But does he really like us? His record suggests otherwise.
I am an unaffiliated female voter in Massachusetts, and a cute guy running for Senate is sweet-talking me. Scott Brown wants me to know how much he cares. I'm playing hard-to-get, but his letters keep coming, assuring me of his commitment to equal pay, reproductive choice, and the rights of military women.
His letters are warm and friendly, filled with pictures of happy women. I feel like we're on a first-name basis, and if I didn't know better, I'd think Scott was a Democrat, or at least an independent like me. I'd think he was a feminist. If I didn't know better, I'd consider him a guy who respected women and could be trusted not to lie to them.
But I know Scott's record. I know that he voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, a follow-up to the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which his mailers (and TV ads) claim he supports. I know that as a U.S. senator he voted against an amendment allowing women in the military to obtain privately financed abortions at military facilities and voted for the Blunt Amendment, allowing employers with moral qualms about contraception to deny contraceptive coverage to female employees. Knowing about votes like this, I'm not surprised that he won an 75 percent approval rating from the National Right to Life Committee. (John Kerry's rating, for reference, is 0 percent.)