But the DSCC received some bad news this week when a poll it commissioned found that Brown’s popularity is soaring. The survey, which has been seen by at least one D.C. insider and was detailed for Salon, measured Brown’s approval rating at 73 percent — easily surpassing the scores for Barack Obama and the state’s two top Democrats,  Gov. Deval Patrick and Sen. John Kerry. It also found him running over the magic 50 percent mark against every potential Democratic challenger, and crushing the strongest perceived Democrats (Reps. Michael Capuano and Ed Markey and former Rep. Marty Meehan) by double-digit margins. The results only grew closer when respondents were primed with negative information about Brown.

The findings underscore the success that Brown has had in separating himself from the national Republican Party brand, which remains poisonous in Massachusetts. (Even in the strongly anti-Democratic tide of 2010 — the best climate for Republicans in Massachusetts since 1994 — the GOP failed to win any of the state’s six constitutional offices or 10 House seats and actually lost ground in the Legislature.) Brown has largely been a steady GOP vote in the Senate, but he has broken with his party in several high-profile instances: a jobs bill last February, Wall Street reform over the summer, and ratification of the new START treaty and repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in December. He also made news last week for (sort of) opposing the GOP’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

All of this has helped Brown craft an image as an independent senator. That some leaders of the Tea Party — which poured itself into Brown’s victorious January 2010 special election effort — are now openly criticizing him and calling for a GOP primary challenge next year only reinforces this image. Brown’s personal appeal — the whole working stiff with a truck thing — remains a clear asset too. 

This is why in a recent Op-Ed for the Boston Globe I likened Brown to William Weld — the Republican who won Massachusetts’ governorship in something of a fluke in 1990, only to build enormous popularity by picking some high-profile fights with his own national party. When he sought reelection in 1994, every big-name Democrat in the state who’d been talked up as a prospect — Paul Tsongas, Joe Kennedy, Ray Flynn, John Silber and on and on — passed. Weld ended up posting a record-shattering 42-point landslide over a hapless state representative.

The endurance of Brown’s popularity is likely to give pause to his strongest potential Democratic foes. Capuano and Markey (and South Boston’s Stephen Lynch, for that matter) would have to give up safe House seats to challenge him next year. Meehan would have to surrender his cozy perch in academia. Running against Brown might not be worth the risk for them — especially with at least one (the 2014 governor’s race, which should be an open seat) and possibly two (John Kerry’s Senate seat, which could open up for a 2013 special election if he is elevated to secretary of state for a second Obama term) other opportunities on the horizon. True, 2012 will be a presidential election year, which will theoretically boost Brown’s challenger in blue state Massachusetts. But it’s easy to overstate the coattail effect, as Susan Collins demonstrated in 2008, when she easily beat a strong Democratic challenger even as Barack Obama comfortably won Maine. In other words, unless Brown’s numbers dip markedly, it’s likely that Democrats will be stuck with a second-tier (at best) challenger in ’12.

The national implications are potentially significant. Democrats are clinging to a 53-47 edge in the Senate now, but they are defending nearly three-quarters of the seats that will be up next year — some of them in very red states. Already, North Dakota — where Democrat Kent Conrad is retiring — is regarded as a near-certain GOP pickup, and the Democrats’ hold on seats in Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, Virginia and West Virginia is shaky at best.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts might be the only logical pickup target for Democrats — especially now that embattled Republican Sen. John Ensign has finally ruled out a reelection campaign in Nevada. Maybe Indiana could emerge as a target, if Richard Lugar is derailed by Tea Party activists in next year’s GOP primary — and if his GOP foe, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, proves to be a particularly polarizing nominee. Theoretically, Maine could too, with Republican Olympia Snowe sure to face at least one Tea Party-backed  challenger next year (although Snowe would likely be unbeatable if she decides to run as an independent).

Thus, ousting Brown would significantly increase Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate. But failing to do so could be the final nail in their majority’s coffin.

BROWN: Your support during the election, it meant a ton. It made a difference and I can certainly use it again. Obviously, the –

KOCH: When are you running for the next term?

BROWN: ’12.

KOCH: Oh, okay.

BROWN: I’m in the cycle right now. We’re already banging away.

So, yes, this does fit right into the narrative of Republicans being subservient to their billionaire masters, but did that narrative need video evidence? Isn’t every single action they’ve ever taken when they hold power in Washington proof enough?

Anyway Brown is going to continue being a “moderate” Republican in order to win reelection in Massachusetts but when it counts, these are his most important constituents.

In his forthcoming memoir, “Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances,” Brown makes a powerful case for his book’s hardscrabble title. He details the beatings he and his mother received at the hands of his stepfather, describing how at age 6 his stepfather “pounded my head, my back, and plowed into me with those massive knuckles and flat, sandpapery palms until I was shaking and sobbing and snot was pouring out of my nose” and threatened to kill him. He discusses being 8 and having a local teen menace him with a knife and order him to perform a sexual act — and how he escaped. And he writes of a counselor at his religious camp who sexually abused him. “I was standing there with my pants down and he came right up next to me and asked me if I needed help, and then he reached out his hand,” he writes, adding that the man told him “that if I told anybody, ever, he’d hurt me badly.” In an interview for Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” Brown cryptically reveals, “Fortunately, nothing was ever fully consummated, so to speak, but it was certainly, back then, very traumatic.” Surely adding to the trauma was the counselor’s warning that, as Brown says, “If you tell anybody I’ll kill you. I will make sure nobody believes you.” And so, Brown says he kept the secret all these years, telling Lesley Stahl that his mother will learn of the incident for the first time when she reads his book.

Brown, who is looking more and more like a man who’d like to be president — and who might just be moderate enough to wrest the Republican nomination from the clutches of the Tea Party — certainly knows that his private life is the subject of ruthless scrutiny. To come out now with a frank retelling of his youth, with its forays into dysfunction, victimhood and eventual petty crime, is a savvy way of heading off any National Enquirer bombshells. No one in public life can come forward with such painful and intimate revelations without a degree of strategy. But such a tactic doesn’t always engender support. Commenters on CBS’s “60 Minutes” website were teeming with cynicism Thursday, offering insights like, “Real men suck it up. They don’t go on national TV to play a victim card,” “Is there anything politicians won’t do to be reelected? Pathetic,” “OK Scott, you get your free pity pills,” and, of course, “Don’t believe one word he says.” Well done, Internet, you’ve made it a banner week for victim blaming.

For all the attention childhood sexual abuse has received in the last few years — tragically, because it’s such a common experience — the stigma of it remains. It’s a particularly taboo subject for men, thanks to the ease with which ignorant, petty minds leap from child abuse to “Dude, that’s so gay.” And, unfortunately, plenty of people can’t wrap their heads around the idea of a victim who isn’t a tragic mess curled up on a shrink’s couch. If you’re not crying and broken and damaged-looking enough, it didn’t happen. They put qualifiers on abuse, deciding that if it wasn’t “consummated,” or it was just some “groping,” it wasn’t bad enough to qualify as important.

So for men as well-known and so very different as Gabriel Byrne, Tyler Perry and Scott Brown to stand up and say that they experienced it is an act of courage, whatever you believe of their work or politics. If they just wanted pity pills, there’s probably an easier way to get them. There’s still, even now, too high a potential price to be paid in coming forward. As Brown says on “60 Minutes,” “When people find people like me at that young vulnerable age, who are basically lost, they make you believe that no one will believe you. That’s what happens when you’re a victim. You’re embarrassed. You’re hurt.” And decades later, that embarrassment, hurt and disbelief can persist long after a traumatized little boy has left Cape Cod.

Brown also said he looked into buying a home where his stepfather had physically abused him just so he could “burn it down.”

Brown said that being physically abused at home and being the product of broken homes made him more vulnerable to sexual predators.

“When people find people like me at that young, vulnerable age, who are basically lost, the thing that they have over you is, they make you believe that no one will believe you,” he said.

Brown added that even his mother did not know about the sexual abuse.

“That’s what happens when you’re a victim. You’re embarrassed. You’re hurt,” he said.

Brown emerged on the national political scene with his improbable victory in the race for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat. He details the childhood trauma in a new book, “Against All Odds.”

Brown’s latest (supposed) crimes against conservatism include his support for the New Start treaty and for repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the Senate last week — this after he voted for Wall Street reform over the summer and a jobs bill back in February.

It’s tempting to dismiss the right’s threats. After all, Brown remains surprisingly popular in Massachusetts — he’s consistently scored better than John Kerry in polling since taking office — he’s armed himself with an impressive bankroll, and there’s really no big- (or moderately big-) name conservative challenger waiting in the wings. Plus, we’re talking about Massachusetts here: Brown’s votes may place him to the left of most Republicans in the Senate, but he is also, on the whole, far more conservative than just about any Democrat who might otherwise hold the seat. He’s doing what he needs to survive in a strongly Democratic state, in other words; surely, conservatives recognize and appreciate this at some level.

Then again, you could have said roughly the same thing about Mike Castle in Delaware heading into this year: He was an authentically moderate Republican congressman with deep statewide popularity — and he was the runaway favorite to capture Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. But to the GOP’s Tea party base, that moderate voting record represented not sensible pragmatism in a blue state but simple ideological betrayal. It didn’t matter that Castle’s only opponent in the September GOP primary was the flaky and (initially) underfunded Christine O’Donnell; once the Tea Party crowd decided that he was a RINO, Castle was cooked. That the Republican primary universe in Delaware is so small only made the task easier.

The GOP primary electorate in Massachusetts is also tiny. Less than 15 percent of the state’s voters are enrolled in the GOP, so it’s not entirely out of the question that Brown, if he continues to break with his party in high-profile votes in 2011, could find himself facing a tricky road to re-nomination in 2012. In fact, with the incoming Republican House poised to push through Tea Party-friendly legislation (perhaps defunding healthcare and Wall Street reform, for instance), Brown could be on the spot more than ever next year. Vote against the Tea Party’s agenda and the GOP base’s frustration with him will grow; go along with it and his popularity with the general election audience could dip. (And given that this is Massachusetts, he doesn’t have much of a margin of error with the latter group.)

That said, if Brown is challenged, he should be boosted by the ability of independent voters to participate in Massachusetts primaries. This was how the socially liberal William Weld fended off conservative state Rep. Steven Pierce in the 1990 Republican gubernatorial primary — a race that Pierce, who overwhelmingly won the endorsement of the (much more conservative) state GOP convention, had been favored to win. Plus, Brown enjoys some goodwill with the Tea Party rank-and-file, even though he’s disappointed them on some votes. He came onto the national scene as their candidate; many of them are probably willing to cut him some slack. This could insulate him in a way that Elliot Richardson, who lost the 1984 GOP Senate primary to conservative Ray Shamie (who went on to serve as state party chairman), and Ed Brooke, who barely survived a 1978 primary challenge from right-wing radio host Avi Nelson, weren’t. Neither Richardson, who famously stood up to Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate, nor Brooke, a two-term senator with a solidly liberal voting record, ever had much credibility with conservatives.

That Brown may have a problem on the right illustrates the degree to which the Tea Party figures to haunt the next Congress. After all, there’s no reason to think that the angry GOP base that embraced Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Joe Miller and others in 2010 will be any less restive in 2012. For every Republican in the House and for every Republican senator who will be up for reelection in ’12, the threat of a serious primary challenge will come with every big vote.