A remarkable HuffPo post Monday by Deval Patrick Watch founder D. R. Tucker chronicles his efforts to rally opposition to His Excellency The Governor, Massachusetts’ lack of response, and his ultimate change of heart:
[I]f I had a child, and that young man or woman viewed Deval Patrick as a role model, a symbol of how to come from nothing and become something, I’d say he or she could not have made a better choice.
This from an enormously energetic partisan who devoted years of his life cheering for Patrick’s defeat. “Graham’s piece reminded me of me,” Tucker writes at one point of an article by shock jock Michael Graham, in an indication of his general approach with Deval Patrick Watch. Another indication:
I knew I had to do something to directly attack Patrick and his overly enthusiastic supporters. Already,there were two anti-Healey sites in operation, in addition to the high-profile liberal site Blue Mass Group, whose founders were staunch supporters of the Patrick campaign.
What changed? Tucker doesn’t say, exactly, but he ends by quoting the late Rev. Peter Gomes of Harvard Divinity School, who famously changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat to vote for Patrick in 2006. Gomes:
Thus, it was no small thing to abandon the party of Lincoln, and I did so not simply to vote for Deval Patrick but to affirm that the values I have always held, that stood for the best in Massachusetts, are now to be found in this non-Yankee from Chicago. Ronald Reagan, at whose second inauguration I offered the benediction, once said that he hadn’t left the Democratic Party but that it had left him; I must say I feel the same way about the Republican Party.
And Tucker:
The dead man’s words had new life. I understood now why Rev. Gomes left the GOP, why he found merit in the Patrick campaign, why he found a reason to believe.
I’ll never have a chance to tell him I’m sorry. I’ll never have a chance to tell him I get it.
Appropriately, the Deval Patrick Watch website on WordPress now displays this message: “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.”
I invite Mr. Tucker to open an account on Blue Mass Group, if he does not already have one, and join the discussion here.
Christopher says
…did you not see my post on this?
JHM says
Happy days.
jconway says
I’ve tutored at the high school Deval would have gone to had Milton Academy not had the program, I ride by the housing projects and neighborhoods he grew up around on my way to the airport, to come from there to being a fairly good Governor takes a lot of talent. I’ve had my disagreements, I went from strong supporter to lukewarn supporter to considering Ross or Stein, but I came back to Deval and his win speaks to the fact that he has governed incredibly well in lean times. Its easy to build new programs and be popular when times are good (ask Weld or Romney) but its a lot harder to build consensus and govern compassionately when times are bad. Once again Barack could learn from Deval.
kbusch says
Reading a few of his posts on Huffington and his own blog, there’s a remarkable obsession with what D.R. used to think, what he thought after that, and what he thought now. Almost narcissistic.
In the post on Patrick, he seems to confess to a blind partisanship without really reflecting on how to avoid that in the future. His post on the History of His Thoughts About Romney talks about how he was influenced by Hugh Hewitt:
D.R. doesn’t seem to be convinced by arguments so much as swayed by personalities.
So as heterodox conservatives go, he’s not too interesting.
Mark L. Bail says
His understanding is poor, his insight lacking, his writing weasely. Why care what this guy thinks? Here are some questionable excerpts from his self-indulgence:
He refers to the “capable lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey.” Capable of what exactly?
The “right-leaning Red Mass Group” Right leaning?! If the Tower of Pisa leaned that much, it’d fall over.
For whom? And what Justice Department work? Tucker cites Orrin Hatch’s 1997 remarks against the nomination of Bill Lann Lee to be assistant attorney general for civil rights. Patrick is indeed mentioned in them. It looks like there was an attempt to label Patrick the “quota king,” but what voters in Massachusetts care about Orrin Hatch and the inside baseball of appointing assistant AG’s? Tucker is merely trying to give himself an air of reasonableness that he clearly lacks in his “hate” for Patrick and cross-over Republicans: