Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Ouch for State Republicans

By

(Cross posted for maximum punishment. AND HOORAY FOR OUR SIDE!!!!! GOBAMA!)

Can it really get any worse for them? Really? Losing three seats in the legislature, meaning state Republicans hold only 16 of 160 seats total?

You know, if you stopped running hard-right, anti-gay wingnuts that are far outside the mainstream of Massachusetts voters, you might actually get somewhere. Unless you like being the size of a single committee of the state House. shrug

(And if you ask me, we already have plenty of “checks” in the legislature with conservative Democrats like Rep. David Nangle. Frankly, I’d love to see them switch parties to more reflect their voting record, but that’s not going to happen while the state Republican party is as impotent as Bob Dole before the invention of Viagra. Talk about a losing side!)

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  1. kool-aid cause they just lost control of the State Senate that they’ve held onto for more than 40 years!  And perhaps there will be a chance for a marriage bill to get through both houses next year since it passed in the House, but stalled in the Senate this year.

  2. In my area two very competant and moderate Republicans lost. Sonny Parente, a Hudson Selectman and Arthur Vigeant a popular Marlboro City Councilor. Both had been expected to win.

    <

    p>Bush backlash went all the way down to State Rep races here in Mass.

    <

    p>Huge turnout and many young people voting for Obama, pot and dogs spelled doom for any Republican.

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    p>This election overall is a generational change like 1960.

    <

    p>The country is also experiencing a shift similiar to FDR’s election in 1932 or Reagan’s in 1980.

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    p>What does this mean for Massachusetts? One party rule is not really a good thing. We do need a loyal opposition.

    • 1) we don’t need loyal opposition if it stops good progress of any sort, like on the national Congressional level. Screw dat.

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      p>2) We have plenty of conservatives in the state lege. We can’t even close corporate loopholes without beating the crap out of them for it. Trust me. We have plenty of balance. If I never see the Republican party rise in Massachusetts I’ll be perfectly content. Since they will never convince the Nangles to join them anyway, they are useless.

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      p>And sure, a couple moderates might have lost, but man, how the heck do you run so many wingnuts in a state like MA? Where is this a sane strategy? They should be running more moderate candidates EVERYwhere, and maybe they’d start actually winning some shit for a change. Instead, they lose seats every cycle – not just this “wave” election. Why do you think that is?

      <

      p>The state Republican party seem to want to move Massachusetts to the right (the far right in many cases). Instead, the state Republican party needs to move towards the left.

      <

      p>Maybe they can call it an experiment for rebuilding their pathetic party nationwide.

      • Too many Democratic legislators are afraid to stand up to their leadership. Should not Sal DiMasi be replaced as Speaker. Yes. Will it happen? Let’s hope. When Finneran was made Speaker it was with Republican support. Now I know a lot of folks didn’t like Finneran, but the fact the there were a larger number of Republicans did help to change the leadership. I don’t see that this time.

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        p>Too many Republicans in the state are more like Libertarians. They do not like government and don’t want to pay for it. How does that change? A few Republicans I know in local government do try to make things work and do try to prevent the Town spending money on questionable items and keep prop taxes low, but they know their constituents want services and good schools and bristle at State mandates on certain expenditures.

      • People who embark on an ineffective self-improvement plan rarely respond to their lack of progress by changing the plan. Rather they redouble their (ineffective) efforts and attain failure more strenuously. You can see this phenomenon with diets, exercise, and personal habits.

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        p>So too conservatives. Could the problem with this election possibly be that there was something wrong or too radical about conservatism? No! The problem is that Republicans are not conservative enough. Americans are waiting for true conservatives!

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        p>Expressing a wish for us to refrain from salting GOP wounds, BobParks next door comments

        Beginning last night the Democrat gloating had begun, but we Republicans also have a reason to gloat.

        The Republicans-in-name-only are officially dead

        This view is not universal in Redville but you certainly hear a lot of it. Krugman suggests that this tendency could shrink the Republicans further.

