There’s an amusingly defensive post by MA GOP chair Jenn Nassour over at RMG. Basically, she tries to explain how one of the greatest humiliations the MA GOP has ever suffered – a total wipeout at every level above the state House of Representatives in a year of historic Republican gains everywhere else in the U.S. – was actually a good thing for the party. Perhaps her early training was in gymnastics.
Anyway, I was struck by an off-topic comment on that thread, from an anonymous user called “LawyerBC93”:
Is there a place in the Mass GOP for me?
I am fed up with the complaining in Massachusetts and am considering a run for state rep in my area in 2012. The current rep has been sitting unchallenged for many years and is a Democrat. I am registered as a Democrat but have been registered unenrolled when I remember to change my affiliation. Is there a place for someone like me in the Mass GOP? Here’s my position on some issues:
Generally pro-choice, I oppose partial-birth abortion
Anti-death penalty under any circumstances
Pro physician assisted suicide under some circumstances
Generally Pro Second Amendment -Strongly oppose Obamacare, although I favor a state sponsored universal health insurance plan
Believe in equal legal rights for gay couples, believe the debate over “marriage” or “civil-unions” elevates form over substance
Support any government support earmarked for Veterans
Oppose reinstating the Bush tax cuts on capital gains, don’t know enough about the rest of his cuts to comment
Support lowering sales tax to 5%, 3% was too low
Support Proposition 2 1/2
Oppose MCAS and believe Ted Kennedy’s No Child Left Behind Act is ruining public schools and is another example of elevating form over substance
Believe president Clinton’s Adoption and Safe Families Act destroys families and costs more money than it saves, money which should be spent reuniting families by teaching bad parents how to be good parents
I am a thirty-something home owning, married, mother of young children, with an advanced degree who is gainfully employed. Is the Mass GOP the place for me?
by: lawyerbc93 @ Thu Nov 04, 2010 at 09:53:40 AM CDT
The response from her fellow RMGers was decidedly mixed. For many, her pro-choice and anti-death penalty views are non-starters. Most likely, her anti-capital gains tax cut and anti-MCAS stances also won’t go over big on the other side of the aisle.
So I hereby extend an invitation to LawyerBC93: come back to the Democratic party. Your views on “social issues” are far more consistent with us than with them. And your views on fiscal issues seem to me to fit comfortably within the Democratic mainstream. Not everyone would agree with cutting the sales tax to 5% immediately, though I think everyone wants to get it there sooner rather than later. But that’s a relatively minor issue. I’d be interested to know more about your views on MCAS and education policy – if you oppose MCAS and NCLB, as many Dems do, what do you support?
I don’t know who your current state rep is, but there are a good number of incumbents who are more than ready for a primary challenge. It’s hard to win a primary, but it’s also hard to knock off an entrenched incumbent in the general. So you have a tough row to hoe either way.
One more thing: based on what you’ve already posted at RMG, yes, you would be too liberal for Barbara Anderson.
I hope you’ll stop by here. I think we’d have a lot to talk about!
Elsewhere he called yesterday the most humiliating day in the history of the MAss GOP
but I have to say Romney’s (hilarious) push for House seats, failing to win a single one, took the cake. It was the embarrassment that, I think, drove him out of the state.
But not winning after “projecting confidence” is what politicians do.
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p>How the hell has Chris Van Hollen kept a straight face for the last month? Well, he was doing his job.
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p>The fact is that Democrats in Massachusetts got pushed harder this time than at any time I can remember in 20 years.
has been decidedly cooler than the reception on RMG.
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p>I think it is likely that the posters on these sites tend to skew toward the wing of their party (RMG posters more conservative, esp. on social issues, than most MA Republicans, and BMG posters more liberal), so this may not be all that enlightening.
Richard A. Jolitz hit the nail on the head:
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p>The current Republican Party is controlled by extremists, sadly.
Pro Second Amendment?
Oppose partial birth abortion?
Prop 2 1/2?
The “marriage/civil union” debate elevates form over substance
Lower the sales tax to 5%?
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p>
I think that the Republican’s “kids table” and the Democrat’s “kids table” are actually the same table, and the adult’s don’t care, as long as their kids come home when they are called on election day. What we need is a revolution of the kids table, because the supposed adults are not just extremists, they are also allies in maintaining the status quo as they force us to plod along wasting time and effort to keep their radical agendas alive. I say screw their radical agendas.
The independent table.
not to mention inaccurate.
Your response may have helped define that.
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p>You MAY be welcome, kinda sorta, BUT if we don’t like your terminology, then no soup for you!
but decided against it. That someone used the same term here, in their own post about their own point, was something that I had to answer to.
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p>Like I said, the term is not only offensive, but it’s wrong. “Partial-birth abortion” makes it sound as if the abortion’s taking place while in labor. That couldn’t be further from the truth. “Late-term abortion” is just a more accurate way of saying the same thing, not to mention less incendiary. You know, I think honest people can disagree on how they feel about late-term abortions, and I respect those who do disagree with my POV on it, but I just don’t respect people who use terms that are designed to either fool or bully others into supporting something they may otherwise not support.
Your point is well-taken, but that’s become the common term for better or worse. My position on the merits is probably closer to yours and I try to remember to say late-term abortion, but sometimes it comes out as partial-birth when it comes up in conversation.
The power to control language is one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of propaganda. The fact that the anti-abortionist movement has been willing and able to replace “late-term abortion” with this awful phrase is testimony to the threat this movement presents.
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p>While I agree that Ryan perhaps over-reacted to the missing quotes in the above comment (it was, after all, a quote), I enthusiastically share his reaction to its use in everyday speech.
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p>The “n-word” is, thankfully, now utterly unacceptable in discussions about race. “Partial-birth abortion” should be similarly unacceptable in discussions about abortion — and its use should similarly brand the speaker as someone to be rightfully ignored.
The Right is better at such things. Witness the constant use of “government schools” instead of what they are “public schools.” Their message control is designed and used repeatedly, and well, to create the false impression that government is an “other”…a “them” and not an “us.”
It’s a discipline-thing. “Don’t Think of an Elephant”.
Or “people from another country sneaking into the US” reform?
I like “death penalty” or “capital punishment”.
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p>How do you feel about “State-sponsored murder”?
The problem with using Murder is the usual legal definition is…
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p>… and what could be more lawful than the “law” executing (pun) the law and we have lots of justification?
The terms “death penalty” or “capital punishment” are relatively neutral terms, suitable for use by sides of a debate about the practice. The analog is “late-term abortion.”
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p>The phrase “state-sponsored murder” is inflammatory. It pre-supposes a moral judgment about the event it attempts to describe. It is, therefore, a term likely to be far more acceptable to those opposed to the death penalty than by those who support it. The analog is “partial-birth abortion”.
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p>Phrases like “death penalty”, “capital punishment”, and “late-term abortion” enable and support civil and courteous debate about important and controversial issues. Phrases like “state-sponsored murder” and “partial-birth abortion” cripple and impede that needed civil and courteous debate.
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p>People and groups who intentionally and habitually use the latter should be ignored.
We have “Pro-life” and “Pro-choice” groups concerning abortion. Now maybe the Pro-choice people would prefer that the Pro-life group rename themselves to “anti-choice” but they are naming themselves “Pro-life” with the purpose of pushing their cause. I have no problem with people using expressions and terms that “they” chose, as long as they are generally acceptable and contain so slurs or profanities. I get what you are saying but I think you are using “your” standard which may not be “the” standard.
It’s another one I would never dream of using myself, but might use it if quoting someone else. In other words I put it in the same category as “damn” or “hell” which I will quote but not initiate rather than the same category as the “f-word” which you’ll notice I won’t spell out though I get the sense based on the language used occasionally in comments that it is actually MORE acceptable here. For the record, I’ve run into a variety of tolerance levels for racial epithet even among those of that race.
for a tremendously traumatic medical procedure that is only performed when absolutely necessary.
