they lived in the states for decades before they ran. This is a false equivalence. Where Shaheen came to NH when she was 26 years old - married and raised a family in NH and entered NH state government - Brown was raised, went to college and law school, married, raised a family and was in MA state government and represented MA (badly) in the US Senate.
Bringing up Hillary or Bobby Kennedy is silly. In Bobby Kennedy's case - like Brown's, he did spend part of his childhood in NY State. In Hillary's case, it is very possible that they had already decided to put Bill Clinton's foundation in NYC where he would work and had chosen NY for life after the WH. It is fair to say that she was not from the state, had no roots in the state - and thus was a carpetbagger. However, she did NOT run denying that she was not from the state and certainly did not attempt to dispute the real NY roots of others - as Brown is doing. Both Hillary Clinton and Robert Kennedy were called carpetbaggers, which they were, but neither whined that it was unfair to be called that. They both ran good campaigns that gave the state reasons to make them the state's choice to fill the Senate seat.
It is possible that NH might decide that Brown will be their choice. However, it would seem that the best way to put the entire carpetbagging issue behind him is to admit the obvious very frankly - that he moved to NH because he wanted to run for the Senate from there. He could then transition to defending why he would be a better Senator for NH than his Republican opponents and Shaheen. He also has the problem that his campaign called Warren a carpetbagger when it was far less true and he personally said that Ed Markey was not really from his district - even though he owned the house his parents lived in when he was born in the district he represented for decades. It is ironic that a man who ran on "he/she is not from here" is now whining when some say the same thing about him.
It is unbelievably strange that while his biography has stated for decades that he was born in Kittery ME, that he is now saying he was born in NH. Yes, I know it was on the border, but saying something that can be disputed easily -- and which is not important - seems weird. Then his comment that "his credentials may not be the best -- whatever' are the biggest gift I can think of to his opponents. I know he was speaking of being from NH, but the question was about being NH's Senator. Then his whiny "whatever" makes him sound like a petulant teenage and evokes his brilliant tweets - which should have been an issue even if he had no misspelling! (It doesn't help that it happened at the point the media FINALLY started to cover his incoherent Senate speeches and bizarre claims like speaking to kings and queens and having President Obama and SoS Clinton consulting him regularly.)
I suspect your defensive of Brown is because you * Republicans have no viable candidate without him. He is all you have and you see the glitter, not the obvious flaws. He got an easy media ride between 2010 and most of 2012 - until his campaign became no nasty that arguing that he was incredibly likable was something most of the local media (almost all but the Boston Herald) stopped saying. I HOPE that NH, being so much a part of the Boston media, saw this flawed man for what he is --- not the likable everyman that some of the national media still sees him as.
* Yes, I am suggesting you might be Republican or Republican leaning. Your argument is identical to the argument made by NH Republicans supporting Brown and - in the description of Shaheen - the words of Brown himself. I have no problem with you making the case that you politely made here. If you are a Democrat, I apologize. I could not think of any other motivation for repeating what are clearly false equivalences in the case of Warren and Shaheen.
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