“Massachusetts Republicans’ numbers are dwindling, both in the state’s power structure, and in the rank-and-file party enrollment rosters. And lately, as the national Republican Party has tacked to the right, local Democrats have been making hay by ignoring whichever candidate the Massachusetts GOP throws against them, and simply dialing up generic attacks on the Republican brand.” 

That seems to describe pretty well the challenging landscape facing Brian Shortsleeve and Mike Kennealy, the two Republicans vying for the right to go up against Gov. Maura Healey next fall. In fact, it comes from a CommonWealth article written 11 years ago – this week’s “Flashback Friday” dive into the archives.  

In “Threading the needle,” which appeared in the magazine’s Spring 2014 issue, Paul McMorrow sized up the approach being taken by another Republican gubernatorial hopeful, this one back for a second bite at the apple after taking a drubbing four years earlier in his first run for the corner office.  

As McMorrow vividly captured, this was not the Charlie Baker of 2010 – the angry guy who seemed to be drafting on the surge of tea party venom that, earlier that year, had improbably carried a little-known GOP state lawmaker into the US Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy.  

The 2014 Charlie Baker was kinder, gentler, and, frankly, more boring – if that’s a way to describe a focus on basic bread-and-butter issues that matter to people but don’t inflame ideological passions. “Baker is running a campaign that’s heavy on crossover issues that don’t have a Republican or Democratic solution. He’s trying to win independents and Democrats to his cause by floating above his party,” wrote McMorrow.  

Baker told him that Republicans win in Massachusetts by “making the case on things that people care about: jobs, the economy, schools, the achievement gap. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican issues. They’re a platform on which to build a great state, and a great life.” 

We know, of course, how the story ended. Baker eked out a narrow victory that year over Attorney General Martha Coakley before going on to win a second term four years later in a landslide.  

What’s remarkable about the sizing up of the GOP challenge in 2014, with a national Republican brand that had turned toxic in deep blue Massachusetts, is that this all predated the arrival on the scene of Donald Trump.  

As they vie for the GOP nomination, Shortsleeve and Kennealy have been offering up plenty of red-meat Republican jabs at Healey over issues like immigration and public safety. But history suggests the Baker playbook might be a pretty good general election model for whoever emerges as the Republican nominee – complete with all the backslapping and bad jokes Baker brought to traditionally Democratic venues like a Charlestown St. Patrick’s Day banquet, which forms the great opening scene in McMorrow’s story.