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p>I judge those who chose to use such a term harshly–and I do not even know anyone who has had to go through the procedure.
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p>I find it hard to be blase about it.
If it’s not okay to let someone call me a “fag” because “that’s become the common term for better or worse,” then I’m sure as hell not going to watch while people employ offensive terms meant to confuse and bully others. Ditto “illegal immigrant” and other offensive and incorrect right-wing terminology.
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p>That you’re trying to correct yourself is a good thing. I understand it can take time to cut certain words out of our lexicon, but sometimes it’s an important thing to do.
“Fag” I wouldn’t use any more than what is often designated the “n-word”. Both aggregiously offensive. Illegal immigrant I’ve started to move away from, but find less offensive especially since if one did immigrate here illegally by sneaking across the border that would by definition make them an “illegal immigrant”. I definitely try to use a different term, though I’m not sure what, for those who came legally but have over stayed their visas. Of course, I’d love to make the term obsolete in practice by reforming the legal immigration process such that nobody would see the need or have the desire to come here illegally.
Talking about “illegal immigrants”, while generally pointless, is ok (in my book at least) because it is (a) accurate and (b) not dehumanizing. Sadly, those who are most vocal about the “illegal immigrant” problem don’t use that phrase — instead, they habitually refer to “illegals”.
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p>The latter dehumanizes the persons in question. Once they are “illegals”, they cease being “men”, “women”, “children”, “boys”, “girls”, whatever. I heard Archbishop Tutu spoke of this at great length when describing his role in ameliorating the horrific aftermath of apartheid in South Africa (the context was a sermon about how to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict).
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p>Never mind that the offensive aspect of the “illegal immigration problem” is that if there is a problem at all (and I would argue that in Massachusetts, there is not), the problem is most emphatically not the “illegal immigrants” themselves, and is instead virtually every other aspect of the system that creates the situation in question.
I’d need to know more, but at first glance I don’t have a strong beef with her positions. I can respect someone who says “I support Proposition 2.5 because I think that property taxes are a form of taxation that should be limited due to them often being regressive, particularly toward seniors”. That’s different from someone who says “I like Proposition 2.5 because I want government so small I can drown it in a bathtub”.
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p>(Actually Grover Nordquist likes Proposition 2.5 because of its propensity to “sort” people by community, which to me sounds like code for “rich people congregate in rich communities and use government to make their lives better, screw the poor people”).
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p>I would also support lowering the sales tax to 5% once our economy comes back and our reserves get a bit healthier. It’s unfortunate that the act of even discussing taxes (other than to discuss cutting them) has become taboo.
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p>”Pro Second Amendment” can mean many things too. Although I don’t own a gun, I don’t want to repeal the 2nd Amendment. I do, however, think that reasonable limitations on gun ownership — such as preventing the mentally ill and people convicted of violent crimes — are appropriate. I also think that there should be reasonable ways to trace illegal guns, even if that means registering gun buyers, since many illegal guns in this state are funneled by legal buyers in states with few gun laws.
…with primary-ing a Dem incumbent. No guarantees of success, but you risk splitting the vote if you challenge in the general as a third candidate.
I’m tired of this absolutely ridiculous phrasing:
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p>This is the education equivalent of The New Republic asking “if you oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan, as many Dems do, what do you support?” Anyone supporting a radical change on questionable grounds is under obligation to defend their choice, not calling out others to defend theirs.
She’d be right in line with most of the Democratic Reps and Senators in Norfolk, Plymouth, and Bristol Counties.
you’ll have to come in for a little brainwashing. Perry’s Patriots have a lot of time on their hands now, so it will all work out.
Sounds like she is saying she doesn’t care what the name is, calling them “civil unions” is fine with her. But the platform says:
Is she committed to marriage if she thinks it is putting form over substance?
