GOP Chairman's Battle

What are the signs by which one determines that one is moving into a new political epoch? 

History suggests that such auguries are often small, apparently insignificant, and frequently counter-intuitive.

One that might portend a sea change in Massachusetts’s political culture could be discerned in an underreported event that occurred last Wednesday night when the Republican State Committee convened in a special meeting to elect a new Party Chairman to succeed Jennifer Nassour. In that election, Bob Maginn, a former Bain & Company partner of Mitt Romney and successful businessman, defeated Frank L. McNamara, Jr., a trial lawyer, movement conservative, and former United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts under President Reagan.

On the surface, this event appeared to be just another dog bites man story. After all, didn’t Mr. Maginn have all the money, the active support of the entire Republican establishment, and endorsements from Romney, Senator Scott Brown, former Governor Paul Cellucci, and the entire GOP legislative leadership on Beacon Hill? In addition, didn’t he vastly outspend Mr. McNamara on lavish dinners, lunches-with-legislators, and Top-Of-The-Hub receptions with Scott Brown, in a successful effort to secure the support of the 80-member state committee insiders, in a campaign that, according to one wag, gave new meaning to the term “Republican Party”? [The answer to both questions is “yes”.]

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is not the fact that Mr. Maginn won, but what he had to do and say in order to win. That an ex-Bain partner and seemingly certified member of the “sex and money wing” of the Republican Party felt constrained at every opportunity to present his credentials as a pro-life, grassroots-oriented, evangelical Christian and social conservative was truly stunning. Indeed, there were times when Mr. Maginn sounded like cross between a turf salesman and a fundamentalist preacher. It was not a performance that many of us expected we would ever see in a successful candidate for Republican State Committee Chairman in our lifetimes.

Bottom line: it’s not your father’s Bain & Company, and this is rapidly becoming not your father’s Republican Party.

With the establishment Republicans now only the fourth most numerous political affiliation in the Commonwealth, behind that of Unenrolled, Democrat, and Tea Party Republicans, and with the depth and breadth of voter anger greater than at anytime in my lifetime, the gravitational pull to the Right is now acknowledged even by those Republicans heretofore dismissive of the conservative canons of government and culture. 

Whether the state GOP establishment will now begin to pay more than lip service to the grassroots, and demonstrate more respect and less arrogance towards those elements in the Party hitherto regarded as the "Great Unwashed” (members of the Tea Party, pro-lifers, and Second Amendment folks who do most of the dirty work to get those at the top elected) will depend upon whether Mr. Maginn’s deeds match his words.

In the meantime, one thing is clear: Mr. McNamara and his conservative allies drove the agenda in this Chairman’s race, and may have established a pattern for the election year that is about to unfold.