"A political party cannot be all things to all people.
It must represent certain fundamental beliefs
which must not be compromised to political expediency
or simply to swell its numbers."
-- President Ronald Reagan
The Massachusetts Republican Party died last Tuesday.
The cause of death: failed leadership.
The party is survived by a few leftover legislators
and a handful of county officials and grassroots activists
who have been ignored for years.
Services will be public and a mass exodus of taxpayers will follow.
In lieu of flowers, send messages to Republican voters
warning them about a certain presidential candidate named Romney.
- Boston Herald, 11/12/2006
"In 2006, while Romney was chairman of the National Republican
Governors Association - a group dedicated to electing more
Republican governors - his own hand-picked Republican successor
as governor lost badly to the Democrat, despite the fact that Republicans
have held the governorship in Massachusetts since 1990. Romney largely
ignored the Massachusetts elections and spent most of the time
during the campaign out of state building his presidential campaign.
He came back and publicly campaigned for the Republican candidate
the day before the general election!
Locally, this is a rebuke to Mitt Romney and checking out within six months
after being elected and having accomplished almost nothing,
[Jim] Rappaport [former chairman of the state Republican Party]."
- Boston Globe, 11/8/2006
Traitors & Scalawags. In their prolonged post-mortem on the 1964 election, most Republicans could agree to the fact that it had been an awful show. Beyond that, there was static from all parts of the party.
Cried Actor Ronald Reagan, co-chairman of California’s Citizens for Goldwater and an early-form pick among right-wingers for the state’s 1966 gubernatorial nomination: “We don’t intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended.”
Between rounds of golf, Goldwater himself took time out to lambast such middle-roading Republicans as Governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and George Romney of Michigan and Senators Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Thomas Kuchel of California as “socalled Republicans.” Barry suggested that “the time has come for a real realignment of the parties,” naming them “liberal and conservative,” not “Democratic and Republican.”
(Times Magazine, “Only 725 Days” Friday, Nov. 20, 1964)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,830781,00.html