        <

        p>Palin 2012 anyone?

          • is the election only made them more convinced they’re right and everyone else is stupid or gay.

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            p>My favorites:

            <

            p>geo999:

            <

            p>

            Every problem that I can think of here in MA is basically a Democrat problem. They’ve owned the place since I can remember.

            Figurehead Republican Governors can’t balance the majority stranglehold the Democrats have in the legislature and on the bench.

            But the people here seem to like it that way.

            Simple, not too much hard thinking, easy to remember that D comes before R and all that…  easy.

            <

            p>John Howard:

            <

            p>

            Yay for Scott Brown!  Congratulations!  This race was like a little referendum on gay marriage, with Orozco being an out lesbian mom and getting visible support from Bay Windows and other lgbt activists and Brown being known for his opposition to gay marriage.

            <

            p>This diary of John Howard talking to himself about SSM is also amusing.

    • What does this mean for Massachusetts? One party rule is not really a good thing. We do need a loyal opposition.

      <

      p>When we have candidates who, with a straight face, declare parts of the country ‘real’ and other parts of the country ‘not real’.  That’s the opposite of loyal.

      <

      p>Krugman points out the vicious monstrosity of the past 8 years was premised on a vivid understanding that loyalty to liberals, in or out of power, was superflous.

      • I think Krugman is a bit over the edge. “Monsters” is a bit harsh. Failed policies and a misunderstanding of the country is more like it. I knew Bush had lost it when he told Americans to “go shopping” after 9/11.

        <

        p>As to the real and not real comments. Maybe Ms. Palin meant it as you think, but I see as a disconnect between rural America and citified America. If you travel in rural America, as I have, you will meet a lot more Palins than Krugmans.

        • *[new] Misunderstood (0.00 / 0)

          I think Krugman is a bit over the edge. “Monsters” is a bit harsh. Failed policies and a misunderstanding of the country is more like it. I knew Bush had lost it when he told Americans to “go shopping” after 9/11.

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          p>”A bit harsh”, it ought to be noted, isn’t antithetical to “the truth”.  The truth, it is often said, hurts.

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          p>I think Krugman is spot on. It’s Bush, et al, who’ve driven us over that edge: Rove is a monster; Delay is a monster; Cheney is a monster.

          <

          p>Bush… maybe not a monster himself, but he is certainly surrounded and supported by monsters.  A monster enabler.

          <

          p>

  3. It’s hard for me to get the big picture from morning newspaper reports.   Did the Republicans gain or lose any seats in the state Senate?

  4. It really is pretty shocking how the Republican Party has disintegrated in New England over the past decade or so. All US House seats in New England are now Democratic, and Democrats now control the State Houses and Senates in all six states, some by massive margins (indeed, Republicans in Rhode Island managed to lose at least 8 of their 13 seats in the 75-member House!).

    <

    p>Some of this has to do with Bush’s reverse coattails, certainly. And certain respected GOP moderates are still out there, like Susan Collins and Jim Douglas. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that for Republicans to have a presence in New England they have to have a true break with the national party (kind of what Bill Weld understood when he endorsed Obama). This will be especially true over the next 4 years or so, now that the remaining Republicans in Congress are even more conservative and are likely to have a big blowout internal argument about whether they need to move even further to the right.

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    p>Back when Bernie Sanders ran for Senate in VT, the Dems essentially conspired to support him as an independent even as he criticized Republicans and Dems alike…I’m not saying that N.E. Republicans would be better off just running as independents, but they probably need to work out some sort of arrangement where they can still coordinate with the national party on logistics (money and volunteers, etc.) but provide these quasi-independent Republicans ample opportunity to attack Dems and (national) Republicans alike.

