Media boost Brown into GOP presidential mix

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President Obama recently made a big thing about the “echo chamber” created by “a slash-and-burn” media and how that had helped poison the Washington political atmosphere.

But the big bullhorn of the media can create as well destroy, as seen in the case of the newest member of the Senate.

According to the latest Gallup poll, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown ranks fourth of 11 possible presidential candidates named by Republicans and like-minded independents as the person they would most like to see as the GOP standard bearer in 2012.

Brown, who has been in the Senate just long enough to have been caught in two huge snowstorms, garnered 4%, a pittance that is about the same as the margin of error of the poll. With so little to show on his national record, the support is certainly name recognition from the blizzard of media attention that came with his surprise win of the Senate seat held for decades by the late Edward Kennedy.

Brown ranked behind two former governors, Massachusetts’ Mitt Romney and Alaska’s Sarah Palin, with 14% and 11%, respectively, for the top spots in the GOP race. Seven percent of those surveyed mentioned Sen. John McCain, the 2008 nominee, who is facing a tough re-election bid for his Arizona seat.

But Brown placed on a par with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, each with years of national politics behind them. They culled 3%.

To be sure, the GOP is far from unified right now, facing a conservative, angry anti-incumbent attack from the ‘tea party’ movement. The poll found that 42% said they did not have an opinion on whom they preferred for the GOP spot.

But the poll does have some meaning. Even without naming a possible candidate, registered voters split almost evenly on whether they would back President Obama for another term or would go to any Republican.

Forty-four percent of U.S. registered voters said they were more likely to vote for Obama and 42% picked the Republican candidate. The remaining 14% said they were undecided or would vote for another candidate.

The old political adage is that it takes a candidate to beat a candidate, so the polls will likely shift when a real person – as opposed to a generic Republican – is named to run against Obama.

-- Michael Muskal

Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal