Rob Simmons is no Scott Brown

There's an amateur political junkie in New Jersey who wisely forecast Richard Blumenthal's surprise entry into Connecticut's Senate race as long ago as last spring.

On April 3, one day after a new Quinnipiac University poll showed Sen. Chris Dodd trailing Rob Simmons, 50 to 34 percent, this New Jersey sage registered the Web domain name blumenthalforsenate.com.

And now the site, which the Blumenthal campaign has arranged to acquire, will become one of the official Web portals for the lead candidate in the race.

If only Rob Simmons had had the same foresight last spring to predict Dodd's retirement and Blumenthal's parachuting into the race he might have had the good sense to drop out, and maybe run a more plausible campaign for governor.

This week, the Simmons campaign issued a fresh new batch of chipper e-mail blitzes, breathlessly heralding Republican Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts, the public relations equivalent of jumping up and down.

And who can blame Simmons for leaping on any cause for optimism, given Blumenthal's instant lock on the race.

Last November, the Simmons campaign was boasting about a "commanding" 11 percent lead over Dodd in the polls. When Blumenthal came out of the first polls in the transformed race with a 35-point lead over Simmons, I wondered if the former 2nd District congressman might not be curled up somewhere in the fetal position, sucking his thumb.

So should Simmons take solace from this week's so-called Massachusetts miracle?

Not so much, I think.

Sure, there's a lot in the defeat of Martha Coakley, also a popular attorney general who also once had a solid lead in the polls, to concern Blumenthal strategists.

And there is certainly a clear message about voter unrest, even in a Democratic stronghold like Massachusetts, that Obama Democrats must digest.

But Rob Simmons is no Scott Brown and won't become one between now and next November, even if a Cosmopolitan centerfold were to rattle out of his closet or if he took to driving to campaign events in a red pickup. (Actually, Merrick Alpert, Blumenthal's Democratic opponent, has already scored that prop.)

Simmons is hardly a fresh face, someone the angry electorate can count on for the next round of change.

Simmons comes to the race as a longtime Bush loyalist, who for years toed the line with the Republican majority in Washington on a variety of issues that put him at odds with mainstream political thinking in Connecticut.

He supported the war in Iraq, a decision he arrived at, he said, after reading thousands of pages of classified documents about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that, in the end, there weren't any.

He talked down the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, calling himself a political moderate and fiscal conservative, then voted for them anyway. He also called himself an environmentalist and then voted for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

He also voted for cuts to Medicaid and student loans, after he said he wouldn't.

In the developing primary race against wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, Simmons has all but abandoned any pretense to moderate credentials, taking increasingly rightist, tea party positions on everything from stimulus spending to tax cuts.

His campaign rhetoric, on topics ranging from the trial of the 9/11 mastermind in New York to wrestler steroid scandals, is becoming increasingly negative and shrill.

Meanwhile, the smart fellow in New Jersey who predicted Blumenthal's entry into the race has agreed to turn blumenthalforsenate.com over to the Blumenthal campaign for free.

The only payment he sought, someone on Blumenthal's staff told me, was to be able to spend a day behind the scenes with the campaign.

I suspect that this peek behind the curtain, whenever it occurs, will reveal a campaign and a candidate more disciplined and focused than Martha Coakley ever was.

I also would guess he'll see a campaign much less likely to yield any of what, right now, might best be called a commanding lead in the polls.

This is the opinion of David Collins.