Scott Brown On The Austin Plane Crash

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) talked to Fox News's Neil Cavuto yesterday about the suicidal pilot Joe Stack's single-engine crash into a building that housed IRS employees in Austin, TX, and the discussion of Stack's anti-IRS rage turned to the present movement of fiscal conservatism.

Brown said he doesn't know if there's a connection between Stack's crash and voters' desire for transparency and effective government (which, coincidentally, were some talking points from his campaign). Hotline OnCall's Rachelle Douillard-Proulx has the quotes:

"It's certainly tragic, and I feel for the families, obviously, that are being affected by it. And I don't know if it's related, but I can just sense, not only in my election but since being here in Washington, people are frustrated. They want transparency. They want their elected officials to be accountable and open and, you know, talk about the things that are affecting their daily lives. So, I'm not sure if there's a connection. I certainly hope not. But we need to do things better."

FNC's Cavuto: "Invariably, people are going to look at this type of incident, Senator, and say, well, that's where some of this populist rage gets you. Isn't that a bit extreme?"

Brown: "Yes, of course it's extreme. You don't know anything about the individual. He could have had other issues. Certainly, no one likes paying taxes, obviously. But the way we're trying to deal with things, and have been in the past, at least until I got here, is there's such a logjam in Washington, and people want us to do better. They want us to help solve the problems that are affecting Americans in a very real way."

More Brown quotes at Douillard-Proulx's OnCall post.