I don’t recall Republican Karyn Polito being a fire-breathing right-winger during her time as a State Representative. Further, she ran a fairly credible campaign for Treasurer, ultimately losing 55-45 after a mini-scandal over specialty license plates, among other setbacks.
Despite her 10-point loss, she has remained a visible ambassador for the Massachusetts Republican Party, including helping out with Gabriel Gomez’s outreach to women. It’s rumored that, despite her 10-point loss in 2010, she might be considering another run at statewide office in 2014; and, given MassGOP’s short bench, she could probably walk to a statewide nomination.
Of course, one of the challenges Massachusetts Republicans have faced is being tied to a far-right-wing national Republican Party. For instance, even though former State Senator Richard Tisei’s personal platform was relatively moderate, Democrats succeeded in tying him to the national Republican Party, the Tea Party, and Speaker John Boehner, who a Congressman Tisei would potentially support, arguably validating the strategy.
Given that Massachusetts Republicans largely have to shun the national Republican Party – and most definitely the Tea Party – in order to have a shot at victory for Constitutional or federal office in the Bay State, who can explain this event coming up on August 15 in Stoughton?
The “Citizen Patriot” Award was created in 2012 to honor great American’s who truly represent the principles that this country was founded on – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
No single individual is more deserving than our inaugural recipient, LTC, Congressman Allen West. Join us this year as Allen passes the torch to another individual who represents the essence of “We the People”, former Massachusetts State Representative, Karyn Polito.
For those who may not recall former Congressman West of Florida, he was one of the most vocal members of the Tea Party, having been elected to Congress in the 2010 Tea Party wave. He was then voted out of office in his first re-election bid in 2012. West offered up numerous offensive and embarrassing moments during his two-year tenure. Among the highlights:
As an Army lieutenant colonel, former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) was relieved of his command, fined $5,000 and eventually allowed to retire in order to avoid court martial for allegedly abusing a prisoner in Iraq. Upon entering Congress, West emerged as one of the body’s top Islamophobes. He also compared food stamps and Social Security to slavery, opposed early voting as an “entitlement,” claimed 80 House Democrats were “members of the Communist Party,” and called Obama supporters a “threat to the gene pool.”
This is who will be “passing the torch” to Karyn Polito. Maybe Polito intends to never again seek elected office. Maybe she does, and just hopes no one will care that she’s standing shoulder to shoulder with a divisive, delusional right-wing extremist like Allen West. But for a state GOP whose chances at success have been predicated in part on distance from the national GOP, events like this aren’t helpful. If Polito does decide to run for office in 2014, I wonder if she’ll invite former Congressman West to stump for her.
Party of Lincoln? Please don’t start that again(1+ / 0-) View voters
The Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln – today, it is the party of racists, xenophobes and know-nothings. Lincoln is long forgotten.
johnt001 @ Thu 1 Aug 2:31 PM
Reply
Or Charlie Rangle calling Tea Party folks “white crackers” who fought against civil rights.
So West gave it back to Dems, awe…ain’t that too bad. Don’t question Col. West’s service in Iraq. People who watched the war from the comfort of their couch should not criticize how a soldier fought and protected his platoon, unless you volunteered to take his place over there.
And if a Democrat in a deep red state, who wished to run for office in that state, accepted an award that was characterized as the passing of a torch from Charles Rangel, it would be considered political suicide.
P.S. Rangel was a war hero and West a war criminal. You can look it up.
Col. West got needed intel to prevent IED’s from killing his troops. Are you saying Korean War vets did everything by the book?
Guess you never heard how Col. West gave his body armor to a soldier, who was using 1950’s era armor. I am not surprised Col West put the lives of his troops, ahead of his own. Perhaps today, we call that criminal.
“Lt. Col. Allen West saved my life,” a grateful Delgado says. “Col. West gave me his body armor. Because of that, I’m here today.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/07/25/he-saved-my-life-veteran-recalls-serving-under-rep-west-in-powerful-new-ad/
That certainly is a very strange move on the part of a Massachusetts Republican. It’s difficult to fathom what Ms Polito possibly imagines she can derive from this. For example, in her last election, there were people arguing that there’s an advantage to having the State Auditor be a member of the minority party, but that argument only works if she’s not some kind of raving ideological fool. So getting a youtube-able endorsement from a raving ideological fool, who, by the way, is likely to rave foolishly and memorably for the camera, seems remarkably imprudent.
Gomez seemed to have won the GOP endorsement without any help from the teabaggers. It’s not as if Adam West followers are even a necessary constituency even to win a GOP primary.
Adam West’s political career was briefer:
http://www.tv.com/shows/batman-adam-west/hizzonner-the-penguin-6400/
Wat more you need to know? No too bright and willing to jump on board any right wring cause as long as it gets her on Howie Carr and please god Bill O’Reilly.
She lives for the campaign and celebrity. Clueless how to lead or govern or legislates. And she doesn’t care as long as hair and make-up are perfect.
She just happened to be born with good looks
expensive looking. Big difference dan.
