Governor Baker has a habit of trying to skip questions he finds inconvenient, usually by declaring them outside his purview as governor. Even as a candidate in 2010, he infamously declared himself “absolutely not smart enough” to know if climate change was caused by humans. (And no, I will never let him hear the end of it.)
Here he is pretending not to know if Trump should have a Nobel Peace Prize. (This is not a difficult question.)
D: Consider this: There are seven Republican governors saying President Trump should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. What do you think about that?
BAKER: To tell you the truth, I have not thought about that for five minutes [etc etc]
Now … does this matter? Who cares what Baker thinks about North Korea?
This was a softball question, and like so many, it actually reveals more than one might wish. Those seven Republican governors are playing to a base: They’ve made their bed with Trumpism, and now they’re going to lie in it. Massachusetts Republicans are deciding now between following Trump down an abyss of corruption, bribery, and downright literal disloyalty to country; or keeping their distance. This is an awkward time for some of them, and they’d all prefer to think of something else.
What would it mean if Baker, along with Maryland’s Larry Hogan, and Ohio’s John Kasich, were to actually confront Trump, on anything, rather than avoiding the subject? These are among the most popular governors in the country. It would give breathing room for a genuine Republican opposition to Trump — which would substantially help in, say, preserving the rule of law and the Republic. Baker does indeed have a national role to play; but since he feels the need to keep his own Trumpist MA Republicans in the fold, he’s just choosing not to fulfill it.
Or what if he’s perfectly happy with Trump?
Let’s not forget Baker’s enthusiasm for police cooperation with ICE. He loves to tout his opposition to Massachusetts becoming a “sanctuary state”: It was one of his big applause lines at the MassGOP convention. He introduced legislation to allow local police to cooperate with ICE — but only for the really bad guys, you see.
Federal judges in Massachusetts have noted that this is an agency known for its viciousness:
Over the past year, federal judges in the Boston courthouse have been unusually outspoken in criticizing immigration cases, as the Trump administration steps up apprehensions and detentions. The critical judges include two Obama nominees, a Clinton nominee, and Wolf, a Reagan nominee.
…
In December, Judge Leo T. Sorokin ordered the release of a Yale University-educated Kenyan national who had been detained for nearly a year.
In a biting memorandum, Sorokin blasted the Department of Homeland Security’s “repeated errors,” which he said suggested “negligence, incompetence, or bad faith on the part of the agency.”
The negligence and incompetence are not accidents. They serve the purpose of terrorizing immigrants — documented and undocumented alike; DREAMers, refugees, and sometimes even American citizens. The chaos and unpredictability is policy.
We know that Trump is a raw-racist, who refers to immigrants and refugees as “animals”. His Chief of Staff (Boston, come get your boy) subscribes to shockingly racist, perverted (and self-indicting) views of immigration. Trump’s Massachusetts chairman Geoff Diehl runs on an anti-immigration platform. The MassGOP rails against sanctuary state legislation. (Congratulations to Sen. Jamie Eldridge on his choice of enemies. Well done and keep it up.)
There’s a context to all this. So when Baker pretends not to have an opinion about Trump, remember that in substance, he’s absolutely on board with the shockingly racist, cruel and abusive immigration policy. He’s using this issue — at the cost of all the human pain that goes with it — to keep himself in good standing with some of the ugliest elements in his own party.
As long as the interviewers let him get away with it, Charlie “Empty Suit” Baker will continue to play this game, saying nothing of substance and taking no stance. He’s a big, handsome, telegenic and photogenic guy who sounds intelligent and concerned but means nothing. All it needs is one sharp reporter or interviewer to pop the bubble and he’ll deflate.
But I’m not counting on that happening as “telegenic and photogenic” are what the media likes, sometimes more than scandal.
He always does it because he always gets away with it. The only time it did not work was when he tried the same duck and cover move on the Confederate flag issue and finally got caught. This is someone who was even able to get away with saying he was not voting for anyone in the Presidential election, despite being the top elected official in the state and someone who should be encouraging people to vote instead of staying home or blanking.
Here’s another easy question no one in our august local press corps has bothered to ask him: are you voting for Trump in 2020? I think this is highly relevant for 2018. He is on the record saying he did not vote for him in 2016. So either Trump has changed and gotten better, or he is open to supporting another candidate. I bet he could dodge with a “we will wait and see”, but that he an answer that could hurt him with swing voters as well as his base.
Don’t you think his admitting that he didn’t vote for Trump makes him admired by independently minded voters? Here’s a person who doesn’t blindly vote the party line, who thinks for himself, and when faced with horrible choices declines to participate. Especially in a state where voters are so sick of the corruption and incompetence of the major parties the majority of voters identify as independents.
Absolutely that move did just that in 2016, but can he get away with that in 2018 with the kind of race baiting convention he just had? He is still a registered Republican, and registered Republicans even in this state love Trump and want to keep electing Trump like candidates. He is getting hammered by local right wing talk radio and the RMG crowd. He needs them and needs the blue collar independents and suburban Democrats. It’s a hard coalition for him to maintain threading the needle all the time.
He may not be able to duck the gun control legislation heading his way.
He has said that he supports the general idea of keeping guns away from people who shouldn’t have them, but has not commented on the specific language of the bill the House is voting on today.
But our local NRA chapter has commented on it, saying that the proposal, as redrafted two days ago, is now a “pure gun confiscation bill” that’s abandoned any pretense of its original purpose — keeping guns away from mentally ill people. They’re saying they’re outraged by what they’re describing as a bad faith bait-and-switch.
In 2016, Baker pleased gun advocates by criticizing new regulations from AG Maura Healey classifying more guns as assault weapons prohibited by state statutes. (The legality of those regulations was recently upheld in a federal court decision.)
His decision about signing this bill, vetoing it, proposing amendments to it or letting it become law without his signature is going to make some people unhappy.