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I know how you feel. That's what is so incredible to realize, that those handful of Republicans left in the legislature (you'd ordinarily think, "Oh, those must be the last sane Conservatives left."), many of them are not only NOT Conservative, but EXTREMELY leftist. You may recall the special election after Joe Moakley died, the contest ending up being between a semi-social-Conservative 'Rat (Lynch) and a nutjob social leftist lady Senator RINO (and you'd think THAT proved that even in an ostensibly "liberal" district that trying to outliberal a 'Rat will STILL not net you a win). A lot of the social Conservatives STILL remain in the 'Rat party there. I remember there was one particular Democrat State Senator who switched to the GOP, only to have to switch right back again as the numbers in the party plummeted towards the 6 it is today (his argument, "I can't get anything done as a Republican."). It is, of course, scarcely better in the House. I know very little about the legislative leaders now, and certainly don't envy them in the least.

As I've had pointed out to me elsewhere, the numbers in the legislature don't reflect actual Republican strength (or at least what it is at the Presidential level, which has also suffered dramatically because of the side-effects of RINO mismanagement - after all, Reagan CARRIED the state twice only 8 years after the state turned hard to the left to support Kook McGovern). If the parties ever shook themselves out to resemble the situation in other states elsewhere, the GOP should have at or around 35-40% of the legislature (and not the 12% or so it has now) and 3 or 4 federal Congressmembers. It's just astonishing for a state that held strongly AGAINST FDR and the 'Rats in the '30s with strong GOP majorities or even in the '80s with being strongly Reagan, that within the course of barely 20 years, the state is voting like South Carolina in the 1920s. It didn't and shouldn't have had to happen, but yet it did...

As for Romney, I believed him very sincere and wanting to bolster those numbers in the legislature (meeting with only the most modest of success when he won, only to have it slip back to the final days of the Swift regime in the midterm), but his having to swim against the current created by his incompetent predecessors, his lack of power (I believe it was during his term that the legislature stripped him of the authority to appoint a successor whenever Teddy or Frenchie make an exit from the Senate), and other indignities that have made it very difficult for him to even continue to have the smallest desire to remain in office where he is literally legally barred from being able to effect change and can only make comments from the sidelines while the legislature "governs" and "rules" for him.

I have to admit, though, his wanting to be President is laughable. Being a Governor-in-exile (which he effectively is) is no experience for ascending to the highest office in the land. At least in Dukakis's defense, he HAD the power to govern, because he had the party behind him. And lastly, Romney should've really ended up in the Senate. That's why I made the comment about Romney wanting to rip the ball$ off of Weld. Weld deliberately sabotaged Romney in '94 (when with a strong endorsement, Weld's coattails could've carried Romney to victory, and he would've become the biggest celebrity in the Senate and hero to the Conservative movement in... well, perhaps ever). Weld didn't want to have to share the spotlight with anyone, except perhaps his puppet Cellucci -- but then the latter wasn't allowed out of the box until Herr Willie left Beacon Hill for the last time. Like you said, if only we could back to 1990 and redo all of this, the state GOP and its fortunes would've been vastly different than the situation it finds itself in today.