Anti-SSM, Who the GOP?

Slapping at gays and tromping on their own, the Massachusetts Republican party is clandestinely pushing the same-sex marriage ban. This is in the grand tradition of national GOP leaders from Nixon to Rove. Lie to the pubic, ignore your own party members, and commit bucks and bodies for extremist measures.

The tale appeared first Thursday in Bay Windows by the prolific and insightful Laura Kiritsy. Today's Boston Globe expanded on it a bit (and somehow didn't credit BW until nearly the end of the article).

Turns out that starting in September, the MA GOP VIPs went on the QT (who remembers Good Morning, Vietnam?). Political Director Matt St. Hilaire sent email only to party members, as Kiritsy writes, that “the party was collecting signatures for the anti-gay-marriage petition in an effort to fortify their own database of voters.” She cites one email that included:

Our goal is to identify thousands of voters statewide on a series of issues and then share that data with our candidates next fall so they can target these voters with very specific mailings and phone calls about the issues that matter to them most

Even though many state Republicans are not in the anti-gay camp, even though the majority of Massachusetts residents favor same-sex marriage, the guys with the big, swinging trunks have no problem hiding in dark corners with the extreme right wingers. They just don't let people know it is part of their program.

By the bye, neither St. Hilaire nor party Executive Director Matt Wylie would speak to BW about it.

The Globe spun this web around our wonder governor, Mitt Romney, a.k.a. Cap'n Brylcreem.He was passive when the whole SSM issue was bubbling and when he could have staked a position. Like Senate President Bobby Travaglini, he waited for the Supreme Judicial Court to show the guts he lacks. It did and now that he pines nightly for the White House, he likes to distance himself from the whole matter.

His latest trick was to call in unannounced to a conference call of anti-SSM petition volunteers. He spent four minutes in intimate chat with 100 of his newly closest fellow pinheads. ''He just talked about the importance of letting the people voice their opinion at the ballot box and urged them to stay strong and keep collecting them in the final weekend here,” said Robert Willington, campaign manager for VoteonMarriage.org.

The not-necessarily so Grand Old Party may have twisted some influential noses in its quiet deception. For example, Topsfield Committeewoman Nancy Luther said, ''A unilateral decision was made. Whether the chairman did it on his own or whether he was encouraged to by the governor, I don't know. I don't think it's right to do that. There should have been a vote of the state committee to participate and use party resources, employees, etc."

An irony here is that the state party loves to moan about being in the minority in this bluest of states. Yet, here it is again marginalizing itself by excluding classes of citizens from common rights, playing patronizing papa to its members, and sleeping with the most intellectually and emotionally diseased of bedfellows.

So, why do you suppose they can't get what they want out of the legislature?