Can it be that Texans have more in common with residents of Massachusetts than most of us here, in the Lone Star State, are willing to admit?

Bay Staters expressed their anger Tuesday at the federal government by electing Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate seat held for 47 years by the late Ted Kennedy, a liberal Democratic icon if ever one existed. It’s been reported for weeks now that Massachusetts hadn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972. What hasn’t been reported, though, is that the Republican elected that year was Edward Brooke, an African-American moderate in the mold of, say, the late Nelson Rockefeller. Brown doesn’t appear to have any of the leanings that Sen. Brooke exhibited during his two terms in the Senate, except perhaps his pro-choice views on abortion.

Still, listening to Sen.-elect Brown’s victory statement Tuesday night was akin — almost — to listening to Texas Gov. Rick Perry throw down on the feds in the spring of 2009 when he declared that Texans might get angry enough to want to secede from the United States of America. Brown said he’s fed up and isn’t going to take it anymore, and that the voters in his state have affirmed him with their vote that sends him to Washington.

Thus, we see a bit of a Texas resemblance way up yonder in that Yankee bastion of Massachusetts.

Hey, wasn’t it Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama who declared in 2004 that we are the “United States of America”?