Losing on five of six of anything will sting, whether it’s losing on a handful of scratch tickets or a weeklong homestand at Fenway. The pain increases dramatically when the losing streak in question involves the majority of voters in the country telling you, every four years, that you believe the wrong things on pretty much everything — especially when you’ve convinced yourself that you’re right. So the Republican anguish and soul-searching that followed November’s disastrous presidential election was to be expected. It didn’t matter so much that the possible solutions for the GOP’s ineffectual stabs at the White House, and at a Senate majority, were completely at odds with one another. One vocal wing of pundits was urging Republicans to moderate hard-line stances on immigration, women’s issues, and social safety net spending, while the other wing blamed November on the party’s insufficiently muscular conservatism. The important thing, at the time, was that national Republicans realized they were up against the wall, and were looking for a solution.
Two months later, the GOP is no closer to a consensus on how to shed its political toxins. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (who, it appears, has completed his political penance for this) made some noise last week about the importance of Republicans not “being the stupid party.” This amuses Globe columnist Joanna Weiss, who asks whether Jindal’s exhortation means he will get behind efforts to repeal a stupid creationist-teaching state law that he signed several years ago. Jindal, she points out, majored in biology at Brown, yet he trafficked in anti-science for political gain in his home state. Sounds downright stupid.
Former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey also riffs off Jindal’s don’t-be-stupid command, in a column for WBUR. Healey, last seen trying to salvage Mitt Romney’s State House record, writes that “No one should expect Republicans to change their core beliefs just because some of those ideas make them unpopular with Democrats.” However, she singles out the unbending Newt Gingrich wing of the party for criticism, calling the notion that national Republicans just have to speak their unpopular beliefs more loudly and clearly “wishful thinking.” Instead, she argues, the GOP needs to put money behind grassroots outreach efforts aimed at women and minorities, as well as dropping the party’s hard line shunning of social moderates. But in today’s New York Times, David Brooks argues against the very notion that the GOP is capable of the kinds of softening Healey promotes. Instead, he says, the moderate misfits who dominate the Republican ranks in the Northeast, West Coast and Upper Midwest should split off into their own wing — a sort of party within the party that would allow folks like Healey and Scott Brown the room to call themselves Republicans without being weighed down by those other Republicans — the ones who traffic in creationism and rape jokes.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait takes a more sober, and sanguine, view of the ongoing makeover. Chait, who called out the GOP’s white and hard-right strategy as a surefire demographic loser a year ago, argues that although the party is making pains to head left on immigration, it’s tacking right on everything else. Chait notes that Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s current ideological leader, is backing off the 2010 game plan of turning every crisis point into a standoff over whether the future of government includes government. At the same time, though, Ryan is still “sticking with the same anti-tax policies that have dominated Republican thought for three decades,” and still “proposing to sell them with the same buzzwords Republicans have been using for three decades.” In other words, stupid is tough to shake.
–PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
Gov. Deval Patrick plans to announce on Wednesday his pick for interim US senator, following today’s scheduled Senate vote on John Kerry’s nomination as secretary of state. The special election for Senate will take place June 25.
State Sen. Jack Hart will resign his seat this week to take a job at a law firm, setting up a special election scramble for his South Boston-Dorchester seat — and turning the race to succeed Senate President Therese Murray, in which he had been viewed as a favorite, into a wide-open contest.
Radio Boston talks about guns and mental health.
State candidates spent more money on Dunkin’ Donuts than they did on posters or electricity last year.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Nahant raises concerns about false burglar alarms, with Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center leading the way with 61, the Item reports.
Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll tries to jump-start efforts to build a new senior center, the Salem News reports.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino will unveil a plan to sell municipal land for mid-priced home construction tonight.
Ayer and Shirley try to swipe the Devens school contract from Harvard.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The Boys Scouts of America may lift its ban on openly gay scouts and scout leaders.
A national poll conducted by Johns Hopkins University finds that an overwhelming number of Americans, including many who identify themselves as gun owners, support stronger restrictions on firearms.
ELECTIONS
Beware of the screen shot: Scott Brown better own up to those tweets, and fast.
Disgraced former rep Anthony Weiner can’t decide which low-level New York City office to run for.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Foreclosures in Massachusetts were down 13 percent last year compared with 2011 but the same report shows foreclosure petitions, the first step in the process, rose by 35 percent.
New data from the Department of Revenue show homeowners around the state lost $106 billion in their homes’ values — about 11 percent — over the four years of the recession, led by Brockton where house values plummeted 44 percent between 2008 and 2012.
The Tennessee comptroller charges that two state agencies improperly approved $25 million in expenditures as eligible for reimbursement under the state’s film tax credit and overstated the return on investment from film deals, the Tennessean reports.
The New York Times looks at how Facebook taught computers to speak like people.
Biotech companies are turning to state legislatures for relief from generic competition.
EDUCATION
Virtual learning is gaining momentum in Massachusetts classrooms, WBUR reports. CommonWealth looked last spring at the huge potential for online learning, and, more recently, spotlighted problems with the state’s first all-virtual school in Greenfield.
A Globe editorial pans the proposed Boston student assignment reforms as weak tinkering rather than the bold step that is needed, and calls on Mayor Tom Menino to send the assignment committee back to the drawing board to come up with something stronger.
A Lowell Sun editorial comes out swinging against a bid to block Lowell Community Charter School from moving into an old mill site.
The Fall River School Committee voted to close the chronically underperforming Henry Lord Middle School rather than allow the state or an outside contractor come in and take over.
Keller@Large bemoans the lack of knowledge of American history by today’s students.
HEALTH CARE
Harvard has been awarded a $100 million grant from the NFL players’ union to carry out a sweeping, cross-disciplinary 10-year investigation of health issues among active and retired pro football players, who die, on average, 20 years younger than other men.
A soldier who survived losing all four limbs in Iraq receives a double arm transplant.
TRANSPORTATION
The number of passengers boarding commercial flights at New Bedford Regional Airport increased by 10 percent in 2012.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
A Plymouth Superior Court judge allowed a suit by a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe against a former Mattapoisett shellfish warden to go forward. The suit, which is being eyed closely by shore towns, claims the warden violated the tribe member’s aboriginal fishing rights when he confiscated his catch.
The Scituate Board of Health approved a limited noise study of the town’s wind turbine, much to the chagrin of neighbors who want a more expansive analysis that measures factors not regulated by the state.
The New Bedford Standard Times today finishes up a three-part series looking at the city’s zoo and its handling of elephants amid an international movement to phase out exhibits of the mammoths and reduce human interaction.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A Plymouth police captain lost his department-issued gun after he put it down inside in the bathroom in Wareham District Court then forgot it when he left before returning and finding it gone.
MEDIA
Twitter releases its second transparency report, disclosing requests from governments and rights holder for information, removals, and copyright notices.
Former Red Sox manager Terry Francona is Greater Boston’s “1 Guest” to talk about his tell-some, bridge-burning book that is getting widespread play. He tells Emily Rooney he doesn’t believe ownership was the source of leaks regarding his personal problems.