Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown Look Down Their Noses at Super PACs

The Massachusetts Senate race between Democrat and Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren and Republican Senator Scott Brown kind of did the opposite of heat up Monday, with both the candidate and incumbent saying very lovely, faux-humble things about how they hope to compete on the basis of their own ideas (money) rather than the ideas (money) of super PACs. Just when super PACs were starting to get fun! Warren says she actually wants to get rid of them altogether and "set an example for the rest of the country." What a drag.

The exchange between the two began late last week, when Warren called Brown, and then got old-fashioned and wrote him a letter because he didn't pick up the phone, calling for an "enforceable agreement" limiting third-party influence in their race:

We have the opportunity to set an example for the rest of the country. Let’s do it. If you are serious about stopping the political games and getting to the hard work of keeping out third party ads and independent groups, I’m ready...Too often, candidates call for an end to third party influence but their words are just that, and their calls are just more empty promises and politics as usual.

Professor Warren was in Boston for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, where she said prior to the event: “What I’d like to do is I’d like to be able to run my campaign. I’d like for Sen. Brown to run his campaign and we both be responsible for what is said. I think that is the right way to be able to run the campaign.”

Smug Scott has felt this way forever, he's now pretending, saying Monday in Mattapan, MA that he's "glad Professor Warren seems to be coming around on this issue...I think by sending a joint message to stay out, I’m hopeful they’ll accept that message," they being the unofficial fan clubs.

But if an organization with millions of dollars to spend likes you, what's a candidate to do? If you can't communicate with a PAC about its message, then you can't tell it to shut the hell up either.

Warren said Monday she hoped the campaigns could agree on some sort of "pact," and establish that there would be "consequences" for anyone who broke it. So, they're going to make a pact ... to show disdain ... for pro-themselves organizations that they're not able to communicate with? Wow, change really is coming. [Politico]