U.S. Sen. Scott Brown — an upstart Blue State Republican in the cross hairs of national Democrats — is lashing out at the party’s opposition researchers, accusing them of prying into his family’s private health insurance records, and demanding that they stop fighting dirty.
“It seems in bad form. Obviously, when it comes to information about my wife and daughters, it crosses the line. I find it offensive and so do they,” Brown told the Herald yesterday.
“They (Democrats) don’t have any business muddling in the private health records of my family,” said Brown, adding that his family is “disturbed” by the intrusion.
Officials from the Group Insurance Commission, the state’s health insurance provider, notified Brown on Tuesday that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asked them “to provide insurance information,” according to a copy of the GIC letter obtained by the Herald.
A copy of the DSCC request provided to the Herald asks for “all direct correspondence” between Brown and the GIC under the Massachusetts public records law.
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"Who, us?" The DSCC protests in response, "Seeking untoward information about Senator Brown's family? Perish the thought:"
A DSCC spokesman insisted the request was only for public information and never sought private medical information about the Brown family.
“Obviously, the commission has made a mistake. Now Brown is trying score cheap political points to distract from his record, voting in lock step with Republicans in Washington, D.C.,” said spokesman Matt Canter.
That last statement doesn't even pass the laugh test. Brown's Senate voting record has been mixed, even maddening at times, from a conservative perspective -- as virtually an tea partier can attest. Why, just this week, he's been irritating the heck out of even infamously RINO bloggers.
So why might the DSCC have risked the terrible optics of getting caught sniffing around the Brown family's insurance history? Call me a cynic, but could it possibly relate to early-onset internal poll-related desperation?
The DSCC received some bad news this week when a poll it commissioned found that Brown's popularity is soaring. The survey, which has been seen by at least one D.C. insider and was detailed for Salon, measured Brown's approval rating at 73 percent -- easily surpassing the scores for Barack Obama and the state's two top Democrats, Gov. Deval Patrick and Sen. John Kerry. It also found him running over the magic 50 percent mark against every potential Democratic challenger, and crushing the strongest perceived Democrats (Reps. Michael Capuano and Ed Markey and former Rep. Marty Meehan) by double-digit margins.
As the aforementioned RINO blogger marveled yesterday, "There’s actually a small chance that, in the bluest of blue states, with Obama at the top of the ticket, the Dems won’t even bother running a top-flight challenger against him next year for fear that it’d be a lost cause. Simply amazing."
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