Pigs flying?
Hell freezing over?
Yup. Boston Globe endorses Republican Charlie Baker over Democrat Martha Coakley.
Effective activist government isn’t built on good intentions. To provide consistently good results, especially for the state’s most vulnerable and troubled residents, agencies need to focus on outcomes, learn from their errors, and preserve and replicate approaches that succeed. Baker, a former health care executive, has made a career of doing just that. During this campaign, he has focused principally on making state government work better. The emphasis is warranted. And in that spirit, the Globe endorses Charlie Baker for governor…..… Coakley’s campaign up to now suggests an odd reluctance to seize the initiative. Even as a prohibitive favorite during the Democratic primary contest, she was unwilling to spell out an issue agenda — raising the possibility that, if she is elected, the public discussion might drift toward whichever priorities legislative leaders decided to emphasize. For instance, lawmakers seem to have cooled lately on education reform. Coakley’s positions in this area, such as on raising the cap on the number of charter schools in the state, appear to be a work in progress. Baker would provide full-throated support for the kind of high standards, accountability, and innovation that will give all children in Massachusetts the opportunities they deserve….At a difficult inflection point in state government, Massachusetts needs a governor who’s focused on steady management and demonstrable results.
That’s how bad a candidate Martha Coakley is.
So bad that in early 2010 when running for Senate against Scott Brown, she made the comment which serves as the poster child for what a politician should not do:
Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive.“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?’’ she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that.
Coakley never has shaken that image of the out-of-touch, I-know-better-than-you politician. That’s enough to kill the campaign even of a Democrat in Massachusetts.
Click here for more from our Martha Coakley archives.
[Featured Image: Martha Coakley watches as staffer pushes John McCormack of The Weekly Standard to the ground, January 2010]
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