What Do Republicans Think of Scott Brown’s New Hampshire Dreams?

Scott Brown created a flurry in the political media when he refused to rule out running for Senate in New Hampshire, a state where he was born and owns a home. So how do the Republicans from his home home state feel about this? Losing Brown, their most famous face on a pretty thin roster of potential candidates for office would be a blow, no doubt, which is perhaps why they just seem to be ignoring the story.

Brown’s comments were first reported by the Associated Press, which focused on collecting comments from politicos in New Hampshire. Rather than run the wire story, the Boston Globe reported their own version, seeking comment from Massachusetts groups. These paragraphs are telling:

Clare Kelly, executive director of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, was less sanguine.

“We suspect the voters in New Hampshire will reject a candidate that has a record of voting with Wall Street and against the middle class, just as they did in Massachusetts last November,” she said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Massachusetts GOP declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the reliably right-leaning Boston Herald chose to just run the A.P. story. Go ahead, just try to find a link to it on their homepage.

The Democratic Blue Mass Group blog already has a post crowing about Brown’s maybe-defection. Commenters point out gleefully that this would make Brown’s insinuations that Oklahoma-raised Elizabeth Warren was a carpetbagger look awfully silly in retrospect. (Sore winners, these guys.) Meanwhile, it’s crickets over at the Republican Red Mass Group blog (as of this writing.)

You wouldn’t be able to blame Massachusetts Republicans for feeling a bit despondent—if that, in fact, motivates their silence … maybe they just don’t care —but this is just the latest in a series of signs Brown is sending that he’s scanning the horizons for options other than a gubernatorial run or a shot at Kerry’s Senate seat in 2014. Look no further than his attempt to do a Cranky Bill O’Reilly impression on Fox News Monday night. Brown might remain the state Republicans’ biggest name, but all things considered, Brown doesn’t seem so sure that’s good enough to put him in elected office here again. Still, breaking up is hard to do.