2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary does not need your vote to win in November [View all]merrily
(45,251 posts)The Massachusetts legislature routinely overrode over 300 of Romney's vetoes every year--and that's when he was still posing as more liberal than Ted Kennedy--which is what Romney said when he ran against Ted in the 1990s. When he ran for Governor, he did not tell us he was in the process of shape shifting because he wanted to succeed Dimson, who pretty much changed the game for Republican Presidents, even appearing much different from his own Pappy..
In the last primary for Mayor of Boston, we started with, I think, 22 candidates. They had only one primary because 21 of them were Democrats and the 22nd was a far right wing pastor who I thought may not have been playing with a full set. So, of course, the general was Democrat v. Democrat.
Maybe you are okay if a liberal Republican is Governor, when your Mayor and and your entire City Council are Democrats, your entire Congressional delegation is Democratic, your legislature is over 90% Democratic, and your state Supreme Court is the first in the country to declare a right to equal marriage. (Maybe you even think some balance would be good. I don't, but some indies might--and most of our registered voters are indies.)
Besides, Massachusetts has a long tradition of liberal, patrician Republican Governors, dating back to when Republicans actually were the more liberal party by far. (Think Lincoln-Douglas. And much less corrupt. Deval Patrick had zero trouble becoming Governor, though. Then again, David Axelrod ran Patrick's campaign before Axelrod ran Obama's.
Besides, it's not as though New Democrats are that different. For example, Romneycare was the model for Obamacare. Billarycare was the model for Romneycare. HeritageFoundationCare was the model for Billarycare. HeritageFoundationcare was developed because some conservatives in Jackson Hole Wyoming thought Nixoncare was too liberal because it had an employer mandate and no individual mandate. Ta Da.