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Sept. 9 GOP primary races fall to the Establishment

Anti-conservative push by party. Stark comparison to Democrat tactics.

POSTED September 19, 2014

The Sept. 9 primary elections in Massachusetts (and New Hampshire) were, from a pro-family point of view, disappointing but not surprising. Virtually all of the “worst” Republicans beat the “good” ones in primary races.

Around the country much of the battle this primary season was between the GOP establishment and the conservatives. And it was particularly noticeable here.

Their mindset goes back to the Rockefeller Republicans of the 1960s (who fought against both Goldwater and later Ronald Reagan’s initial candidacy). It’s the idea that conservatives have no other candidates to vote for, so if you push the party and its major candidates as leftward as possible you can attract more liberals. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it falls flat. The alternative to that, which Reagan used, was to persuade the electorate that conservative principles were superior to liberal ones.

The Boston Globe had an interesting op-ed article this week pointing out what we’ve all observed: that Democrat primary voters are very serious about liberal “social values” when deciding for whom to vote. And as a result, all the Democrat candidates for Governor were seemingly to the left of Castro on everything.

This is a 180-degree contrast to what we’ve all observed about Republican primary voters (and especially their deep-pocket donors). GOP voters are much more often driven by a political calculus of how their party can win power, and are much more willing to throw principles out the window (if they had any to start with). They’d vote for Hugo Chavez if they thought he could win. They’ll support a pro-family candidate, but rarely out of principle. This isn’t universal, of course, but is common enough that it sways elections.

Thus in Massachusetts, ultra-RINO Charlie Baker got 75% of the vote for governor vs Mark Fisher’s 25%. And in the Legislative primaries, Establishment-funded candidates won just about all the races. (In the Democratic primary for governor, Coakley, Grossman, and Berwick finished 42%, 36%, and 21%, even though Grossman won the vote at the party's convention.)

As we reported earlier, the Massachusetts Republican Party went to extraordinary lengths to derail the candidacy of pro-family businessman Mark Fisher. The favorite was Baker, whose anti-family positions make him almost indistinguishable from the Democrats.

To make matters even worse, virtually every pro-family GOP legislative office-holder and candidate in Massachusetts jumped ship and supported Baker’s candidacy. (We can only think of one who didn’t.)  

The icing on the cake was when the Mass GOP State Committee voted in July to keep the tally sheets from the GOP convention locked away even from themselves, because they knew the voting process used to try to sink Mark Fisher was pretty clearly crooked and likely criminally liable.

And in New Hampshire, the heavy establishment favorite, recent resident Scott Brown, got 50.5% of the vote in the US Senate GOP primary against nine other candidates, including a former New Hampshire US Senator.  This is after Brown (1) was the deciding vote for the despised Dodd-Frank Act, (2) voted to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, (3) had bragged in Massachusetts TV commercials that he voted with Barack Obama nearly half the time, and (4) has been very public about his pro-choice positions. Go figure.

And finally in Massachusetts there’s Richard Tisei, the homosexual activist (pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, “married” to his partner, etc.) and former GOP state senator who is running for Congress in the 6th district again this year. He doesn’t need money from the state GOP establishment. The national GOP establishment is “targeting” this race again and pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars to attempt (again) to get him elected.

As least in Mass. there’s still Independent Rev. Scott Lively on the ballot for Governor. According to a recent Boston Globe poll, he is leading the other two Independent candidates, both of whom are multi-millionaires!