The writing is on the wall … and not just there: Unlike the bizarre tone-deaf fealty that candidate Kerry Healey showed to Mitt Romney, Massachusetts Republicans now seem to want to move away from Romneyism and towards — well, what?
Some MA GOP’ers are choosing McCain in the primary, says the National Journal’s Hotline (hat tip: David Bernstein). And how can you blame them? Give Mitt credit for swooping in and saving their bacon in 2002, but what’s he done for them lately? His right-wing pandering antics and absenteeism left Kerry Healey with the choice of either repudiating him publicly — a dicey balancing act under any condition — or being his standard-bearer. She chose the latter, and got stomped. There’s no real reason for them to back Mitt at this point, so even in his weakened state, McCain’s the best game in town.
Locally, there’s another model for the future of the MA GOP, claims State Sen. Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester), who looks to Schwarzenegger’s success in California (reg. req’d). And why not? Arnold pulled out of a popularity nosedive the old-fashioned way: He stopped the BS and started to be a better governor by, like, governing. He took centrist tacks on things like climate change and health care. He looked for ways to cooperate with the Democratic legislature. He got re-elected in a landslide.
Sen. Tarr scratches his chin and says hrrmmmmm…
… Deval Patrick has emerged as a dynamic leader who captured the imagination of the electorate, and the people of Massachusetts got back in the game in a big way. Voter registration increased dramatically, and on Election Day, some polling locations in Boston ran out of ballots.
Now is not the time for Republican legislators to begrudge Gov. Patrick his due, or to set themselves up as reflexive naysayers. In fact, the leverage provided by his victory may be just what Beacon Hill needs to be a more open marketplace for ideas, regardless of their party of origin.
Specifically, Tarr mentions alternative energy as a consensus issue on which Republicans can help.
Could it be that on a basket of issues, the Mass GOP positions itself as more “progressive” than a good chunk of the MA Dem Party? Interesting strategy. It worked in 1990, by the way.
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2. Small-minded people went for the action hero one last time toward the end of the election.
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I’m not so sure I’d be calling Arnold a great governor lately. Nor would I call him someone willing to buck the extreme right – after all, he vetoed civil unions and basically said the opposite of what everyone else says – that he wouldn’t want the people or leg to decide marriage, but the courts…
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meh. Not saying I can’t stand him – he’s way better than Romney was and at least slightly more honest to what he really believes in. I just don’t love him either… or even like him very much.
I agree with the basic thrust of your post, as I would summarize it, that the Mass GOP has sent several signals that it intends to continue to distance itself from Romney and become more “moderate.”
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However, I certainly don’t think teh Mass GOP is positioning itself as more “progressive”. Though obviously a word that lends itself to many definitions (let’s not debate the semantics again here and now?), I would imagine that the Mass GOP will not adopt the core principles of “progressives” (which I hope most would admit include a lot of “big government” programs and a focus on economic justice that most Republicans think isn’t really government’s role).
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This shift “to the center” is better charecterized as going back to the small government (lower taxes!), libertarian and fiscally conservative roots of the GOP. You know, how Romney used to be before he started running for President? And as oppossed to the new religious, anti-gay, pro-“normalcy” and “let’s extend democracy to the world” agenda of many modern-day Republicans.
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No?
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Gov. Christine Whitman in Boston. And looking at who was there, MY, how alliances have shifted!
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Read the whole post here – esp. check out the photo!
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http://capecodporcup…
There’s been a hubbub because the Chair of the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans endorsed McCain. Mass GOP is kind of pissed at him, but it’s a signal in the moving sentiments of the GOP Storm Troopers.
The College Republicans endorsed an idiot. McCain was an idiot from day one. His only claim to fame is that, after he had been shot down over a North Vietnam bombing raid, he refused to be repatriated to the US from a NVN prison camp after the NVs offered to do so. Apparently, he was too stupid to recognize that, if he had been repatriated, he might be able to fly a few more bombing missions for the USofA.
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I’m sorry, McCain was–and is–an idiot, and the College Republikaners are, too.
That was too harsh, raj.
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I’m not a Republican — I don’t even play one very well, but it would surprise me a lot to learn that McCain will galvanize or be a standard-bearer for the Weld-Whitman winglet of the Republicans. McCain has been telling us he’s a conservative not a moderate. He’s a winner of the Jingoism Contest; not even a draft might be sufficient to cover all the military ventures he would like to venture. Soon, no doubt, he’ll be a regular guest of the 700 Club.
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It also seems to me that the national Republicans have made of social issues a big wedge. They’ve tried to polarize as much as possible between the Hollywood types and the regular folk. In Massachusetts, alas, the Hollywood types are ascendant. We’re pro-choice here. Marriage equality is increasingly recognized as a civil right. But for the Weld-Whitmans to win they must “unwedge” those issues.
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That’ll be fun to watch.
…but I’ll be presumptuous and assume that you don’t spend much time on web sites around which Republicans typically gather. The mantra on those web sites typically goes that McCain was honorable because he allowed himself to be incarcerated in a North Vietnamese prison camp for some–what was it? six years, instead of allowing himself to be repatriated to the USofA because he was the son of some high muck-ti-muck in US military. I read this only a few days ago over at Greg Djerijian’s web site (www.belgraviadispatch.com), so it isn’t an old tale.
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It struck me as being dumb to praise someone for allowing himself to remain incarcerated, when he could have been helping in the war effort, when I first read that 20 years ago, and it continues to strike me as being dumb. To paraphrase George C. Scott paraphrasing Gen. George Patton, the idea in war is not to die for your country, but to make the other guy die for his. You can’t make the other guy die for his country by sitting on your butt in a prison camp. And that’s what McCain did for six some odd years–he sat on his butt in a prison camp.
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BTW, McCain isn’t going anywhere. Irrespective of his age, his flip, flop floop and flupduddling has made him unelectable. He’s more over the floormat as Mitt “the snitt” Romney.
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But I stand by my comment about McCain and his NVN war prison antics. And thanks for the correction about the plural of Republikaner on another thread.
I only meant that the word “idiot” was harsh. Taking down McCain, the world’s most maver-icky maver-ick is a noble and useful effort.
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Having, as I wrote on a previous thread, lost my hazmat suit at the cleaners, I tend only to read about Right Blogostan from such useful aggregators as Sadly No and World O’Crap. Even then, it is a very guilty pleasure that I rarely indulge.
if they’re not going to contest elections.
After the Weld/Cellucci/Romney debacle for the Republikaner party in Massachusetts, it was clear that elections in Massachusetts would be decided in the primaries. I don’t know how to put it more succinctly, but the fact is that it is true. Romney absolutely ruined the Republikaner Partei in Massachusetts. He spent millions of US$ in 2004 supposedly trying to elect Republikanern and ended up with a net gain of minus five. But when one imports people from Georgia to run for the Republikaner Partei (as he did in Worcester County) what would he expect?
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The sad thing is that the Republican party in Massachusetts was once a proud and upstanding organization. John Volpe as governor, and Edward Brooke was the first democratically elected Negro (word intentionally used) senator elected to the US Senate since Reconstruction. The Republican party will sorely be missed, but Romney’s Republikaner Partei will not be. There is a difference between the two.
is Republikaner. If I may point you to the de.wikipedia article on the
topic. Their slogan:
The emphasis on strength has unpleasant associations, no? They are quite to the right of the Christian Democrats