Brown Made the Massachusetts Election More about Policies than Personality | The Weekly Standard

Brown Made the Massachusetts Election More about Policies than Personality | The Weekly Standard: "The Massachusetts election is by no means a done deal, but Democrats are furiously spinning the race under the assumption that Brown will win. There are a number of misconceptions being spread by those trying to pin blame mostly or solely on Coakley, but one of the more puzzling Democratic talking points is that Coakley 'let the race become a personality contest.' That line was uttered by Barney Frank last week and is repeated by Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com today:

*She allowed Brown to turn the race into a personality, rather than an issue/policy choice. Aside from healthcare and the implicit notion that Coakley would be a stand-in vote for the deceased icon whose seat she would be filling, what was the Coakley 'platform'?

No one denies that Brown has a better personality than Coakley, but after watching three Brown v. Coakley debates, it's clear that the thrust of his campaign wasn't that he owned a truck. Brown attacked Coakley from the right on the major public policy issues of the day--terrorism, taxes, health care, and cap and trade. Brown adviser Eric Ferhnstrom tells National Review's Robert Costa today that 'people talk about the potency of the health-care issue, but from our own internal polling, the more potent issue here in Massachusetts was terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants.'"