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    p>Nationally it was a bad, though perhaps not worst-case scenario, for Republicans in Congress since they did over-perform in some areas. But in New England they were destroyed. A lot of interesting soul-searching for Yankee Repubs over the next few years…

    • Might be right paul. In the Marlboro District an Independent candidate (Joe V) got 10% add that to Vigeant’s votes and Vigeant would of won. Maybe if one of those two had dropped out and the other had run as an Independent????????

      <

      p>Certainly voters would have to look more carefully at the issues then decide. Easy to pick when D vs R and you don’t like the Rs.

    • from the Southern Baptism pro-Bush Republicans who bring them nothing but negative baggage. Maybe they should rename themselves Conservatives.

      • after all, the New England consensus is for government to stay out of our personal lives… marriage equality, no gov’t God in the public square, pro choice, and according to Question 2, interested in lesser drug restrictions.

        <

        p>The fight is over taxes and regulations, so the New England GOP ought to just work with the libertarians and focus on small gov’t on the fiscal side.

        <

        p>It’s got to work better than 16/160 in the state lege, right?

        • I highly doubt that officials at the LPMA have any interest in cooperating with the MassGOP.  Having worked with and been in contact with Republicans and Libertarians alike, I have taken in a number of important impressions.

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          p>First, of the 16 Republican state representatives in the next General Court session, one-fourth of them (four) are from Worcester County.  The suburbs of Worcester (specifically Holden, Auburn, Grafton, and Shrewsbury) are likely to be the main enduring hotbeds of limited government support.  Also, the chair of the LPMA, George Phillies, is a professor at WPI.  Thus, Central Massachusetts is likely to be the centre (no pun intended) of fiscal discipline in the Commonwealth.

          <

          p>The most prominent Republican activists in the area, as seen through the activities and the weblog of the Worcester County Republican Club, are your typical arch-conservatives.  Their ranks include a number of SoCons, who emphasize that portion of their experiences.  On the other hand, George Phillies expressed his displeasure at losing the Libertarian nomination for president to Bob Barr by explaining that his delegates had a difficult time supporting Barr due to his previous activities as a Southern Republican US representative.  He said something along the lines of “My delegation is majority pagan,” referring to the Libertarian State Committee.  In other words, the primary composition of the LPMA is of “godless heathens” (that’s a paraphrase).  I don’t think George Phillies wants anything to do with Worcester Republicans, or Republicans in general.

          <

          p>Thus, the likelihood of what you state is not particularly high.  But that’s just my view.

    • You’d think that the GOP in Mass and elsewhere in New England could try a strong message of GOOD GOVT REFORM, ANTI-CORRUPTION, CHECKS and BALANCES, FISCAL PRUDENCE (but not insanity like Question 1) and better SUPPORT FOR LOCAL GOVT/COMMUNITIES.  Yet, those issues sadly lack the bite of the welfare, crime and tax triuvirate that so propelled them in the early 1990s.  Resentment and reaction have been GOP currencies since the 1960s – although the old style GOP (pre-culture war) used to include a lot of reformist/good govt types.

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      p>As Lynne points out, they continually run on social issues and against state taxation when Massachusetts is increasingly socially liberal and the tax angst seems most aimed at property taxes and not state ones.  And the big tent dems are pretty fiscally tight themselves – leaving little openings for an anti-tax message to gain much traction.

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      p>Essentially the Mass GOP has no agenda that I can point to.  No message.  And the wider Republican brand is so tarnished its hard for them to recruit solid moderates for state politics. Who wants to be associated with these guys these days.

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      p>They got to get back to some basics and fight hard within the national party for a place for socially/fiscally moderate politics.  Otherwise they are screwed.  

      <

      p>They need a 10-20 yr plan but at this point don’t know where they want to be in a year let alone down the road.

  5. …for Republicans when they screwed with they House leadership and elected Finneran Speaker and he proceeded to crush them and chase their Governor’s away. They are getting what they deserve.  

  6. Republicanism and then saw yours.  Its not just a Massachusetts phenom.  There are now no Republicans representing New England in the US House of Representatives. Brutal.

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