Boston Globe - "Brown’s glossy veneer conceals misleading campaign"

Strip away Brown’s pretty packaging - his Massachusetts National Guard combat fatigues, his “American Idol’’- contending daughter, his warm and fuzzy ads - and this is what you get.

He is allegedly for health care reform, except he doesn’t support the historic health care reform legislation that is on the brink of passage in Washington and was Kennedy’s life quest.

He supports Roe v. Wade, except that a prominent anti-abortion advocacy group backs him as a “pro-life vote in the Senate.’’

He dispatched his 21-year old daughter to attack Coakley for stating the truth: In 2005, Brown sponsored a legislative amendment that would have allowed medical personnel to deny emergency contraception to rape victims if it “conflicts with a sincerely held religious belief.’’ The amendment didn’t pass, but Brown owned it. It was attached to a bill that he ultimately voted for, which required emergency rooms to provide contraceptives to rape victims.

Recently, Brown told the Boston Herald that gay marriage “is settled law. People have moved on.’’ Not long ago, though, he wanted to put it up for a referendum.

Brown bristles at Coakley’s persistent efforts to tie him to the Bush-Cheney years. But, he supports Bush-Cheney policies, from taxes to torture.

And he’s willing to tap into that familiar Bush-Cheney fear factor, which paints Democrats as soft and weak “I have to be honest with you, folks. . . I’m scared of some of the policies I’ve heard,’’ he said during Monday night’s debate.

You want scary?

Brown’s a lawyer. But he uses the term “lawyered-up’’ as an insult, instead of what it is - a principle that makes America different from - and better than - the rest of the world. Under the Bush administration, Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a transatlantic flight with explosives planted in his shoe, was tried in a civilian court; he will, as Coakley repeatedly points out, spend the rest of his life in prison.