Baker Only Player on MA GOP Bench

Lord love a duck, was it only three years ago that Mass Republicans' great wide hope, Charlie Baker, went down grimacing to Gov. Deval Patrick? He's back and big and bland as ever.

You can see his ho-hum announcement on the front of his new campaign site. At there moment, there's no other content accessible, short of signing up for his mailing list or giving him money.

The key concept here is that his only real hope of winning the open office will be voter delusion. The MA electorate loves its fantasy that putting Republicans into that office somehow is the smart thing to do, avoiding one-party rule and such.  Those who vote that way often say something like, "It's only common sense." Yet, that invariably means, "I got nothing. I'll make wild assertions and I don't want to be challenged or prove anything."

In MA reality, over half the electorate is unenrolled. The other 48% divvy up 36%-plus for Dems and 11%-plus for Republicans. Within both the unenrolled and Dems are substantial numbers of socially and fiscally conservative voters. I have long contended that this shadow Republican party is the base that the opposition needs to rally, where they need to pluck and groom their candidates from. That would apparently take more smarts, guts and energy than the GOP has here.

Amusingly, blogs around here, including the Red and the Blue Mass Groups, already carry Baker barkers claiming he will skunk Steve Grossman or whoever else wins the Dem primary. Some shills advance the very false idea that in the 2010 election, Baker would have beaten Patrick if Dem-turned-unenrolled Tim Cahill would not have run. That assumes Cahill's 8% of the vote would have gone entirely to Baker — a risible fantasy, when in fact Cahill bled Patrick votes from both Dem and unenrolled voters.

As outgoing MA Dem party chair John Walsh clears his desk, he also clears his throat and ridicules Baker's bluster. Moreover, sites like BigDigBaker.com and ProgressiveMass' list of 13 things Baker would like voters to forget they know about him are not being subtle about the candidates failures, shames and duplicity. If those seem like showing your hand and telling the opposition what's coming, it's no surprise to either side. Voters will have to delude themselves to smear the oval for Jolly Cholly.