I’m not sure that form/substance is the dichotomy for gay marriage as much as name/object confusion — the logical fallacy of confusing the name of an object with the object itself.
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p>A reality about at least some religions that all sides of the debate are going to have to recognize and somehow accommodate is that no US government will ever successfully force any institutional religion to apply the sacramental aspects of marriage to populations it deems ineligible.
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p>The Catholic church will not recognize the religious validity of a heterosexual marriage between two baptized Catholics when either or both of them are divorced (not annulled, divorced). It is relatively difficult (not impossible, but difficult) for a heterosexual couple to marry within the Episcopal church of one or both of them has been divorced two or more times. Many faith traditions will not recognize or perform marriages where one of the parties is outside that faith tradition. I’m not sure about the legal status of a religious tradition that refuses to recognize or perform interracial marriages between heterosexuals.
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p>I think that an approach in which the state defined “civil union” to mean “all of the rights, privileges, and obligations” of marriage — from a statutory perspective (tax exemptions, health care access, inheritance, and so on), and where the state declared that “marriage” conferred no legal status whatsoever, but was instead a purely religious action (something more like Bar Mitzvah, confirmation, or baptism), gets us 99% of the way home.
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p>I think it would accomplish the object of marriage, and I think that anyone who wanted to could declare themselves “married”. The result would be that every couple, whether hetero or same-sex, would have to appear at town hall or similar civic office to have the civil union formalized. This is only a tiny incremental step beyond the marriage license that is already required. The difference is that in the approach I suggest, no clergy’s signature would ever mean anything.
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p>Once this is in place, then any church may refuse to perform the purely religious ceremony called “marriage” for whatever arbitrary reason they like. So what. Any couple who chooses can gain “all of the rights, privileges and obligations” of marriage whenever they like — perhaps from town hall rather than the church of their choice.
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p>This solves the legal and civic problem. The emotional, spiritual, and personal suffering caused by prejudice against people because of their gender preference cannot be solved by any government.
Get the state out of the marriage business entirely, and leave it with administering the legal ramifications of the contractual rights and obligations and domestic relations of people who enter into such contracts.
I’m pretty sure that MGL Chapter 25 pertains to Public Utilities regulation.
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p>?????
…to THIS instead.
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p>BTW – does anybody else think the new web site SUCKS?
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p>No back budgets. No lists of amendments. No more ability to research.
Wow.
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p>I’m not sure I’m ready to go that far — if nothing else, I think there good biological reasons to prohibit incest.
I would be content with deleting the word “marriage” or its verb, adjective forms and replacing them globally with “civil union.”
Christening?
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p>Marriage is a religious ceremony, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Pagan. The state borrowed the word to describe the institution. The state should just have a gender neutral partnership registration, maybe in the Sec. of State office.
I agree that “marriage” is the wrong word to use in the statutes you cite. In my view, that means we amend that statute to use a different word or phrase (such as “civil union”).
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p>I read your comment as proposing to repeal, rather than amend, the statute.
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p>I think a legitimate public interest is served by ensuring that close biological relatives not make babies, whatever we choose to call the prohibited relationship between them.
Sometimes, trying to fix broken language isn’t worth the trouble. Like 40b.
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p>As far as consanguity goes, it could use an overhaul in the wake of genetic testing.
You know that adopted siblings are also prohibited from marrying, right? It is not just a matter of genetics. And the rare cases where people don’t realize they are half siblings or siblings due to adultery are not something we need to worry that much about, because an occasional unknown incestuous marriage doesn’t pose a significant-enough health risk or social risk to justify genetic testing of all couples seeking marriage.
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p>It is true is a significant problem posed by donor conception, but the answer to that is to end donor conception, not to start genetically testing everyone before they get married so that we can continue to do donor conception. And we should immediately open the records of sperm banks and correct the birth certificates of donor conceived individuals, so that people can know if they are half-siblings. But not by mandatory genetic testing, that’s bad news.
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p>And, for the record, do you think siblings should be allowed to marry? Or, rather, get a “gender neutral partnership registration”?
