Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the agenda of a new establishment in Washington. And they think you’re on board with all of it. They think they own your vote. They’re sure they can’t lose. But on Election Day, the Bay State will set them straight.

We are witnesses, you and I, to something historic. We have run a race never to be forgotten. We are in a cause that deserves all that we can give it. In these final forty-eight hours, let us see it through to victory.

All along, I have counted on the goodwill and support of independent-minded people like you, and never more than right now. I ask for any help you can give, and above all for the honor of your vote.

In return, I make this pledge to you and to every citizen of Massachusetts: If I am entrusted with the people’s seat, I will give everything that is in me to be a good and faithful senator, and to make you proud.

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"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" (Churchill)