Former U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) stunned the American
political scene by announcing that he would not run in the
special election to succeed John Kerry, who resigned his U.S.
Senate seat to become Secretary of State. Brown was a rare
Republican who was able to win a seat in heavily Democratic
Massachusetts. He struck lighting in a political bottle, winning
a special election against a feckless and gaffe-prone Democratic
opponent. In 2012, as the political universe reestablished its
natural equilibrium, Brown lost his reelection bid. While the
moderate Republican remains personally popular in Massachusetts,
Brown could not overcome the argument that a vote for Brown was
a vote to keep the unpopular Republican Party in control of the
U.S. Senate. Brown's Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Warren, ran
as much against Brown as she ran against a potential Republican
take-over of the U.S. Senate. In a debate, Warren admonished
that a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate would mean that
conservative "Jim Inhofe [U.S.