Some unions were forbidden due to fear of ‘inbreeding’ and birth defect. Now, they test for that.
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p>I hadn’t thought of donor conception, but you’re right. For ages, we have STD testing because it could be a death sentence, but did away with it due to treatment. Maybe we SHOULD do DNA testing – but for birth defects.
It’s more important that everyone be allowed to have children than it is to prevent birth defects. No one is perfect, and going to such an extreme to deny such a basic human right in order to stop birth defects (or to try to, since birth defects would still happen even if we did mandatory testing) just decimates the basis of equality and equal rights and dignity and all that stuff.
You have to guess about the chapters. It was obviously designed by someone who looked for the intuitive organization in the green books, but has never had any occasion to actually refer to a statute. A surprising waste of money for such an un-improvement.
For all the reasons already listed.
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p>And if “Kayak Safety” is really among the most popular searches (as the website says), it’s probably because the search engine is sending people there regardless of their request. While we’re at it, why bother with a “most popular” list anyway?
Did they improve anything about it? They should go back to the old one.
And most conservatives and Republicans I know do as well. This is eventually where we need to go. That said, gay marriage has worked towards those same goals at the state level without the radical change in peoples cultural conception about marriage. The irony is were we to change some gays on the left and a lot on the right would be chanting ‘get government out of marriage’ when in reality that is exactly what we are trying to do!
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p>To me marriage is ultimately a religious and social institution and should remain in those institutions. Everyone, gay, straight, transgendered, what have you, should get a civil union from their JoP that gives basic rights. I am all for ENDING all the privileges married people get, particularly tax breaks and the like, since again it seems like government trying to interfere with culture one way or the other. Marriage is not for everyone and I don’t even like libertarian paternalism in the form of incentives, and I especially don’t like them if the government does have a cultural bias in extending those incentives towards just one segment of the population.
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p>To the social cons I say I agree with you and disagree with you. I agree that the Church definition of marriage is most important to me, and it currently (in my denomination) does not cover gay persons and I do not think it should at this time. Where I disagree is this feeling of lost they have when a civil institution that a)they just said doesn’t matter to them and b) according to my denomination is in fact not accepted by the church as even a relevant institution somehow changes. Its essentially a proxy fight for those that want to re-criminalize gay sex but realize that position puts them outside the current mainstream. The other irony is they think big government is evil and incompetent except when it comes to defending the Christian understanding of marriage. But I have a lot of friends in the Federalist Society, and have debated them on this issue, and the next generation of conservatives will either follow Ted Olsen’s lead or take the position you are articulating. But few conservatives my age, even evangelicals, honestly care how government defines marriage.
It is expensive. ASFA destroys families.
I don’t see this as a total wipeout, one of the worst humiliations the Republican party has ever experienced. The last election produced no Republican members of Congress from MA, and no statewide constitutional officers. Nothing new there. This election increased the state House by, what, 15 new members? That’s pretty good. Yes, they were arrogant in their belief that they would grab several US House seats, and most of the statewide offices, and in that it is a big slapdown, but otherwise, no. BTW, I’m a partisan Democrat who’s happy about the state outcome, and not some kneejerk apologist for the Republican party.
remember, Deval Patrick was ‘dead on arrival.’ There was talk from the punditry that he should step aside and not run again. Charlie Baker was going to be the next Mitt Romney and come sweeping in here as ‘the guy who fixes things’ and win a convincing victory. None of it happened.
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p>If the election was even close, maybe I’d agree with you. That Baker was an embarrassment to Republicans, and that they couldn’t even get the low-hanging fruit (2 congresscritter seats and the auditor’s position) adds to the embarrassment.
I’ll have to see how many of those 17 or so new Republican state Reps hold on to their seats in 2012 when a larger presidential-level electorate shows up. If they do, well, then it’s something they can build on. If not, then even these relatively modest 2010 victories were a fluke.
