Posted on 02/16/2007 6:52:46 PM PST by EternalVigilance
*BUMP*
Check out post #16, folks.
Surely you do not blame Mitt for the continued decline of the GOP in Mass to nothingness do you? If you do, you think local politicians have far more influence than I do. Mass is filled with academics and health care providers, has very few fundamentalist Christians, and dislikes chat about American uniqueness. The place enjoys thinking of itself as sophisticated, hip and European.
Actually, the MA GOP decline can be blamed on Bill Weld, who makes Romney look conservative by comparison.
Finally, everything is above board. I've helped destroy this country, so its ok, if our presidential candidate has helped to destory this country too.
Which views of Ronald Reagan evolved? Don't say he was a democrat in the 1940's. I asked which of his views changed.
My hypothesis is that larger forces are at work. Massachussets among other things, is never going to be interested in a party that has its base in the South, as long as the South is the South. But it goes beyond that. It goes to how the higher wage earners make their money, and they make it off academia, high tech finance and computer stuff, and high tech health care.
That's true. But Mass. will never vote for anyone right of Kennedy anyway, so it doesn't matter.
The more Mitt Romney explains, the less convincing he is. In fairness to him, he was dealt a weak hand as Governor of MA, with a rodent-dominiated legislature and Surpreme Court. But his many changes of position are suspicious.
I don't think he should be ruled out, as he does have some significant accomplishments. But the skepticism of conservatives is fully warranted. I'm still willing to hear him out, but he has a lot of convincing to do.
A Governor generally has ultimate blame for the gains or losses of his party (at least at the state and legislative level and success at passing off the office to a fellow member of their party), so I do hold Romney responsible for everything that occurred on his watch. The fact is, even if there are "few" Republicans of the variety you describe, he didn't even much help the RINO candidates, either. That old reference article I kept (I'm not on my own computer) showed that even liberal Republican candidates for office were ignored by the likes of not only Romney, but Weld, too (someone Romney considered one of his political models to follow). As the article points out, Romney's sole goal was advancing his career with respect to getting the Presidential nomination, anything else was superfluous to him.
BTW, even you'd admit that MA isn't 89% rodent, as its legislative makeup is.
You're so measured. I simply consider him the biggest fraud in American politics today. At least Giuliani admitted that his policies are pretty much the same as Clinton's.
Being an out of the closet Pubbie in that state is about as socially acceptable, as being a homophobe, or warmonger. The fact is, is that Mass has almost no majority GOP precincts, so of course the party absent something special, like scandal, or some very talented individual, will lose almost everything, everywhere.
"He has evolved, changed, expanded no more than previous Republican Presidents who must of us all ended up liking a great deal. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush for example."
Depending on the issue, it makes a difference what decade, you were still evolving after.
A politician almost 60 years old, switching positions on abortion in 2004 having held his position during the abortion wars of the 70s, 80s, and 90s is not comparable to Ronald Reagan.
It does smell a little like Herbert Bush though.
Another problem is that most of the local GOP party apparatii is simply dead or non-existent. The Republicans there are of a very elitist vintage (we're talking ones that think of Irish Catholics that have been here well over a century as "Papist immigrant rabble trash.") and aren't particularly interested in doing the real work necessary to jumpstart the grassroots and aggressively field candidates and win (it's as if the merest suggestion is offensive !). Ironically, here in Nashville, that same type of mindset exists in our local GOP (minus the anti-Irish bias), and we have roughly 90%+ 'Rats in office in my county when it votes over 40% GOP. With a bit of actual work, we could win far more than what we have now. Same goes in MA.
As I said, if the MA Democrats had acted as we do there today, just lazed about and not done the hard work to flip one of the premier GOP states in America to their party, the state would still be like New Hampshire (after all, on demographics, a state that Caucasian, super-Caucasian, shouldn't be voting the way they do).
The fact is, what few Republicans that are elected there, many of them are RINO weenies. They don't have the basic courage to defend the national party and just choose to go rodent-lite in policy and rhetoric. With those kinds of choices, it's no wonder the people opt for the real deal when it comes to a liberal candidate. Sadly, most of your Conservatives in that state have to battle it out in the Democrat party. As I told others, what they need up there is to start from scratch. I'll bet you could get together about two dozen or so hard-working and innovative individuals and take control of the state apparatus, dump the calcified polopony Brahmin snobs, and try to get things moving again. The goal ought to be within 10 years to try to capture 25% of the offices in the state, something that should be able to be accomplished. You might discover that once people are offered alternatives to the same old, same old, they might start to vote for them.
Tsongas was pretty good for a Democrat. He would have been a much better president than the Clinton dual-monarchy.
Most of the Brahmins, few as they are, are Dems. White Protestants in Mass voted considerably more Dem than Catholics did, in 2004. In fact, self identified Catholics in Mass split their votes evenly between Bush and Kerry.
I never understood why Catholics still vote Dem, aside from the older ones who think they're still voting for JFK.(Kennedy, not Kerry)
Tsongas wasn't being honest about his health, supposedly. If you recall, he died on 1/18/1997, 2 days before the end of the first term he was running for. Had he run and won a 2nd term, it would've presented the first time a Vice-President-elect would've been sworn-in as President.
Yes, but you're talking about the Presidential vote. These are the people we need to be targeting for downballot offices. Many of those either vote Dem or don't vote at all. As far as I can tell, the Protestant Brahmins still control the fossilized party apparatus in more places locally (although the new party chair, former Congressman Peter Torkildsen is neither a Brahmin nor a Protestant, but a Catholic, which I'm sure gave some of the fossils the winds). Of course, this is not a new situation. After all, Reagan carried MA twice and GHW Bush nearly carried his birthplace state in '88, but the party wasn't actively going after those same folks for downballot offices (though we obviously were doing better in some contests for federal offices). If they had been aggressive and played their cards right, there could've been a '91-style wave such as what happened in NJ (with the GOP capturing huge majorities), although the NJ GOP blew it in time in similar fashion as to why the MA GOP did. The very best they did was to capture 16 out of 40 seats in the Senate in '90, a whopping 40%, their best performance since the late '50s after they lost their majorities for the final time. Like I said, with hard work, I don't think getting to only 25% is so impossible. But if they keep on the current liberal tack, 11% is going to seem like a huge figure in another few election cycles. The party simply has no reason to exist there anymore as it stands right now.
The GOP is pretty much dead in New England anyway, with the exception of the 2 senators from NH.
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