Send in the Clowns

Jules Crittenden, writing in the Boston Herald:

It’s that time of the election cycle when we get ready to take one for the team. I’m talking about conservatives. Here in Taxachusetts.

Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank and Mike Dukakis. Gay marriage and Willie Horton. The strictest gun controls in the nation, and gun violence is skyrocketing. John Kerry, still reporting for duty.

We all know the jokes, we’ve heard them all before. People are always amazed to learn that conservatives live here in Massachusetts. They wonder what that can be like. It can be galling to think that, in presidential elections, your vote doesn’t count.

It is nothing more than a symbolic gesture, to let the world know, for example, that more than a third of John Kerry’s voting constituents prefered a Republican from Texas.

But to view the national stage from Massachusetts is to know the bitter truth that our state plays an important role in America’s political theater. Every two years, bluest blue Massachusetts sends in the clowns. We show America what could be and America generally sees it and acts accordingly: runs in the other direction.

From Kerry’s insulting jibes at our troops, to the efforts by Kennedy and others in our delegation to undermine a wartime presidency and give Euro-style socialism a foot-hold in the New World, Massachusetts gives America its bogeymen.

An unexpectedly interesting piece of commentary from this source — do go read the whole thing.