Independent of the party you are pretty sure going to be re-elected. Unless you commit a felony and sometimes even then 🙁
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The state GOP raised a lot of money, had a lot of grassroots support, had a lot of national support in these races, and the Scott Brown victory increased all of that even more. Every state office was competitive, lots of house and senate races were as well. And the GOP got creamed. The big problem the GOP has is that it occasionally finds politically talented and compelling personalities (Weld, Cellucci, Romney, and Brown) that win races and even win them big, but it can never expand beyond those individual races into a more concerted effort at going beyond personality and really building a Republican brand in MA. Had the GOP, even locally, not been hijacked by the tea party I would love to build that brand since it is obvious this state needs a fiscally conservative and socially moderate alternative to the Hack-Prog alliance that has dominate the state. And I honestly think a Prog-GOP alliance, not unlike the Con-LibDem coalition in Britain, is the best way forward for the state. But as soon as the MASS GOP becomes a big tent and gets over its knee jerk fear of working with Democrats, then I think it can do well.
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p>An interesting parallel is in Tip O’Neill’s autobiography and his slow strategy of chipping away at a then, impregnable GOP House majority, to become state Speaker and preside over a majority that has yet to go away. It worked because he won over the younger GOP members and convinced them that he would be a fairer and more transparent speaker than the bosses in their own party, he forged alliances with culturally conservative GOPers and Catholic Democrats to overturn the socially liberal Brahmin establishment, and he also focused on tailoring the right candidate for the right district. He literally spent the summer before the election driving through Western MA and finding WASPy Democrats who were well respected local officials and convincing them to run, and by challenging more races and getting a bigger spread he was able to beat the spread so to speak and get some of those guys elected out in places that still fondly remembered when their local pol Coolidge became Gov and President. Real yankee areas.
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p>Anyway if the GOP did that it could do real well. Perry and Hudak were DOA IMO. Hedlund and Cousins/Healey/Tarr were much better fits for those districts. Meas was the better candidate to field in the 5th. But go over to RMG and once again its the factions fighting, the Rockefeller wing, the libertarian wing, the social conservative wing, and they will never get along.
It seems to me that the Massachusetts State Government has now become essentially a branch of the democratic party. You really own it, and there are some serious issues on the horizon in particular the budget which you are not going to be able to blame on anyone else.
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p>I still incredulous about Mary Z. Connaughton losing, a candidate with serious tax problems has become auditor. Sorry but the system is broken, people are just voting D without thinking.
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Was right.
then the minority party which has been AWOL for a generation, has to take the blame. There’s no reason why a decent Republican candidate shouldn’t be able to win regularly in many of these districts, except that the party hasn’t cared to bother. They’ve always been interested in the corner office and a celebrity candidate instead.
Democrats have entrenched themselves for decades in a corrupt, back-scratching system, and this is the Republicans fault? That is worth a spit-take right there.
have seats gone uncontested? They can’t expect to win more seats if they don’t even try. Sure an entrenched incumbent is nearly impossible to unseat, but it’s not impossible. Capuano ran unopposed. Save for the write in race of McKenna (sp?) Coakley would have run unopposed. Those are two big seats not to have a candidate for. Perhaps the results of this election will encourage more to challenge.
but the tendency to insist that they lost because of stupid voters, and not because voters did not see your candidate as an answer to their needs simply reeks of sour grapes. You’ve married your own arguments.
No the voters aren’t stupid – but I think Jeff Perry would have been elected if he had a D after his name, that is just plain depressing. BTW I didn’t check all “R” and you shouldn’t just check “D”.
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p>Our new auditor, who is supposed to pay attention to how our government is operated has tax problems and was Labor Secretary under the person she is suppose to audit ?
have gotten through the primary if he had a D after his name. Both his character and his ideology would have prevented him from being a Democratic candidate for Congress. But even taking away the extreme right wing ideology, and this scumbag wouldn’t have won a primary with his police record. This is why the news media was so enamored with Sean Bielat. He wasn’t a scumbag or a nutjob (Hudak), so they could call him “the new Scott Brown.” Hopefully, Brown can now become the new Sean Bielat in 2012.
