The ongoing conflict within the MassGOP between Trumpist wingnuts and politically rational conservatives is as crazy and counter-productive as virtually every political analyst has indicated. It is, indeed, absurd for state Republicans to oppose Charlie Baker’s brand of conservatism. What it is not, however, is surprising or unexplainable.
The most interesting thing about anti-Baker wingnuttery is that here in Massachusetts the more rational alternative really isn’t worth much in terms of conventional party building objectives. The fact is, none of the 21st century’s Massachusetts governors of either party have been particularly useful party builders or partisan policy advocates on Beacon Hill, despite their best efforts. The reason for this is that the Corner Office at the Massachusetts Statehouse is not a politically powerful enough post for what we conventionally understand as effective party leadership by a political chief executive.
The top-down control at the statehouse, where the “big three” jointly steer the ship of state, prevents the right-left partisan dynamic that animates partisanship in Washington and in state capitols across America. No modern Massachusetts governor has the ability to carry water very far for their party’s most engaged activists. Massachusetts governors’ ability to cultivate political popularity is considerable. Such popularity can and has helped 21st century Mass guvs achieve important policy successes. Their ability to exercise political power, however, is virtually capped by the seemingly impenetrable political power of state legislative leaders on Beacon Hill. Bay State Governors need their popularity to achieve their personal political and public policy making goals. State legislative leaders in Massachusetts, on the other hand, do not need to expend nearly as much effort or capital on the maintenance of popularity, leaving them free to focus their efforts and resources on maintaining power instead.
What Jim Lyons and his merry band of crackpots at the MassGOP want from Governor Baker is madness no matter how you slice it. They aren’t “crazy like a fox.” They’re just crazy. But, as Professor Cunningham indicated yesterday, it’s not like a MassGOP – Charlie Baker love fest would put a dent in the Democrats’ three decades long, two-house, veto-proof majority in the state legislature. All the MassGOP can really hope to do, if they want to be relevant anywhere, is to try to be a player in the mass media political narrative where at least they can self-motivate by repeating the mantra that “all publicity is good publicity.”
Poor pitiful Jim Lyons’ approach was always doomed at the ballot box and on Beacon Hill. His one hope was that he could raise some cash for the cause, maybe impress his party’s new masters enough to land a soft political retirement. What he failed to understand is that the Joe Six-pack wingnuts to whom he’s pandering are in it for the ego satisfaction and entertainment value of expressive right wing camaraderie in (what they see as) a left wing state, which they can get for nothing from local Rush Limbaugh clones like Howie Carr and any number of non-local Trumpist bloviators in the ever-expanding, internet fortified, wingnut outrage media ecosystem. The deepest conservative pockets in Massachusetts wouldn’t touch Trumpism with a ten-foot poll. Confrontational social/cultural conservatism is bad for business and they are getting a good enough deal from Beacon Hill without the PR headaches and embarrassment of association with the GOP’s lunatic fringe.