Posted on 02/03/2010 4:38:53 PM PST by GOPsterinMA
Nicely put - incest sums it up well.
IIRC, the Nazis used the Spanish Civil War as “practice”. MA was the “practice” for the USA.
Setti Warren...ugh. He even has his own Wikipedia page. I’m impressed!
I wouldn’t agree with that (going Indy), simply because Indies don’t win office as such. I think it was possible he could’ve taken the easier route and done to Patrick what Ed King did to Dukakis in ‘78 (of course, that sent the left into hysterics, and a lot of them voted for the GOP ticket that year). I’d go so far as to say if Cahill had done that, the Patrick supporters would go to Baker. As it was, ole Weld himself (whom I concluded was a Democrat agent, anyway) was both on the anti-King liberal GOP ticket in ‘78 (the AG nominee) and ran as the liberal alternative to John Silber (for whom I’d have unapologetically supported in ‘90).
So, anyway, the reasons why I’d support Cahill are because I think he’d be much closer to Ed King in style, he clearly wants more of a centrist (as opposed to far-left) appeal. Baker is already trying to appeal to the left, and I consider him to the left of Cahill. Baker will do nothing for the MA GOP. Cahill will cause no harm to the GOP (not as if it can suffer much more with that 90% Democrat makeup in the General Court). So if Cahill ends up a bust, we’ll not get the blame as a party. It’s absurd at this point given the state GOP to even be fielding a candidate for Governor, because it is a completely useless office for anyone with a Republican label. We need to be working on winning more seats in the legislature, more in Congress, downballot statewide offices. When we have enough of a bulwark of GOP elected officials, that’s when we run one for Governor. If Cahill is successful, that will help us a lot more than it will the Democrats.
But having someone like Baker now, whom I absolutely guarantee will be a disaster like all the prior RINOs/DIABLOs from Weld through to Slick Willard, at a time we’re trying to regain our foothold, will not only swiftly eliminate whatever positives we’ve earned lately, it will also jeopardize Brown’s reelection and put us back on course to permanent and total Democrat domination for the next generation. We have to think tactically here.
(P.S. And just as an aside for those that think Baker should be elected so that the Republicans will preside over redistricting, I’ll remind them again, we have 10% of the legislature, there isn’t a Republican party that can uphold any attempt by Baker to ensure more favorable lines for the party — none. One enormous reason why a Republican Governor in MA — at this time — is completely useless, and it doesn’t matter how Conservative they are).
Brilliantly stated, as usual!!!
You bring up a good point. The governor can have very scant influence on legislation in Massachusetts, since it the Democrats undoubtedly would have an easy time even overriding a veto. But a Republican governor who isn’t ashamed of being Republican (Ahem, Romney; Ahem, Weld; Ahem, Swift) could help rebuild the party. Unfortunately, the choice of a sodomy-lover as LG does raise questions as to whether Baker is that guy. But a Democrat like Cahill certainly isn’t!
>> IIRC, the Nazis used the Spanish Civil War as “practice”. MA was the “practice” for the USA. <<
What whacked out Communist taught you your history? Franco was no Nazi. He was just slandered with that label because he fought socialists. So that makes him a Nazi (nationalist-socialist)?
I’d trust an ex-Democrat like Cahill reaching out to the right over a RINO like Baker reaching leftward. A moderate (perhaps fiscal Conservative) Indy Governor will give the GOP a chance to grow, though (well, presumably if we get better party leadership - leftist Jennifer Nassour and the “let’s keep the party in the boneyard” crew needs to go ASAP).
I’ve addressed that point about the situation with the party itself for years now. We need dynamic persons involved ready to go balls to the walls with the Democrat corruption. Far too much timidity and exclusionary tactics of center-right people. If the party were in remotely good shape, we should’ve made gains in ‘08 against a massively unpopular Patrick, and yet we continued to slide. That’s the party’s fault. I do hope Brown isn’t a one time fluke, but we have to consider if drastic changes aren’t made to kick out the people holding the party back, he may very well be (and Nassour deserves next to no credit, ditto Michael Steele, with Brown’s victory, those two couldn’t lead their way out of a paper bag).
ungh. not ready for Cahill.
Maybe not a Nazi but he was a dictator who played footsie with Hitler and fascism. He was no Augusto Pinochet.
If I was alive live and a brave Spaniard I’d have taken his side against the Reds. Then worked to overthrow him and install a democracy.
