Politico’s home page at 3 p.m. today:

The lede:

Scott Brown’s got his groove back.

A string of recent polling, an agreement to bar outside money from the race and some savvy legislative moves have put Democrats on notice that ousting the first-term Massachusetts Republican will be anything but easy, even with a first-class challenger.

Six months after Elizabeth Warren burst into the Senate race as the heroine of the left and swiftly leapfrogged Brown in polling and buzz, her superstar candidacy has plummeted back to earth.

It’s now Brown whose gotten a lift in this marquee match-up, and observers on both sides of the aisle credit the candidate for the turnaround.

The piece goes on to cite Brown’s savvy positioning on the recent insider trading bill, his smooth maneuvering on the payroll tax cut extension, and “the agreement to sideline super PACs”  in the Senate race, which the piece labels “a coup for Brown’s team.”

(See also Joe Battenfeld’s Boston Herald column today.)

The Politico piece also includes this quote from local Democratic chinstroker Dan Payne:

“He uses pop-culture well. He spontaneously calls up sports talk-shows and gabs about the teams and scores, and maybe if they ask him about politics, that’s okay too.”

Coincidentally, Brown released his latest installment of the Scott Brown Radio Report, which salutes retiring Red So players Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek.

Smart. And smart politics.