Column: Bay State Republicans need to find their conservative souls

Taylor Armerding

I hear the Massachusetts Republican Party is beginning a series of navel-gazing forums to figure out how it can resurrect its own cold, dead corpse.

The "MassGOP Grassroots Forums" began this past week in West Springfield and are coming to Plymouth, Fall River, Worcester, Dedham and Andover.

I can't wait. I think I have a closet that will easily hold them all.

Yeah, bad joke. But the party is a bad joke. If those who claim the GOP label had any energy, any smarts, any charisma, any passion, any ambition other than to "get along" with the Democrats at the Statehouse, they'd be on a tear about now.

They have had a literal feast of "issues" dropped in their laps.

They've had a Democratic state senator caught on video stuffing cash into her bra. They've had a Democratic House speaker resign just in time to avoid being forced out of office due to ethical, uh, "problems." And he's the third in a row.

They've had a remarkable run of stories, even in the left-leaning Boston media, about how the honest, working taxpayers of both parties are being shafted — paying for a pension system for public employees that is beyond outrageous, brought to you courtesy of the Democratic Party, which has controlled the Massachusetts Statehouse since 1958.

They've also had a run of stories about the outrageous provisions in union contracts. Which party is in bed with the unions? It ain't Republicans.

What is wrong with the Massachusetts Republican Party is not complicated. It does not require a series of grassroots forums to figure out. For my eminently reasonable $100,000 consulting fee, I can tell them what to do in three words: BE REAL REPUBLICANS.

You'd think that would be obvious. But in Massachusetts it is not. Republicans are convinced that their party's fundamental principles — limited government, personal responsibility along with personal freedom, the free market, low taxes, fiscal responsibility — won't sell in Massachusetts. They think the route to electoral success is to be Democrat Lite.

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