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To: fieldmarshaldj

All good points but I just don’t see a conservative GOP ever getting a footing in MA. 60% of the people essentially believe in European style nanny state govt and want nothing to do with a smaller govt. Abortion is religion here so social conservatives have no hop here. The 60% are also pacifist so a strong foreign policy is a non starter as well. What plank would a conservative run on ?

A RINO is useless as you say, I don’t blame the politicians as much. All the libtards keep getting re-elected so that same 60% is pretty happy with the status quo. When 70% voted against the repeal of the income tax recently I lost any small level of hope for change in MA.


19 posted on 07/02/2009 7:15:53 AM PDT by Maneesh
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To: Maneesh; Impy; Clintonfatigued; BillyBoy; darkangel82
I believe a Conservative Republican could get elected Governor (after all, Don Carcieri could do it in RI, and RI isn't terribly different than MA, although RI was (at least in recent decades) not favorably disinclined towards the GOP, although that is on the downslide, but for different reasons). But there's no point to any Republican getting elected Governor as long as they have no real power (and let's face it, if you don't have substantive veto power or the ability to appoint a Senate vacancy, you're practically a figurehead).

I'm not expecting some miraculous turn to the right, but there needs to be a viable Conservative opposition minority that reflects the voting preferences of the state. The state isn't 100% leftist, yet the pols largely are. If we finally purge the leftist guards of the GOP corpse and tell those that have been disconnected (or just plain disgusted) with the political process and get young student activists and older retirees involved, that party could be resurrected. It doesn't serve any state having 90%+ of its elected officials in one party (that wouldn't be good even in a GOP state, because statism, arrogance of power and corruption inevitably seeps in).

I do admit an admiration for how the Dems took over what was once one of the most heavily GOP states in the country (go back to the late 19th century, and the Dems were as shut out of the process as the GOP is today. If you talked to them back then and told them they'd have 100% of the major offices by the start of the 21st century, they'd have thought you were crazy. How they outpaced the GOP in the 1950s-70s when the state officially became a Dem majority state was that they start replacing a calcified Dem apparatus down to the lowest levels with young activists and once they got control, they went after a similarly statist and calcified GOP (where the party was failing to replace old timers with young activists that could carry on to the next generation). They picked off our low-hanging fruit and aggressively grabbed seats with our retirements, and that's how they got to where they are now (and we didn't fight back just as hard, we just kept ceding ground until there was nothing left to cede). There's no reason if we don't use their playbook (but NOT the ideology), we can't score wins. If we keep up with it, by the 22nd century, the GOP might be back as the overwhelming majority again (presuming we still have a country as we do now - but one thing is for sure, if the Conservatives doesn't fight back and use the GOP as the vehicle for change and reform and restoration of sanity, we will lose this country).

20 posted on 07/02/2009 10:18:28 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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