California Republicans – You can make History by Voting for Mitt Romney

I’ve already written on this subject ad infinitum and know it like the back of my hand, so you could’ve spared JimRob’s bandwith.

WeldRomney were book ends of the tag-team RINO crew that destroyed completely the last viable strands of Republicanism in Massachusetts. Deliberate and willful. Weld is a Clintonista and is 100% behind Romney.

The last time a Massachusetts Republican was a US Senator was 1979. Since 1997, there have been no members of the US House from Massachusetts. This doesn’t seem like a vibrant party to me, and its problems predate Romney.

They just called California for McCain. Does the GOP have some kind of death wish? He is the worst candidate the party has put up for the nomination since Bob Dole. Why are there so many brain dead people in the Republican Party? I thought all the dumb people were in the Democratic Party. I guess I was truly wrong.

By that reckoning, North Dakota is a “Democrat” state because it hasn’t elected a GOP House member since 1978, a Senator since 1980 and the other Senator since 1958. It is, in fact, a Republican state with a Dem federal delegation. There’s a lot more to a state than just going by its federal makeup.

The MA GOP was in decline, but was still competitive for offices, federally and statewide, and came roaring back at the end of the Dukakis era. When the party made the mistake of nominating Weld over House Leader Steve Pierce in 1990, it was the beginning of the end of the party. Weld deliberately jackhammered the party into the ground by swiftly wiping out the stunning gains, and his disciple Romney completed the job by the time he left office. The Democrats couldn’t have done a better job — in fact, they couldn’t have done the job at all — these two RINOs did. And frankly, as far as I’m concerned, they both were nothing but trojan horse agents for the Democrats. Weld’s plan was to take his dog and pony show nationwide and cripple the GOP and the Conservative movement, and when Jesse Helms stopped him cold, into the breach stepped Romney. Quite brilliant. But fortunately it didn’t have everyone fooled. Of course, judging by FR as of late, it looks like there’s more than a few people that either don’t know the story or would love to see the end result of what these two want to do. I’d expect to see Weld in a VERY prominent role under Romney, and that must be stopped at all costs. These guys make McCain look like a rank amateur.

Oh well, I’ve only lived here all of my life, what do I know.

I’m saying it was unnecessary for you to type all that out. I’m well aware of MA’s political and demographic history. But there are more than a few FReepers whose knowledge of history on their own states are, shall we say, shallow. More than a few have presumed the state has been nothing but a bastion of the Democrat party ad infinitum and have little idea it was one of the premier GOP states in the country with some of our best and brightest leaders. It’s either because they’ve been misinformed or haven’t really taken the time to do the research. I’ve had a lot of time to do research, so it’s why I can talk about nearly every state in the country, their dynamics, and history. I’ve used MA has a warning beacon for what can happen to a vibrant state GOP when bad or opportunistic leadership, elitism, stagnation, misguided policy, ignorance, bad values and class bigotry come together. It didn’t have to turn out that way, but it did. You may disagree with my conclusions in these discussions, but I’m far from uninformed by a long shot.

There is a suspicion that I have had for a while that the liberal wing of the Mass. Republicans would rather deal with Democrats than Conservative Republicans. I remember Steve Pierce and Ray Shamie, then there was another candidate, I forgot his name, but it seemed that there was always an embarrassing story about them in the Globe three weeks before the election.

I think the California party was decimated in the same way. I believe the insider business interests want someone in the corner office who speaks for their little clique. These insiders seem to be more fearful of the conservatives than the Democrats. I think they understand that the Democrats are crooked and can always be bought off whereas the conservatives have principles. These RINOs fear principles the way Dracula fears sunlight.

"There is a suspicion that I have had for a while that the liberal wing of the Mass. Republicans would rather deal with Democrats than Conservative Republicans."

That's no mere suspicion, that's an outright 100% fact. It's not just in MA, either. New Jersey has been following that model. In the early '90s, the Republican party swept to jaw-droppingly gargantuan majorities in the state legislature, and within a decade, it was all but gone. Being led by these Country-Clubber liberals like Christie Whitman (who is effectively a male William Weld) and Donnie DiFrancesco, they opposed new blood, Conservative reformers and openly sabotaged them when they got the nomination (most notably then-Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler. Schundler in any other state would've been a rock star. An ex-liberal Gary Hart Democrat turned Conservative that became the first GOP Mayor of that city in nearly 8 decades, and turned the city around. But because he was regarded as an outsider, they all but helped the sleazy rodent Jim McGreevey to victory over Schundler, and we all know how that turned out). The party has been shriveling ever since, even against all the lousy rodent Governors. It now is at its weakest point in the past several decades.

