I know a Senate race isn’t the same as the presidential contest, but it’s worth noting Scott Brown, despite running in a presidential election year, got 47 percent of the vote statewide, running almost 270,000 votes ahead of Romney. I’m sure there’s a lot of points about that race that can be debated (including whether Brown ought to have been able to beat the very flawed Warren anyway), but it’s clear Republicans can get more of that state even with presidential-year turnout.
You’re exactly right. What holds the MA GOP back IS the state party leadership. They are run by ultra-left wingers who believe running moonbats further to the left of the Dems is the way to win. It’s not only crazy, it’s criminal. They’re not there to see the GOP expand, they’re there to preserve an ultraleft majority for the Democrats. If that same gang ran every state party in the nation, the GOP would hold between 0-10% of the federal and legislative seats, too.
What caused Brown to lose for the full term is that he made the mistake of tacking left for the general and was beginning to piss off the very die-hards who helped him to take the Kennedy seat. You never piss off your base and the people that worked their butts off for you.