It’s not just the fact that things were as bad as usual for the MA GOP. It’s that they were as bad as usual, if not worse, in a historic year for Republicans.
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p>I’m happy to consider other candidates for the greatest humiliation ever suffered by the MA GOP – really, I am! 😉 I’d just like to know what the candidates are.
The irony is basic progressive electoral reforms like clean elections, like IRV, like decreasing ballot sig requirements and voter registration requirements, would probably benefit the GOP and for the long run. Unfortunately, the GOP is ideologically pure first and would never toe away from the national party line. All election season you were equating Baker and Palin David, and I defended him right until last August when he did not have the basic courage to repudiate the birther and sex offender running on his ticket. Not only is such a spineless wimp undeserving of being our Governor, but it demonstrates even a moderate Republican in this state, still has to toe the far right party line. It has lead to short term gains, but they were mostly in the South and the Midwest, places the GOP does strong anyway, and in some cases part of longer term trends. But they still will not be competitive in the Northeast unless they allow for party diversity. Our state races, and the region as a whole, have been viewed as bright spots for the Dems and the GOP really should have had some of these races.
All due respect, jconway, that’s BS. I don’t recall ever “equating Baker and Palin.” If you can prove me wrong, please do so, but otherwise please try to get your facts right.
… (but honesty, should stop being surprised) at the continued revelations of offense on the right to slights never actually given. Even small, dis-reputed, minorities on the left that give slights generate offense to tar everyone right of Evan Bayh.
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p>That this phenomenon of ‘taking offense to these non-slights on behalf of the non-left’ is demonstrated in the moderate left is even more troubling.
and don’t really perceive him to be on the “right”
… him as ‘right’ but rather ‘moderate left’ which is why I added that last sentence. The right has elevated victimhood to a virtual profession and they repeat their victimhood so much in the media (friendly and unfriendly alike) that they’ve been able to establish this as a ‘big lie’ to the point where even those on the moderate left start to buy it. The case above is illustrative because the repetition left a moderate lefty with enough of a strong impression that it created actual ‘transference’… making the mental leap from ‘it actually happened’ to ‘it actually happened and David (or other editors) did it’.
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p>The impression is so strong that it’s just assumed. While this wouldn’t be surprising for those on the right having got their news from Fox, but the fact that this can infect even the moderate left to this degree is somewhat alarming.
I think David is right and agree with him about making a big tent, even locally. It is obvious toeing the tea party line has lead to some short term gains, but not in MA. Unfortunately the BrooklineDems and Ryepowers of the world want to impose the same kind of rigid, ideological purity tests on candidates on our side of the fence. And while their principles are laudable and consistent, even if I disagree with some of them, as a strategy for building a better party and reversing Tuesdays results, its a recipe for disaster. The 1972 and 1984 conventions expunged all moderates and conservatives from the Democratic party and lead to massive landslide losses that allowed for destructive presidencies to continue. Putting up a challenger to Obama’s left, as some have called and even some recently ex-Senators have hinted at, is not the way forward. Calling voters stupid is not the way forward. And saying a perfectly socially moderate and independently minded woman has no place in the Democratic party unless she toes the line on every issue, is similarly short sighted and small minded and leads to bad results.
You wrote:
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p>I think we should ignore her comments on abortion, because of her use of the gratuitously-inflammatory phrase “partial-birth abortion.” That is hardly a “rigid, ideological purity test”.
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p>Your summary of the 1972 and 1984 Democratic conventions is pure malarky. The only people the Democrats rejected in 1972 were segregationist racists from the deep South (who were welcomed with open arms to the GOP, where they remain today). Those were hardly “moderates” or “conservatives”. I have no clue where you got your information, but I think you need to re-examine your sources.
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p>I lived through those years. Did you?
