Elaine Kamarck: Will the 'Massachusetts Liberal' Shibboleth Still Work for Republicans?

Elaine Kamarck, in the Boston Globe (July 11 2004):

When it became clear that Senator John Kerry would be the nominee of the Democratic Party, Republicans saw an opportunity to recycle some of their best lines from the contentious Bush-Dukakis presidential campaign of 1988. Like Governor Michael Dukakis before him, they said, Kerry was an Massachusetts liberal, uttering the phrase as if it were a communicable disease. The goal was to depict Kerry as a extremist, advised by a boutique of Harvard intellectuals, whose views would prove unacceptable to the rest of America.

With Tuesday's announcement that John Edwards will join Kerry on the Democratic ticket, the Bush campaign's first response was to throw the L word at the North Carolina senator.

Will the liberal charge stick? More to the point, what exactly is a Massachusetts liberal, and how did it get to be such a pejorative term? Can the epithet still hurt John Kerry in 2004?

Remember Willie Horton

For those of us steeped in recent political history, the first image"Massachusetts liberal" dredges up is that of a convict named Willie Horton. Michael Dukakis had the misfortune to be governor when Horton was let out of a Massachusetts jail on a work release program and proceeded to rape a woman in Maryland. The Republican ads against Dukakis were brutal -- and effective.

Then, during a presidential debate, CNN moderator Bernard Shaw asked,"Governor, if Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" In a bloodless reaction, Dukakis ignored the question about his wife and proceeded to defend his position against the death penalty. To a country sick of crime, Dukakis appeared to embody the kind of politician who cared more about the criminal than the victim -- proving himself (at least to those predisposed against him), too culturally out of step with the country to be president.

So one meaning of"Massachusetts liberal" is soft on crime. But in 2004 crime is not nearly the issue it was 16 years ago -- in part because President Clinton reversed both the image and the reality. Not only was Clinton in favor of the death penalty, but as governor of Arkansas he ordered a convict executed in the year he first ran for president. He then promised to replace 100,000 bureaucrats with 100,000 cops -- a promise he kept. During the '90s, crime began to drop to record low levels. John Kerry, a former prosecutor, is not likely to be tagged with the Massachusetts liberal"soft on crime" rap. That day has come and gone.

Welcome to `Taxachusetts'

A second meaning for"Massachusetts liberal" was"tax and spend" liberal. But like the"soft on crime" rap, the"tax and spend" rap has also seen better days....