Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

The Slow Death of New England Republicanism

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Their old bulwark in the Granite State was shattered again following its recent trend to the blue side.  Shaheen won her rematch with Sununu and his family history (father to son) in the state easily.  Governor Lynch had a cakewalk to another term.  McCain, whose two greatest political victories, were made in New Hampshire was creamed there and it was called early.

Maine maintains Collins and Snowe in the Senate, the last vestiges of a regional Republicanism clearly in a ceaseless decline.  Chris Shays, the last Republican in the House went down after holding on barely in 2002/4.  No Republicans in the House from the whole six state region.  None.  Tragic for a party that built itself here for years.

I mean just look back in time. In 1932 – Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut were among the six states Franklin Roosevelt lost in his landslide 1932 victory over Herbert Hoover. In 1936, only Maine and Vermont voted against Roosevelt.

And Bloomberg reported today that in 1973, 18 of New England’s 25 House members — and five senators — were Republicans.  When President George W. Bush came into office in 2001, Republicans held five House seats and six of 12 Senate seats. In 2006, four Republican House members were ousted. There are four Senate Republicans (and they can’t feel safe for the long-term, see Gregg, Judd).

While us Democrats have started to crack into the solid south – winning Virginia and hopefully NC.  The Republicans are rapidly fading as an electoral force east of the Hudson (or really northeast of the Susquehanna).  The west is changing our way – Nevada was an unexpected whooping last night.  Save for the depopulating plains and the Dixie vestige, the Republican Party is in retreat.

So can New England Republicanism ever be reborn?  Will the national party, increasingly dominated by the Palin-wing, let it?  

Beacon Hill would seem to present some ripe targets given the recent corruption scandals and the economic/fiscal crisis facing the state.  You’d think Torkildsen and Co. could make some progress with a good government/need for oversight and accountability message – and yet they seem incapable of delivering it.  With such a thin bench (drawing too many one-issue ideologues/cranks with no chance) and the Republican brand anathema in our state, their fight is not an easy one no matter how many scandals occur under the Dome.  

I’d have said it couldn’t get any worse after Deval clocked Muffy in 2006 and the no-longer GOP lost more seats in the legislature.  But maybe their terminal trajectory will continue in our state until they’re not only completely irrelevant but maybe fully bageled here as well.  Chris Shays – a real moderate couldn’t swim against the tide forever.  They are officially bageled now in Congress in our region.  

So who knows? The death of their party may continue unabated in its once proud homeland.  Time will tell.

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Comments

  1. There are several response strands:

    1. The libertarians are chomping at the bit to be given speaking roles in the new Republican Party. To me, that doesn’t look as if it will happen any time soon. Ron Paul’s following is devoted but small in number.
    2. The true believers in the party have the counter-intuitive idea that Bush wasn’t “really” a conservative — and McCain isn’t “really” a conservative. These people seem to believe that if they’d run someone with Gingrich’s politics but without his faults, the GOP would keep the White House. This is like an ancient debate about essences. What is the essence of conservatism? Who has it?
    3. I read suggestions “next door” that Republicans simply cannot expect the socially conservative brand to win in Massachusetts. Again, this is problematic for them. Social conservatives are out to make the country righteous. What? They’re going to sit on their hands as sin sweeps the state. Don’t think so.
    4. Next door, Vote3rdpartynow proposes abandoning the effort for a couple years. Let the Democrats dig their own hole. Then move in for the win. (Where did that sunny Reagan optimism go?) It’s our duty to make sure that Democrats govern smashingly well, so our colleague must find a different return route.

    • 1) That’s why we need to co-op SOME of those Paulites–and let them help us end our foriegn policy overreaches and beef up our personal liberties creed.  Their energy could spark a rebirth.

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      p>2) Let them keep thinking that way and all we need to do is remind folks what 30 years of Reagan/Bush/Bush did to the national debt and how conserative fiscal responiblity is a myth.

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      p>3) Our best hope is squeeze out the moderates like Powell, Weld and David Brooks of the world–along with some paulites–and let the hard core soccons and neocons control a smaller, less tolerate and weaker party.

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      p>4) If we blow it, they’ll be back.  So I’m with you…WE need to keep the pressure on our folk not to screw this up.  We can control “the table” for the next 4 years of the next 40 years, it’s up to us.

      • He (she?) is right that they need to change the narrative that defines the party, but the specifics he offers are not much of a redefinition.  All he did was omit religion and sum up all other policy areas as ‘we’re against liberals’.

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        p>Not exactly high-brow stuff.