I agree in general terms with your post, but have three quibbles. Number one, to the extent that the GOP can get 1/3 +1 seats in the state house in November (a real possibility), a GOP governor’s veto can be upheld, and a Cahill would be less likely to veto a Democrat gerrymander than would a Baker; remembet that, for all his faults, Weld played hardball on redistricting in 1991 and got several competitive congressional districts for the GOP (although they didn’t stay very competitive for long due to the state’s swing towards the Democrats).
Second, is Cahill really less liberal than Baker? I don’t see why we should support an Ed Case-type anti-Machine liberal even if he runs as an independent. And if Baker is as liberal as you assume he is (which would mean that he’s being purposely misleading in his website), surely we can find another Republican that is more conservative than Cahill and can win the GOP nomination (Scott Brown is not the only moderate-to-conservative Republican in the state).
Third, if the Republican vote is split between Cahill and Baker, Patrick can win with 35% (which would be easy for him to achieve, since Democrats would see Cahill as a crypto-Republican if he had a lot of Republican support). For Cahill to be able to win with GOP support would require that the GOP not run its own candidate or at least completely and publicly abandon its nomine (as the CT GOP did in the 2006 Senate election).
In conclusion, I think that there’s quite a bit that we need to think about before throwing our support to Cahill.
Well, it’s nice to see Cahill has such a sterling character reference. :^)
I said Franco was not a Nazi; I didn’t say he didn’t receive material support from the Germans. By your reasoning, Churchill was a Stalinist.
>> If I was alive live and a brave Spaniard I’d have taken his side against the Reds. Then worked to overthrow him and install a democracy. <<
I think we can reasonably agree on that!
I’m no expert on Euro history, but I think you’re correct. Franco certainly was a lukewarm “fascist,” mostly a run-of-the-mill Euro strongman without a particular ideology. He had little of the racist notions of Hitler, few of the economic ideas of Mussolini. But he willingly accepted Nazi help to defeat his political enemies.
FMDJ - Taking liberties with a Michael Douglas quote from Wall Street: “Cahill’s the dog with the least fleas.”
Baker sucks. If not Cahill, keep Patrick and/or Murray then.
He’s not great, but Baker? Like I’ve written, IMO Cahill has the least amout of warts or fleas.
In 1991, the GOP were 4 seats and a party switch away from majority control of the State Senate. Today, with Brown’s departure, we are 4 seats away from having zero members in that body. I’ve laid out the reasons as best I can why at this point, we are not ready to get the Governorship yet with a Republican. We aren’t going to quadruple our membership in the State Senate to make a Republican Governor effective, it’s just not going to happen.
There’s too many institutional problems within the state party that have got to be addressed. Once those have been resolved, and we have a more substantial presence in the legislature, then we can make a go for the Governorship. It was having 16 years of liberal RINOs that KILLED the state party, and putting one more in there will not change the situation, but it can make it so that we are shut out and labelled (rightly so) as completely useless and ineffective. That’s why Cahill is the only logical choice. We get a potentially semi-Moderate Governor who won’t willfully inflict harm to the GOP. That’s the best we’re gonna get now, and I think we should support it.
Preaching to the choir FM! I agree!!!
How far away from 1/3 +1 are we in the state house? (I know that we’re at less than 10% in the state senate, but all we need it one house to sustain a veto.)
I agree with you 100% that we need to rebuild the MA GOP from the bottom up, which is why I commenced my reply by saying that I agreed with your post in general terms, but it seems to me that it would be a heck of a lot easier top rebuild the GOP in the state legislative level if we had a Republican governor that could veto a gerrymandered redistricting plan that would condemn the GOP to permanent minority status in the legislature.
As far from 1/3rd as you can imagine. We’d need about 14-15 seats in the Senate, we haven’t had that since before January ‘93. We currently have 4 in that body, pending the special election for Brown’s seat. If we don’t hold it, that prediction I made of reaching zero when the 4 remaining Senators vacate (including Richard Tisei, Baker’s running mate, who will be exiting this year) could very well come true.
For the House side, we hold a paltry 16 seats, same with the MA Senate, only 10% of the 160 seats. We would have to win about 54 seats in that body to reach that percentage of 1/3rd+. We had 38 members in 1991-92. 1963-64 was the last time we had more than 1/3rd of the body (back when it had 240 members and we held 90 seats).
So as you can see, under those mostly RINO Governors, we’ve lost 75% of our members in the Senate since Weld took office, and nearly 60% of our House members. Those GOP Governors have proven themselves to have been thoroughly toxic at preserving, nevermind gaining, numbers of our elected officials, and their veto power is utterly worthless.
If this decline continues at the current rate, by the 2018 elections, we will have 1 Republican left in the House out of 140 members.
And the conservative or moderate Dems have been purged. So with the potential of only 1 GOP in the entire MA House, we’re screwed.
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