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" Twice in the past two days, once from Thom Hartmann on the radio and once from kindly Doc Maddow on the electric teevee set, I have heard advanced the theory that John McCain has been making such a public jackass out of himself over the nomination of Susan Rice as part of an elaborate plot by which Rice&amp;#039;s name would be withdrawn, leading the president to appoint John Kerry to be Secretary Of State in her stead. This would then open up Kerry&amp;#039;s seat for a special election up here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) through which we once again would be blessed with the recently obsoleted concept of Scott Brown, United States senator. Not so fast there, folks. First of all, there&amp;#039;s no indication that Brown would win another special election just because he won the last one. He severely damaged his brand by running an idiotically harsh campaign against Elizabeth Warren, and there&amp;#039;s no indication that the voters up here have forgotten that. He had two things going for him in 2010 \u2014 he was allegedly a &amp;quot;moderate&amp;quot; Republican, and people liked him. The second of those two attributes is now deader than Foster Furcolo, and he certainly didn&amp;#039;t run as any kind of moderate. That aside, do not sleep on the fact that the Commonwealth is perfectly capable of finagling this scenario off the boards entirely. The Boston Herald, the local tabloid that lined up strongly behind Brown in both campaigns, was warning about this very thing a couple of days ago. &amp;quot;I think that would be preferable. It would certainly save the taxpayers money if they don&amp;#039;t have to pay for another election,&amp;quot; said Phil Johnston, former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. &amp;quot;I think people are campaigned out. I think the governor is very popular and most voters would be happy to support his choice until the next general election,&amp;quot; Johnston added. I&amp;#039;ve known Phil Johnston for a long time, and no flies have ever abided on the man. The Democrats have changed the rules twice in the last eight years for purely political purposes and, at least in theory, there&amp;#039;s nothing to stop them from doing so again in such a way that Governor Deval Patrick can appoint Kerry&amp;#039;s successor. (Patrick&amp;#039;s not running again anyway and therefore can stand the gaff.) Of course, they only would do this to save us all the time and expense and annoyance of another campaign. Knocko&amp;#039;s only ever had ye&amp;#039;er in&amp;#039;thrests at heart. Not that Brown has any reason to listen to me, but I think he should hold off and run for governor when Patrick leaves office. Memories of the nasty campaign will have faded by then, and there is no obvious successor in place that should be able to scare Brown out of running. If this whole thing makes Massachusetts look like the center of the universe, it&amp;#039;s only because we are. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16812/scott-brown-special-election-112812/?src=rss>