Posted on 06/09/2013 3:09:06 AM PDT by billorites
Paul Cellucci was not a nuisance.
That’s what H. L. Mencken wrote on the passing of another Republican governor of Massachusetts — Calvin Coolidge — and can there be any higher praise for a politician, especially one of the Bay State variety?
OK, he wasn’t perfect — Jane Swift and Margaret Marshall come immediately to mind. But he really always did try to do the right thing, and when he departed office in 2001, the state was in immeasurably better shape than when he and Bill Weld took over in the wreckage of the Dukakis disaster known as the Massachusetts miracle.
They were elected saying they’d cut taxes, and they cut taxes.
They said they’d work with the Democrats in the Legislature, and they did. Maybe because Cellucci was almost a Democrat, not in the new pejorative RINO sense, but just as an average guy who went along to get along.
Like Scott Brown, he worked his way up the ladder from selectman. Unlike Brown, he never lost an election. He loved movies, but he also loved music, and he knew Kenny Rogers’ song, “The Gambler.”
He knew when to hold ’em and he knew when to fold ’em, in 2001. He became ambassador to Canada, a reward for all his loyal work as a Bush family liegeman.
For a long time, I never could understand why Cellucci agreed to be Bill Weld’s running mate in 1989. After all, he held elective office and Bill Weld had lost all but two of the commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns when he ran for attorney general in 1978.
But Paul was always willing to play second fiddle. He didn’t mind hanging out with legislators, or Democrats. The story was that when he first decided to give up his state Senate seat, the first guy he told was state Rep. Bob Durand — a Democrat.
In the House, Paul Cellucci had been a rabble-rouser with a bunch of Republicans and Democrats torturing the leadership with their antics.
It’s hard to imagine now, but back then, some solons actually read the bills before they voted on them. A few of them were even Democrats.
In the Senate, though, he got along with Billy Bulger. He genuinely seemed to like the Corrupt Midget. As I said, nobody’s perfect.
He was one of the young GOP reps who hooked up with George H. W. Bush in the 1980 New Hampshire primary.
After the Reagan landslide, some of them came down with Potomac fever big time, but Cellucci remained at the State House, commuting home nights to Hudson. His old man used to hang around the office, whatever office Paul held at the time.
In 1998, after Weld turned over the Corner Office to him, Cellucci looked like the lame duck that’s everybody’s favorite dish at the State House. But he knocked off first Joe Malone in the Republican primary and then the first guy to emerge with a full set of the credentials that now seem de rigueur for all modern Massachusetts moonbats — not Catholic, not from Massachusetts, steeped in Harvard.
I refer of course to L. Scott Harshbarger, and the L stood for Luther.
RIP Paul. You did your best.
Thanks billorites.
RIP Paul. You did your best.
Bullcrap! He signed into law the worst gun control law in the country (up ‘til then).
Maybe that *was* his best.
He wasn’t perfect but I’ll take him over deval any day.
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