Enough Griping About a One-Party State!

Bostonist has never made pretensions of conservatism, and it won’t take much to guess whom (this) Bostonist is voting for in a week and a half. Because of that, we don’t expect people to care if we take time out of our busy schedule to debunk things that Kerry Healey and her supporters say. Also, with Christy Mihos and Grace Ross running quixotically for governor, Healey has enough higher-profile-than-us detractors already. But damn it, if we hear a Massachusetts Republican kvetch one more time about the dangers of a “one-party system,” we will go crazy.

The Globe reports today that Mitt “in ‘08” Romney is finally bothering to add fuel to the flaming wreck that is help Kerry Healey’s gubernatorial bid. Naturally, he does this first by singing the praises of the two-party system, implying that control of two branches of government by the same party leads to tyranny (an argument we’d assume he wouldn’t want to make as he eyes a run for President and tries to help Republican legislative candidates). But the problem in Massachusetts (if there is one) isn’t the system - there are no procedural barriers that keep Republicans off the ballot. It’s that the state Republican party is totally anemic. They haven’t even managed to get candidates on the ballot for three of the seven statewide offices up for grabs.

It’s all well and good for the Republicans to say that there should be a conservative in the corner office of the Statehouse to balance the Democratic majority in the legislature. They might even try proposing policies that make Healey seem like a more appealing candidate than Patrick (we know, it’s a crazy idea). But this one-party system business has to stop. China is a one-party system. Massachusetts is a two-party system where one of the parties is poorly organized and whiny.

Photo: Voters in Leominster China.