Charlie and Deval, wear your school tie – the crimson model emblazoned with “Veritas.” Treasurer Tim, show us your street cred – your Wall Street cred. It is time to pay homage to elites. In this age of concern for the working family and passion for Tea Party populism one important group is being shunned […]
Maurice Cunningham
Posted inEconomy, Opinion, Politics
Tea partying for fun and profit
Even a grass-roots movement of The People needs leaders, and the recent Tea Party festival on the Boston Common reveals the group’s vanguard: commercial hucksters, both small-time and big-name, in the grandest American tradition. The small-time label clearly doesn’t apply to the event’s headliner, former vice-presidential candidate, former Alaska governor, and present celebrity Sarah Palin. […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
No holy alliance
The Democratic Party and Catholics enjoyed a long and fruitful marriage in Massachusetts. These days the commitment is more frayed than any political union this side of John and Elizabeth Edwards. The marital conversation has not yet approached Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in its intensity, but it might be damaging the Democrats nonetheless. There […]
Posted inPolitics
Brown boom or Brown bubble?
The extraordinary victory of Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley leaves us with an important question for the Massachusetts GOP: Was the Brown phenomenon a sign of a sustainable boom in Republican fortunes here, or was it a bubble that will soon burst? If the campaign portends a boom in Republican fortunes, there would […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
The Know Somethings?
The Tea Party phenomenon aims to upend Massachusetts political structures with a combination of anti-establishment populism, a challenge to prevailing economic wisdom, and anti-immigrant vehemence. John Mulkern has written a superb book exploring these factors – but the book was published in 1990, and is titled The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts. Most of us have […]