"I remember Steve Pierce and Ray Shamie, then there was another candidate, I forgot his name, but it seemed that there was always an embarrassing story about them in the Globe three weeks before the election."

Jim Rappaport or Joe Malone ?

"I think the California party was decimated in the same way. I believe the insider business interests want someone in the corner office who speaks for their little clique. These insiders seem to be more fearful of the conservatives than the Democrats. I think they understand that the Democrats are crooked and can always be bought off whereas the conservatives have principles. These RINOs fear principles the way Dracula fears sunlight."

Exactly. Conservatives are usually the biggest threat to the status quo, since they are reformers. Illinois is similar to that, and the establishment RINOs and the Democrat party are referred to as "the Combine." When reformist Conservative Peter Fitzgerald upended a Combine RINO candidate in the GOP Senate primary in '98, they worked together to try to take him down for the general. When he beat Carol Moseley-Braun, they hated him even more and spent the next 6 years hounding him out of office. He was the best Senator the state had had since Everett Dirksen and because the Combine declared war on him, he didn't bother to run for reelection, and guess who the Combine installed in his seat ? Barack Obama. That's why I always say the establishment liberal RINOs are our biggest enemy, far worse than any Democrat.

The knife in the back is always the deepest cut.

Do you see the possibility of ‘divorcing’ the Republican Party? Could we build a third party in some selected very conservative communities and then let word of that travel around the nation?

I believe there are actually four parties instead of two. It think there is the power elite Democrats and the rank and file Democrats, and then there are the elite Republicans and the rank and file Republicans. I think the Republicans are more aware and would probably be more willing to go for a new party. However, it would be interesting to do some surveys of Democrats and independents.

Well, there have been “divorces” before. The Liberal Republicans of the 1870s that made common cause with the Democrats in opposition to Reconstruction policies of the Radicals. The Silver Republicans of the 1890s. The Progressives of the 1910s. Heck, even the MN GOP post Watergate when the party suffered drastic losses renamed themselves the “Independent Republican Party.” In the case of the Liberal Republicans, some soon returned back to the fold while others stayed Democrats. The Silverites became William Jennings Bryan supporters and became Democrats. The Progressives largely came back to the GOP, but some of the non-elected officials would become more comfortable 20 years later with FDR and the Democrats. And the MN “Independent” GOP dropped the “Indy” around 1995 after our smashing wins.

So as you can see, it can be a mixed bag, and more often than not, we get absorbed by one party or another. What I’d like is a shake-out, since there are more than a few Republicans that clearly don’t belong in the party because they oppose reform, generally don’t care about a Conservative agenda at all, and oppose new blood that can reinvigorate a party, which is an absolute necessity (touching on MA for a moment, why we systematically lost so many seats in the legislature and Congress over time was because the party was calcifying, the Republicans kept getting older and older and the young go-getters were Democrats that would capture the seats one by one as the Republicans retired or died off). That’s also a danger when you have younger folks come in and park themselves for decades, stifling any opportunities for up-and-comers. Of course, even the Democrats had similar problems with ancient Democrats staying in place for decades (in the case of Speaker McCormack and his counterpart, Speaker Martin, both came into Congress in the 1920s, and stayed until they were nearly carried out feet-first, Martin being beaten in 1966, and McCormack finally retiring in 1971 — both of whom are comparable to Ted Kennedy, who served with both men as a youngster, but has now served longer than the two). The Democrats, however, had vigorous groups of youngsters that took over from the ancients and built up the supermajorities we see there today. It’s a winning formula for us if only we’d get rid of these old establishment types that won’t let go of their almost non-existent piece of the pie.

Regarding the difference between the Dem grassroots vs. the GOP is that a big chunk of the Dem base are simply moonbats. Their elected officials, if anything, are far more moderate and know that the moonbats simply have no clue what it’s like to have to deal with real policy. That things can’t be done “immediately” (such as getting out of Iraq, imposing crazy environmental standards, et al) and if they were, would cause serious damage. We have the problem similarly that our GOP elected officials are to the left of us, and they’ll cite similarly as the Dems that they can’t “swiftly” do what we ask of them (as the Dem base asks of their pols), but in doing so, it ends up a collusion between both parties. Ultimately, I think the liberal establishment gets far more out of the deal than the Conservative base does (not the moonbat left, per se, but just what we think of base liberalism, erring on the side of increasing taxes, spending, more regulations, etc.). But the problem of having no difference in some cases between how the elected officials behave, it makes it harder for us to make the argument to elect more Republicans when they don’t represent substantial change (as McCain embodies as an establishment RINO) that we demand as Conservatives.

The question is, how much longer will we continue to allow ourselves to go along with this charade ?

Hopefully not much longer. “No more deals, Kirsty. No more teasing.”