Wither the Mass GOP?

A few days ago, our friend, Iron Mike, sent us a copy of his New Year greetings which included a hard look at the sorry state of the Massachusetts Republican Party. While the national political scene has been hijacked by the mass hysteria of adulation for president elect, we here in the Bay State have the impressive challenge of jump-starting the stalled efforts of the Massachusetts GOP. And while there is certainly some spillover from the national party's tepid performance during the presidential campaign, Mike reminds us of our own shortcomings:

- It began in 2007 with RINO Ogo's failed run for Congress - where he lambasted President Bush and no Republican anywhere in the Commonwealth [other than me] pushed back at him or told him to change his tune. Mass Republicans seemed willing to concede their sitting president was fatally flawed – even as he had the courage to make the surge happen, and bring a measure of victory to a four-dimensional battlefield.
- Then cowering in our caves and dugouts – we ran nobody against GrandMa Tsongas – who can’t tell the map of Afghanistan from the map of Iraq.

- Then our National GOP – and probably our MassGOP – ran RINO Ogo against Kerry. Most of us believe there was a deal struck between the MassGOP and the Democratic Party to offer Ketchup Kerry a weak opponent in exchange for quarterly access to Hillary’s Oval Office. Last January nobody saw The Messiah coming.

- When Ogo floundered [gee, do you suppose Kerry’s office sent “young Republicans” to help Ogo collect signatures?], - nobody got behind Jeff Beatty, at either the state or national level. McCain made only one secret trip to our state, - a secret fund-raiser on Nantucket.

Mike is joined by many others who point out that having tried to water down our conservative principles in attempt at bringing more voters under our "big tent" succeeded only in muddying the GOP's message. As we begin to re-build, the foundation should be a return to a clear statement of our conservative Republican fundamentals.

While the results of the last election were painful, this is not the time to go into hibernation. The new administration in Washington, as well as Democrats on Beacon Hill are about to be swamped by economic realities which will highlight the unsupportable costs of many of the liberal entitlement programs. The GOP has the opportunity to spotlight these failures while we re-tool our message and re-build our two-part form of government. Or as Iron Mike says:

This is not simply a battle about which party controls Congress or the White House, or Beacon Hill. This is really a battle to preserve liberty, individual freedom, free enterprise, and government by the people, - or to just watch our nation quickly slide into a socialist welfare state – without a shot being fired.

Mike thinks the choice is clear: we must fight for what we believe in! The View supports this choice.