Scott Brown—Immigration and National Security Hawk

National Review’s Joel Gehrke explains Scott Brown’s foreign policy positions here.

Against all expectations, Scott Brown has made the New Hampshire Senate race competitive — and done it with hawkish stands on immigration and national security.

Brown’s victory in the 2010 special election to replace the late senator Ted Kennedy in the liberal stronghold of Massachusetts provided the most dramatic symbol of the country’s distaste for President Obama’s pending health-care overhaul; it was a harbinger of the resounding defeats that Democrats would suffer in the November midterms.

Now, as the Republican challenger to Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.), Brown has run a variation of his 2010 strategy, with an emphasis on immigration rather than Obamacare (a law he still opposes).

“This race is about immigration,” Brown told conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham during a September interview. “There is a rational fear from citizens in New Hampshire and throughout this country that people are coming — either criminal elements, terrorist elements, or people with diseases — coming through our border,” he said Thursday evening during a debate with Shaheen.

Of the three state races considered a reach for Republicans at the outset of the midterm-election season — Minnesota, Oregon, and New Hampshire — only Brown’s campaign remains a contender; he trails Shaheen by 1.8 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average.