I probably wouldn’t vote for her, though. I guess you could call that an “ideological purity test,” but it’s one that each and every one of us employs at some point or another. I don’t think that’s wrong — do you?
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p>I have to admit, I’ve run full circle in what I think it takes to build a successful coalition. About 4-5 years ago, I thought we needed to go the route of a more honest/decent version of what Karl Rove was doing — just on the left. More hard-lined, etc. Then I shifted toward the “more and better” approach — winning with whatever it took in the hopes that larger majorities would translate into an overall larger ability to pass bills that would meet my standards.
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p>Since Obama’s been in office, though, I’ve gone back a little toward the other direction — “more and enough” is my new catch phrase — because a lot of those extra democrats actually hindered our ability to pass good bills.
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p>I still think we need to elect Democrats that suit their districts, but in the case of a lot of Blue Dogs, they weren’t really doing that. The people who they were moving toward the right for wasn’t their constituents — it was their favorite corporations. This is probably why roughly half of them lost reelection, while only 4 out of 80 members of the progressive caucus did.
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p>We don’t need corporate shills. There are plenty center-left Democrats out there who aren’t corporate hacks and who are proud to be Democrats, who will do the right thing on issues that are important to their constituents, which is often going to coincide with doing the right thing in general.
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p>Case in point — Joe Sestak, who nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the cycle — has a pretty darn moderate background in Congress, but he’s not afraid of being a Democrat and he’s not a hack for the corporations. He got $10 from me this cycle, the only out-of-state candidate I sent a donation. I think there’s a decent chunk of democrats out there who fit this description — compare and contrast Senator Tester to Senator Nelson, and I’ll take Senator Tester any day of the week… and so would his constituents, I imagine.
She sounds like a thoughtful, well reasoned, woman with integrity, I for one can think of no better qualification for being a Democrat.
LawyerBC93 appears to be a classic case of what George Lakoff calls a political bi-conceptual. She lists off positions on both sides and in another comment does a better job of liberal/progressive messaging than most Democratic politicians:
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p>Unless you are locked into the “you have to pay for your sins” (and your child and child’s children have to pay also) mindset, this should grab you.
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p>I’d take her over some of the Blue Dogs and conservaDems we have now.
I am a lurker here, and over at RMG.
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p>That said, I sympathize with LawyerBC93. As a kid in college I had trouble picking a party. My views are easy enough to determine, but figuring out where they put me is harder. This task is only made harder with different parties having different wings, or differences between the state and national parties, or worse as the parties re-invent themselves every few years.
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p>Can the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, or Goldwater, really be compared with that of George Bush? Is it fair to even attempt to compare the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton to that of Barack Obama?
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p>Ultimately I chose to put aside my personal liberal beliefs in favor a strong libertarianism which left me a Republican. But I can’t deny that I feel uncomfortable attending GOP events standing next to pro-life social conservatives.
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p>One commentator said something to the effect that the Tea Party had once again made it safe for Libertarians in the GOP. However the guy I was standing next to on Saturday asked me what I thought of Rand Paul and the CA Governor’s race.
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p>For people like LawyerBC93 and myself, we can only hope and wait for the days of moderate-liberal yankee republicans to come again. People like George H.W. Bush (Sr), David Souter, Senator Snow (R-Me), and prior republicans from Massachusetts like Edward Brooke and Joseph Martin give us that hope. Provided that people like the George Bush crowd don’t edge out the moderates.
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p>If nothing else, I can safely say that I have never seen a strong move to “purify” the Democratic Party like has happened with the Republicans. The Progressives have made their peace with the Reagan Democrats, and for better or worse, the Democrats have always been more willing to work with liberal Republicans than the GOP with conservative Democrats.
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p>For now, the best we can say is that we do it better in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the nation.
I can’t imagine a time when moderate liberal Yankee Republicans might walk the political Earth again. They sleep with the dinosaurs. OTOH, who could have imagined that the Republican party would risen from the dead like an evil Lazarus so quickly after the 2008 elections, so I guess stranger things have happened?