Those voices don't speak for the rest of us

John Sununu: Mass GOP needs to stop treating conservatives like pariahs

This week on the Howie Carr Radio Show in Boston, I've been told that John Sununu was asked by Carr what Massachusetts could learn from the success the GOP had in NH, and Sununu said that even in liberal MA, the base was the conservatives and the establishment had to stop treating the conservatives like pariahs.

I couldn’t agree more. Rush Limbaugh has been saying for years that the majority of Americans are Conservative, and I believe that applies to Massachusetts residents as well. They may not vote that way, but they're conservative in the way they raise their families, run their lives, and manage their finances.

When their debts begin to mount they cut back on their expenses. That's fiscal conservatism. And they drive their kids to Sunday School or Catechism classes, and teach them to say grace around the table. That's the beginning of training in social conservatism. And they wave the American flag proudly on the Fourth of July and at parades honoring veterans. They teach their kids to be respectful during the playing of the national anthem at ball games, and to work hard in school and become law abiding citizens.

That covers traditional Conservative values and in a very simplistic way all three phases of the Reagan Conservative model which Ronald Reagan referred to as a three legged stool: Fiscal conservatism; social conservatism; and national security. I see no evidence that most people in Mass are attempting to bring up their kids as radical socialist wackos and instilling them with hatred towards the United States, like President Obama's parents did to him with the help of a variety of radical marxist mentors.

The Mass GOP needs to get behind the true Conservatives and Tea Party types all over this country if they want to obtain any relevancy in the Country's political spectrum. The leadership needs to stop worrying about what a candidate needs to say or shouldn't say in order to win. Just pick true conservatives who are true to their own convictions and they'll come across as being sincere rather than political opportunists trying to win an election by saying the right things.

Winning shouldn't be the ultimate goal. Educating the electorate and building a larger conservative constituency is what is needed through debates and campaign appearances during the primary and into the general election campaigns. We do that and that will lead to electoral victories eventually. This Mass GOP stands for nothing and deserved to lose. How dare they try to present the case that our candidates deserve their vote simply because the Democrat candidate that has worked so hard at constituent services proved himself to be inept at managing the nation's or the state's economy and contributed to the recesssion. Why can't they build a case for voting for Republican candidates because of who they are alone, not what's wrong with the other candidate?

Right now the Mass GOP has nothing what-so-ever to offer the GOP nationwide except the ability and an apparent willingness to drag it down. There needs to be a clean sweep of the Mass GOP leadership including the State Committees and all the RTC's that supported the Gubernatorial and Congressional candidates that lost, and replace them with true Ronald Reagan conservatives and/or tea party supporters who are also social conservatives. (The greater boston Tea Party leadership is a fraud and a joke for refusing to support candidates that are social conservatives). Until that happens the Mass GOP is destined to lose, lose, and lose some more.

Voters rejected moderate Republicans in Massachusetts on Tuesday, not conservatives

As the dust begins to settle in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, like all Conservative Republicans in Massachusetts, I’m filled with mixed emotions.

I’m elated at the success the GOP experienced nationally, while disappointed somewhat bitterly at the outright rejection of the GOP in Massachusetts, though not surprised.

While Conservatism triumphed nationally it was moderate Republicanism or if you will, Progressive Elitism that was really being rejected in Massachusetts. So what else is new?

Another way to describe it was we ran candidates who were pretending to be conservatives while not speaking out on social issues. The ones that did were viciously attacked and slandered by the Republican progressives during the primary campaign.

Once the candidates were selected, I congratulated them publicly and then tried to keep my mouth shut and do my duty while holding my nose at the same time, because I knew it was all a big charade. Although I admit that at one point I was ready to explode when a candidate who claimed to be a conservative stated emphatically during a debate that Roe vs Wade is settled law. A true conservative could never conclude that a bad law based on a false constitutional right such as the non existent "Right to Privacy" could ever become settled law. But I reigned in my anger and deleted an angry reply I posted in response to the statement and refrained from commenting further throughout the rest of the campaign though it killed me to do so.

The Democrat candidates in Massachusetts did not have to run as liberals. They were liberals at their very core and proud of it. Some of the Democrats and most of the Independents that voted for them were not happy with the state of the economy, Obamacare, and many regulations being imposed on them by the Obama administration, such as was the case with the Fishing Industry in Massachusetts' ports like Gloucester and New Bedford, yet they still voted for their candidates.

These same democrat and independent voters looked at the Republican candidates and saw intelligent, articulate, Democrat Lite candidates but saw nothing that stood out as a strong contrasting choice, who was willing to fight hard for their local concerns. And until the Mass GOP figures out that a moral compass is needed to sustain the third leg of Ronald Reagan’s conservative stool, i.e. Social Conservatism, they will continue to lose and lose badly. If their is no moral base there the stool drifts left of center and looks remarkably like the Democrat alternative only not as strong and true to its convictions.These candidates shouldn’t have to put on an act in order to win elections. The GOP leadership needs to run genuine, true conservatives who believe the words they speak because it is who they are. Why is this so difficult to understand?

I just spent some time reading posts at Red Mass Group and some of the old guard Republicans are attempting to reshape the party after it's dismal failure the other day and they are having intellectual discussions that make my head spin. Part of the problem is that these elites don't understand that there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. Anyway they’re having discussions about the need to find a philosophy they can latch on to like Yankee Republicanism and were dropping names from the country club Republican vernacular like Henry Cabot Lodge, Saltonstall, Volpe and names I haven’t heard since the 1950’s.

I'd like to make a suggestion. Try Conservatism as demonstrated successfully I might add during the tenure of President Ronald Reagan. Most of the country did last Tuesday with the help of the grass roots tea party movement and the results were a net gain of 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate.