He actually shrank the government something most Republicans fail at. I don't see how he destroyed the GOP 45% of Mass voters voted to repeal the income tax.
In 1990, when he was elected, there were 16 out of 40 Republican State Senators, and there were 37 out of 160 GOP State House members. They elected a State Treasurer and 2 Executive Councillors and retained 1 U.S. House member (the late Silvio Conte), which increased to 2 newcomers in 1992. Flash forward 12 years later, Weld is gone, Cellucci, his clone, cleared out, Swift, another Weldite, is heading out the door, and what do they leave ? An almost non-existent 6 out of 40 Senators (a 60%+ drop in representation), and 22 State reps. (practically a 50% drop). ZERO statewide officeholders below Swift, ZERO members of Congress. Weld vowed to "fight a battle for the soul of the GOP" against conservatives (yeah, those same people that ARE the Republican party in every other state in America). He told conservatives in MA, like the Irish were told a century ago, you need not apply to the GOP -- you aren't welcome. So what is left of the few remaining officeholders is a sad, sorry sight... Represented by individuals like Jo Anne Sprague, 1 of the 6 Senators left, a hard-leftist who was the "hope" of the party to run for the seat of the late Joe Moakley. Her Dem opponent looked like Jesse Helms by comparison, and he clobbered her. The situation, I've been told, by someone "on the ground" in MA, is even worse at the grassroots where the party has, for all intents and purposes, died. It's the Democrat party in MA that is the big tent, ranging from the hard-core left wing (Kennedy/Kerry/Birmingham, etc.) to ostensibly more conservative (Speaker Finneran). Weld turned the party into a one-man (or one-man + Lt Gov) show and let the party wither on the vine. In my opinion, he was perhaps one of the worst "Republican" Governors in recent memory, and one of the most single-handedly destructive individuals to the party, bar none. His 2nd in command didn't even want to stick around to repair the damage, and left for a cushy job north of the border. Swift has been utterly clueless. As for Romney, we shall see if he is interested in serving as a Republican and welcome conservatives back into the party and start to invigorate the grass roots, or if he'll become another Weldite Party member. If it is to be the latter, let us just give the state GOP its nice burial and always remember it as an example of what happens when one of America's most previously penultimate GOP states is overtaken by RINOs, that destruction galore follows.
P.S. The 45% of state voters that went with IT repeal only goes to show you where our party might truly stand in power if its "leaders" hadn't hacked it to pieces. What a shame.