Scott Brown Speech Heist. Round Up the Usual Suspects.

The Boston Globe features an embarrassing piece on Massachusetts Republican U.S. Senator Scott Brown lifting some inspiring dogma from Elizabeth Dole, wife of Bob Dole and former cabinet secretary and one-term U.S. Senator herself.  Brown’s office says it used Dole’s website as a model when took office in early 2010–more than a year after Dole had departed from the Senate.  The content of Dole’s site found its way to Brown’s and then into the vast beyond.

Brown will need to keep a close eye on what his campaign attributes to him as original thought.  Snatching other people’s content and claiming it as your own will sound familiar to Brown campaign manager Jim Barnett. He ran into similar heavy weather in 2010 when he was managing Republican Rob Simmons’ unhappy Senate bid in Connecticut against professional wrestling maven Linda McMahon. The righteous Simmons campaign hip hoorayed and ballyhooed an economic revival plan that was lifted in large part from the National Federation of Independent Business. Barnett blamed a “young staffer” for the error.

The closely scripted Brown ought to start requiring footnotes.