Expensive looking or not, she is a keeper in my eyes ( and wallet too).
douche with hair and make0up
You get a +1 for the subject line… and I clicked it before I read the text of the post, which is more than a bit too over the top for my tastes.
*shrug*
I thought it might be a transcription error, but no, on the TeaParty website it reads:
“The “Citizen Patriot” Award was created in 2012 to honor great American’s who truly represent the principles that this country was founded on – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
American’s
What a bunch of foofs.
My favorite has to be the Communist Takeover post from National Director Dee. It’s not even good as a study in anachronism because she lists as communist goals no goal communists have ever advocated:
Apparently Shostakovitch had to deal with different communists. Historically, Socialist Realism was if anything too heavy with meaning, not meaningless.
Historically, Communists have never been on the cutting edge of the sexual revolution. (See Stalin, Article 121.)
Yes, yes, communists have always advocated what they call “petit bourgeois” approaches.
Aside from this one remarkable, unsubstantiated post, there is a lot of concern on the site about Agenda 21 as being part of a Marxist plan to take over the U.S. There’s also a whole lot of certainty that, say, Mitch McConnell is a secret liberal (or possibly even Marxist) who is permitting the liberal agenda to “take over our country.”
Finally, I enjoy the “sacred” right to bear arms. You’d think that the 2nd Amendment was not attached to the U.S. Constitution but instead to the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount.
Is that the GOP is a tight knit, top down party. It’s one of the reasons it is so disciplined with block votes in Congress and one of the reasons it will have a harder time winning. Found this telling quote from a Republican Senator: “We can no longer be the party of white men over forty-we need blue collar workers, union members, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and women. We cannot continue to scare away women”. That comment was made in 1980 by moderate Sen. Bob Packwood (R-OR)(also ironic since he scared a lot of women with his lewd behavior). Unfortunately to get Republicans in Georgia or Orange County to give to Massholes, they need to be excited and in order to get those pockets you gotta act crazy. It’s a vicious cycle and one that will continue to prevent the loyal opposition we need in Beacon Hill (I’d take a Weld Republican over a Bulger Democrat any day of the week)-and a good faith negotiating partner on Capital Hill. So long as the radical right funds the party and sets the agenda it is DOA in the Northeast and I would argue locked out of the White House for at least another cycle.
So if I read you correctly, the too staid, too moderate, too reasonable Ms. Polito needs a craziness injection before she can tap into out of state funds. And Allen (or is it Adam?) West is just the guy to do it. There’s nothing not crazy about him, so there can be no pretending Polito is completely moderate.
She needs his face on out of state mailers. So did Gomez apparently. We did elect Romney and Brown so they were able to get way with this on a short term basis before. But MA voters always wake up eventually. It’s too bad, I honestly would love a truly moderate Republican counting the coins. The Auditors office was a patronage haven, as was Treasury under Timmy. Luckily Bump and Grossman are fiscally conservative to a fault (see manufactured EBT crisis). So maybe getting crazy money and attention is the way to go.
Winslow is smart enough to critique the national GOP and come on here, Ed Factor over at RMG has a lot of good ideas (which leads to him getting routinely mocked as a RINO by the ditto heads). The fact that Tisei, a strong socially liberal openly gay candidate had to endorse economic radicalism to get NRCC funding speaks volumes. They all have to take the train to crazy town stopping on at least one of the stops.
Mitt Romney campaigned as a left-leaning Weld Republican when we elected him. There is, literally, an inverse relationship between the public statements and proposed policies of gubernatorial candidate Mitt Romney and, a few short years later, presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Have we considered whether perhaps Ms. Polito is just plain crazy? Maybe Mr. West has met her, perhaps she has shared more with him than with the public, and perhaps she is, well, his preferred candidate.
So you’re saying they are the real CP?
It seems to be imbued with a reality-defying ideological purity, but there is also a hostility to Republican leadership. Witness the Kentucky branches of the Tea Party — which appear to be out for Mr McConnell’s scalp.
The tea party strikes me as a movement whose entire identity is delusional reality-defying something (I don’t know if I’d call it “ideological purity”). Its members strike me as having more in common with my five children during their mercifully brief three year old tantrum phase than anything else.
I really see no logic, no rationality, no ideology (in any philosophical sense). I see an anarchistic desire to destroy government, and I see a narcissistic passion for getting their own way. I really don’t see anything at all beyond that.
I see an anarchistic selfish desire to destroy government that doesn’t benefit them personally…
Not only did “strike” not work on the word anarchistic (to designate replacing “anarchistic” with “selfish”), but I guess I failed to properly close the italics, and it ran over to my userid, and the rest of the page.
To top it off, when I pressed reply, the text in this text box is *already* italicized!
Huh, this is interesting. Can’t … stop … italicizing …
to anarchists.
…then explain to me why it’s OK to do this:
You people CREATE the Bulger Dems.
I remember her commercials in 2010. She walked around the North End and people said hello to her. I guess that was supposed to make people around the state want to vote for her?
During her stint in the legislature she was one of the last anti-gay holdouts who voted (unsuccessfully) to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. She also voted against allowing out-of-state same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts. So she’d be attractive to the discriminatory set.