Posted by
Robert Morris on Monday, November 12, 2007 6:54:37 PM
Mr. Jackson said (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GreggJackson/2007/11/09/romney_secrets_the_media_are_hiding_from_you),
"When he was elected, Massachusetts had a Republican governor for nearly two decades. When he left, it didn't. What it had was a Hillary disciple who is now transforming the Cradle of Liberty into an amalgam of the Soviet Union, Sodom and Las Vegas."
On the one hand, Jackson implies the state was conservative before Romney because they elected GOP governors for two decades, and it was Romney's fault they became so liberal they elected a democrat after him. At the same time, he must be a liberal, because the state is liberal, and they elected him. Was the state conservative or liberal before he was elected? Sounds like he is saying both.
The truth is the state had been electing conservative governors for a very long time even though it was fairly liberal and continues to become more liberal through the years. Even when they last elected a Democrat, Edward Joseph King (1979-1983), he was conservative on most issues.
Gov. King is described on the governor website (www.mass.gov) in the following way: "Governor King froze property taxes, reduced state spending on social programs, and undertook a variety of efforts to encourage business formation and agriculture in Massachusetts. He identified the need for greater centralized data and technology planning in state government, creating a new division for this inside the Executive Office of Administration and Finance. Advocating capital punishment, President Reagan called King his "favorite Democratic Governor," which mobilized the liberal members of King's own party to defeat him."
As even Jackson mentioned, the state had been electing conservatives before him, so electing him as a conservative is easy to understand with over two decades of precedent.