The GOP's Northeast Achilles' heel

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
WashPost
Monday, September 27, 2010

BOSTON

"Where are our plans for a New Deal or a Great Society?" asked Edward W. Brooke, the legendary Massachusetts Republican.

It's not a question anyone in today's Republican Party would dare get caught even considering, but Brooke had the temerity to raise it in "The Challenge of Change," a book published in 1966, the year he became the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

The midterm election that year was very good for Republicans in general, including a Californian named Ronald Reagan. But it was an especially fine year for moderate and progressive Republicans of the Brooke stripe across the Northeast. Their prizes included governorships in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Pennsylvania.

In 2010, Republicans run away in horror at the prospect of being called moderate, let alone progressive, and that is an obstacle in the GOP's path to a congressional majority. It will be very hard for Republicans to take the House if they don't break the Democrats' power in the Northeast -- and they still have to prove they can do that.

(More here.)