Poor Scott Brown. You gotta feel at least a little bad for a guy who gets billed as the headliner at a big New Hampshire Republican fundraiser that actually drewmore protesters than supporters. That's not quite a Westboro Baptist Church kind of turnout, but it's got to be a comedown from having a bunch of war-whooping supporters who just want to hear you slag that Indian lady professor alla time. Actually, maybe you don't gotta feel bad for him at all.

On the positive side, the 200 or so ardent gun-fondlers and their strange bedfellows, a bunch of dirty hippie Dems, rallying across the street from the official GOP event didn't boil over into an armed rebellion, so, Huge Success?

The New Hampshire GOP would really like to defeat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in 2014, and to the Mainstream Insiders, Brown seemed like a potentially attractive candidate. Except he did say one time that maybe the Second Amendment was only 99.6% sacrosanct, and that he could maybe get behind a renewal of the assault weapons ban, which means he wants to put all gun owners in gas chambers, bow down to Mecca, and maybe even start rooting for the Yankees. The Bqhwoston Globe found some definite disgruntlement among the crowd at the rally, which, unlike the fundraiser, was open to the press:

“Scott Brown is clear on the Second Amendment: He doesn’t like it; he doesn’t support it,” said state Representative JR Hoell, the secretary of the coalition and an organizer of the protest. “He’s no different than Jeanne Shaheen.”

Brown, who had long been opposed to a federal assault weapons ban, reversed course after the December 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn.

“He’s a Bloomberg liberal,” J.J. Valera, 66, said of Brown, referring to Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, a strong proponent of increased federal gun control measures.

Valera, chuckling, said opposition to Brown was the “only time we ever agreed with the Democrats.”

Despite a surge of support from 10 College Republicans who waved “Run Scott, Run!” signs, Brown entered the fundraiser from the back door. Before the event, he still managed to put on a chirpy smile for the press and remind everyone that he's not some weird foreigner from Massachusetts, he's actually a New Hampshire guy who used to live in Rye, so don't you call him a carpetbagger, darn it. (We'll confess that we don't have any idea how that carpetbagger stuff would play in New Hampshire anyway -- don't you folks in those itty-bitty eastern states just see state borders kind of like county lines anyway?)

Just to make life a bit more interesting for Brown if he does run for Senate in New Hampshire, state Rep. Al Baldasaro is looking into a Senate run himself. Baldasaro has some excellent teabagger credentials as one of the loons who sought to impeach all 189 members of the NH House who voted successfully last spring to repeal the state's "stand your ground" law, which proved they had violated their oath of office to support the US Constitution, obviously. To have a chance against such a stalwart defender of the 2nd Amendment, Scott Brown may actually have to divorce his wife and marry his gun.

[Boston Globe and Manchester Union Leader via Concord Patch]