Is Mass the "Canary in the coal mine?"
Bay State dems the best thing to happen to GOP
By Jules Crittenden
Boston Herald City Editor
Sunday, November 5, 2006
It's that time of the election cycle when we get ready to take one for the team. I'm talking about conservatives. Here in Taxachusetts.
Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank and Mike Dukakis. Gay marriage and Willie Horton. The strictest gun controls in the nation, and gun violence is skyrocketing. John Kerry, still reporting for duty.
We all know the jokes, we've heard them all before. People are always amazed to learn that conservatives live here in Massachusetts. They wonder what that can be like. It can be galling to think that, in presidential elections, your vote doesn't count.
It is nothing more than a symbolic gesture, to let the world know, for example, that more than a third of John Kerry's voting constituents prefered a Republican from Texas.
But to view the national stage from Massachusetts is to know the bitter truth that our state plays an important role in America's political theater. Every two years, bluest blue Massachusetts sends in the clowns. We show America what could be and America generally sees it and acts accordingly: runs in the other direction.
From Kerry's insulting jibes at our troops, to the efforts by Kennedy and others in our delegation to undermine a wartime presidency and give Euro-style socialism a foot-hold in the New World, Massachusetts gives America its bogeymen.
We have a Democratic legislature here by default.
The hapless local GOP has been unable to muster challengers in any significant numbers, despite 16 years of managing to shoehorn a mixed bag of Republicans into the governor's office. Even blue Mass. voters have wanted someone to put the brakes on. But that would appear to be over.
With the likely election of Deval Patrick as governor, we'll give America a brave new Dukakis, not to mention an advance glance at an Obama administration. Watch and learn. It is perhaps the best 2008 gift we, Massachusetts, could give the GOP.
More Kennedy. More Kerry - no way he's going quietly; his Web site now sports a Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial saying his dumb troops-dumb Bush joke was "right either way." A rasher of Patrick. Frank in the Democratic House leadership. What more could a Republican candidate in 2008 ask for?
Among the GOP candidates in 2008 is likely to be Mitt Romney . . . another ironic Democratic gift to the nation. He gets trashed here at home for making Massachusetts jokes in Iowa and South Carolina. It could be his strongest suit. Mitt emerges from the Democratic wilderness, bruised and bedraggled from ridiculous combat with legislators who, for example, ignore lawful petitions in constitutional conventions to avoid giving the voters a say.
Mitt made his bones tilting at Ted 12 years ago - the most serious threat the Bay State's 800-pound gorilla has faced in decades (this year's challenger didn't have a prayer).
Democratic control of Congress, should it come to pass on Tuesday, will offer America the spectacle writ large that Massachusetts offers in miniature. It won't be the worst thing that could happen.
Speaker-hopeful Nancy Pelosi, suddenly faced with the prospect of actual responsibility, is begging her minions to keep a lid on it. You know they won't be able to. As they engage in the destructive practice of investigating every spurious claim of rights-trampling that already has been hashed over repeatedly, we will get a sneak peak at the Democratic vision for America.
An America eager to ingratiate itself with the world and embrace any bizarre fringe cause that emerges. This is what we live with in Massachusetts. We hope for the occasional upset, so we can show America, see, we're not all like that. There are rational, normal people here.
But this year, it looks like we'll be taking another one for the team.
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