Scott Brown officially ended his political career on Monday. Instead of choosing to serve in public office, Scott Brown has decided to take a job at a Boston law firm, Nixon Peabody, according to The Boston Globe’s report. The law firms states that Brown “will focus his practice on business and governmental affairs.” But as msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell states, “That is the lobbying world’s euphemism for lobbying ‘government affairs.’ So today, Scott Brown became a lobbyist. That is death for a politician every hoping to run for office again, and even Scott Brown is smart enough to know that.”
After Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in a special election and his name became immediately floated as a potential future presidential contender, he spent 1,064 days in office–then lost to a rising star of the Democratic party, Elizabeth Warren.
On January 8, O’Donnell argued that a move back to the Senate would be unlikely for Brown but that he should aim for the Massachusetts governor seat instead. “You heard it here first, which is to say you’re hearing it right now—Scott Brown probably won’t even run against Ed Markey. Scott Brown would be much happier running for governor when Deval Patrick leaves office next year, a race Scott Brown would have a much better chance of winning, and a job he would love. I mean love, compared to the Senate, which according to my sources he doesn’t really like.”
Last month, Scott Brown signed on as a Fox News contributor. When Sarah Palin quit the Alaska governorship and left state affairs to Alaska Lieutenant Governor Parnell, she signed a contract with Fox News. So today, “[Brown] competed a full Palin by quitting politics completely and simply chasing the money that his political celebrity has earned him.”
O’Donnell continued to compare the two politicians’ trajectories. “Scott Brown is smart enough to know that he cannot go off and become a lobbyist and then take that dreaded occupation on to a debate stage as a candidate for anything ever again. This is Scott Brown’s full Palin—take FOX News’s money and then go for the money anywhere else he can. Like Sarah Palin, Scott Brown is all about the money, now.”
Clare Kim