  2. There are four Senate Republicans (and they can’t feel safe for the long-term, see Gregg, Judd).

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    p>Are you counting Joe Lieberman in that?

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    p>ME: 2 GOP
    NH: 1 GOP, 1 Dem
    CT: 0 GOP, 2 Dem
    RI: 0 GOP, 2 Dem
    VT: 0 GOP, 1 Dem, 1 Socialist
    CT: 0 GOP, 1 Dem, 0 Socialist, 1 CT4Lieberman

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    p>

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    p>Me, I’m hoping that the progressives can get some good candidates in Democratic primaries in 2010 for the Lege.  Let’s knock out some of the DINOs while re-electing DP.

    • Just to nitpick, Sanders is not a member of the “Socialist” Party. He does consider himself a “Democratic Socialist,” but that’s an ideological group whose members belong to various parties; it is not a party itself. He was elected as an independent, not the nominee of any party.

      • AMY GOODMAN: This weekend, I went to Vermont, and I spoke to Bernie Sanders in the cafeteria of the local Montpelier high school, where he was having a pre-victory rally. Hundreds turned out for the free meal. I asked him what it meant to be the first socialist senator.

        REP. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, before we worry about that, what we’re excited about is that we’ve been holding a series of rallies all over the state. And I’m guessing that right here in Montpelier, Vermont, we’re going to have 400 or 500 people way up in the Northeast Kingdom, a conservative part of our state. We had 300 people earlier today. So there is a tremendous amount of momentum, I think, in the state of Vermont, where people are going to stand up and say, “Enough of Bush, enough of Cheney, enough of rightwing Republican leadership.” And I believe that this small state may well lead, be a leader in this country, in moving us to a whole different level and a whole different set of priorities.

        In terms of socialism, I think there is a lot to be learned from Scandinavia and from some of the work, very good work that people have done in Europe. In countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, poverty has almost been eliminated. All people have healthcare as a right of citizenship. College education is available to all people, regardless of income, virtually free. I have been very aggressive in trying to move to sustainable energy. They have a lot of political participation, high voter turnouts. I think there is a lot to be learned from countries that have created more egalitarian societies than has the United States of America.

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        p>http://www.democracynow.org/20…

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        p>

        • I agree, he’s a “socialist” in terms of ideology (specifically a “democratic socialist”). My point was that he’s not a member of the capital-S “Socialist” party.

  3. using “us v. them” language.

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    p>Obama said last night in his acceptance speech:

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    p>

    And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

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    p>and I urge everyone to remember that.  

  4. John McCain managed to win only a single county in New England — Piscataquis County in North/Central Maine.

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    p>Even Dole managed to win at least two counties in the region (in New Hampshire).

  6. something everyone including me seems to have overlooked, until I saw the map in today’s Globe.

    • It is really the last bastion of the GOP in the region.  People like having a moderate Republican in the State House to counter their overwhelmingly Democratic legislatures.  Now if only we had any credible moderate Republicans left in Massachusetts…

    • But they were both at/near their positions before the GOP was so, so toxic.  The question is: could any local politicians become elected to a state lege / state office with the GOP brand in New England… that’s a much tougher row to hoe.

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      p>

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      p>So far as I can tell, the only way the New England Republican Party can survive in the near future is to make it clear that they split from the national party on a number of issues as a party.  If they ran commercials that clearly stated that the New England Republican Parties did not subscribe to gay bashing, that they didn’t believe that it was reasonable to fear brown skinned people, that science should be taught Monday through Friday and religion on the weekends, that the Earth ought to be loved… if they did that they would still maintain fundamental Yankee conservative values of frugality and small government and not be so damned repulsive in the mean time.  I’m not suggesting that they need to [or should] co-opt Democratic positions on labor, on abortion, on taxes, or on social services.  Frankly, I’d prefer that they didn’t, and I’m not under any impression that they would.

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      p>The Democrats stopped pressing on gun issues nationally because, frankly, it was a huge loser in the wide open spaces.  Where tight gun control is a winner locally, the Dems push on it locally.  The Republicans really need to do the same, either by controlling themselves nationally [unlikely] or by publicly and officially disassociating from that nonsense regionally/locally.

  7. To the state — to cut down on corruption, to have a little bit of a dialog.  Has all the relevant voting in Mass been moved to the primaries?  The problem is that any party calling itself Republican is currently doomed to failure even by association.  There’s always another perspective and even another set of ideals that would split our voters into two even-sized pieces.  That tension and competition of ideas is what enlivens us.  

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