Op-Ed; Mitt's tormentors exploit feeble GOP

THOMAS M. KEANE JR.
839 words
21 June 2002
Boston Herald
All Editions
027
English
(Copyright 2002)

Don't blame Democrats for their party's efforts to oust Mitt Romney from the ballot. It's the GOP's fault.

With their residency challenge, Democrats are really just making explicit something that has been implicit for quite some time: The two-party system in Massachusetts is dead. Enfeebled and toothless, more punching bag than competition, the Republican Party is like a 90-pound weakling on the Democratic beach. Democrats kick sand in their faces and Republicans do little more than whimper.

This may seem counter to conventional wisdom, since it now appears that the Democratic Party's attack on Romney's credentials is provoking a strong backlash. That, of course, is the reason why a host of Democrats, once privately, now more publicly, are starting to question the political wisdom of their case before the Ballot Law Commission. They figure that should Romney survive the challenge, his chances of becoming governor are much improved.

Leave aside the governor's office, however, and things look quite different. Yes, a Republican has been governor for the last 12 years. But otherwise? The Massachusetts GOP is pathetically inconsequential.

Consider: Democrats hold all four of the non-gubernatorial constitutional offices - attorney general, treasurer, secretary of state and auditor. All of the state's 10 congressional representatives are Democrats, as are its two U.S. senators. At the State House, only 22 of 160 state representatives are Republicans. On the Senate side, it's only six out of 40. Just three of the 11 Massachusetts district attorneys are Republicans; the numbers are similarly lopsided for other county jobs such as sheriff, registers of probate and deeds, and clerk of courts.

And it gets worse: Not only are there few Republican officeholders, there are hardly any Republican candidates. This year, almost two-thirds of the Democrats in the Massachusetts House and Senate will be unchallenged by a Republican. Of the statewide offices (excluding governor and lieutenant governor), only one - treasurer - has a reasonable (albeit not likely) chance of falling into Republican hands. And then, of course, there is the icing on the cake: Jack E. Robinson. The erstwhile candidate is, to be charitable about it, an embarrassment. In almost any other state in the country, he would be run out of the party. But at times in Massachusetts, he's all the Republicans had.

In fact, the Democrats' challenge of Romney is itself proof of their supremacy. If the Republicans had any significant power in the state, Democrats would fear some sort of political revenge. But with the Massachusetts GOP, there is no bite behind the bark.

Bully for the Democrats, you say? Hardly. Some months ago, MassINC, a political think-tank, held a forum essentially bemoaning the "Future of the GOP." MassINC's executive director, Tripp Jones, argued that Democrats need a vigorous GOP. The Democratic Party, he said, gets "sloppy and lazy when there's no opposition." Certainly, that's been apparent of late. Over the last year, Democrats have made a series of blunders - from goofy litmus tests to their bobbled convention - that have hurt their cause. The residency challenge is only the latest misstep.

Moreover, an ineffective two-party system is bad for public policy. That's because, at its best, politics is about the sorting out of competing ideas. Privacy, for example, is at odds with public safety; market economics is at odds with economic security. But if no one is there to effectively argue the other side, politics can quickly descend into extremism and cynicism.

Still, it's not the Democrats' fault that the Republicans are so weak. And that weakness itself is a puzzle. Many Republicans at the MassINC forum, heads in sand, denied there was any problem at all. Others tried to blame the GOP's anti-government ideology, arguing it caused those inclined to be Republicans to be less likely to participate in government.

That's hardly persuasive. After all, nationwide the Republican Party does quite well. Republicans seem to have little problem fielding candidates in local races in most other states.

Nor is Massachusetts somehow uniquely inhospitable to the GOP. Sure, Democrats do well in urban areas dominated by lower-income and blue-collar populations. Yet, the vast majority of the state is middle class. These are exactly the kind of people Republicans should be able to attract - and do attract - in other states. Suburban voters rarely register as Democrats but for some reason Republicans haven't been able to scoop them up; instead, suburbanites are typically unenrolled.

Perhaps it is simply that Republicans have grown lazy. They like the glory of the governorship, but the rest of it, particularly the grassroots part, gets the hands too dirty and takes too much work. Democrats have toiled for years building their party. Instead of whining about them beating up on Romney, the GOP needs to make the same sort of effort.

Tom Keane can be reached at tom@tomkeane.com.

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