Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) issued a fiery call tonight in Charlotte for Democrats to “grow a backbone” and get out to help re-elect President Obama.
He also issued a scathing rebuke of the term of his predecessor, claiming that he had fixed the things left in tatters by Mitt Romney’s term.
“By the time he left office, Massachusetts was 47th in the nation in job creation – during better economic times – and real wages in our state were declining,” Patrick said. “He cut education deeper than anywhere else in America. Roads and bridges were crumbling. Business taxes were up and business confidence was down.”
“Mitt Romney talks a lot about all the things he’s fixed. I can tell you that Massachusetts wasn’t one of them.”
Patrick called Romney “a fine fellow and a great salesman… but as governor he was a lot more interested in having the job rather than doing the job.”
He went so far as to extend the criticism to all of the GOP governors who spoke at last week’s Republican National Convention, saying not one of those “who preached that gospel in Tampa last week has the results to show for it.”
“It’s time for Democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe,” Patrick said. “Quit waiting for pundits or polls or super PACs to tell us who the next president or congressman is going to be.”
“Let’s all start by standing up for Barack Obama,” the governor said. “I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office and neither should you.”
Romney’s qualities and accomplishments matter in the upcoming election, but so too for Obama. Based upon the record, if Donald Duck were running against Obama, logic should dictate that the Duck wins.
Romney and Ryan each did more by the age of 13 than the Criminal in Chief had done before he was annointed king.
And that appears to still hold true.
Deval Patrick has been a disaster as a Governor. Even the Democrats are offended by his big spending, his cronyism and corruption.
He would have lost his reelection if not for a Third Party candidate.
But that’s what third parties are for in the US: to help Democrats get (re)elected as they only significantly draw votes from Republican candidates.
Not always. Remember Ralph Nader, Florida, 2000?
Don’t forget the dead & now the illegals wbo vote early & often.
He cut education and still got Massachusetts to the number one spot in the country? Wow that is impressive!!!! Less money, more results! Wow! Good job Romney… I sucess is determined by how much money you waste not by the quality of the education.
Business taxes were up… well fees and liecensing were up. Not taxes. And the people who used the services paid for them instead of the tax payers.
I suppose getting the credit rating of the state back to AAA was a way to see what a failure Romney really was…
Didn’t spend enough money… balance the budget… strong credit rating… failure!
Not to mention that one of Deval’s first actions as Governor was to hike the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%. If Tax-It-All Deval wants to go there be my guest!
Hey, Democrats, fond of quoting Lincoln?
“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”
–Abraham Lincoln
How ’bout them apples?
You think this is about crushing the rich? I’m a conservative and that’s just a stupid remark. The world isn’t black and white. It is nuanced and requires balance. Let’s have a real debate.
Mealy apples. Wouldn’t eat ‘em.
The quote isn’t from Lincoln, it’s from some Reverend who wrote it fifty years after Lincoln died.
When Romney was sworn in as Governor of Massachusetts, unemployment there ran at 5.6%. when he left in 2007 it was 4.6% (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). So much for the claims of Deval Patrick!
Indeed, which is why you see them cite jobs created. You can’t create many jobs when your state is at statistical full employment.
Low number of jobs created because almost everyone already had them.
When Deval Patrick came to office, unemployment in Mass was 4.6%, in July this year it was 6.1%, again according to the BLS.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: dem desperation smells like victory.
My concern is what O and lame duck dems might do until Romney’s inauguration. I believe that they—O in particular—will go nuclear on the country.
Others have pointed this out about the unemployment rate being 4.6%. You know, when unemployment is that low, it is very hard to create even more jobs. Of course Massachusetts was near last place in job creation.
Unfortunately, Romney and the GOP did nothing proactively to prevent these lines of attack. Romney has had all the time in the world to talk about his record in Massachusetts, but with the exception of a terse back and forth with Rick Perry in one of the 1500 or so Republican primary debates, Romney hasn’t talked about his record as governor.
Romney and company spent the entire Republican convention trying to disprove months of Democratic attacks that painted him as a woman hating racist who tips the scales just behind Dr. Evil in overall evil-yness.
But Romney’s record as governor is going to be a favorite line of attack from here on out. The distortions and twisting of the truth will be so numerous and unrelenting that it’ll be difficult for Republican surrogates to keep track of them all, let alone refute them.
And team Romney handed this gift to Democrats by neglecting to put forth their own preemptive narrative of the candidate’s years in the Massachusetts governor’s mansion … thereby allowing David Axelrod, Stephanie Cutter and their minions to permission to craft their own defining narrative of those years.
Republicans truly are the stupid party.
They’re going to talk about Mitt’s tenure as MA governor when O’Barky has wrecked the US economy? The CBO said that the Bush recession ended in June 2009. That was over 3 years ago! We should have been out of this recession with a roaring economy by now except for the incompetent Barry’s misguided and failed policies. He doesn’t deserve a 2nd term. In the private sector, he would have been fired 3 years ago for the mess he’s made.
No. You got a serious problem here, because the republican brand is so tainted with failure after Bush. All Obama needs to do is to convince enough people that Romney is even worse than him, that at least the ship hasnt crashed and 4 more years of crazy social conservatives and Ayn Rand fanatics is a surefire way to screw it all up just when its starting to come around. “Obama12 – at least he is not insane” is going to be the platform. And with the socons dragging you down, thats gonna be a hard one to fight.
That’s about it right there. Thank you Todd Akin.
I’m MA-born/-raised/-educated, and an on-again/off-again resident (currently on-again) since finishing undergrad. Romney in my experience was a more than capable governor.
In this connection, I especially want to point out the recent flurry of (frequently successful) prosecutions of various MA state Democratic political figures, many of them quite senior, as well as numerous Democrat-affiliated hangers-on — all largely taking place either in the latter stages of Deval Patrick’s 1st term or now in the early phase of his 2nd term. The scale and scope of the corruption lately being brought to light is staggering, even for the Bay State.
Why do I say “[i]n this connection”?
Simple: When one understands via these prosecutorial exposes what a gummed-up pile of poo the Democrat-dominated system in MA particularly was during the Romney gubernatorial term — in other words, the massive extent of the moral rot, cupidity, grandiosity, and ideological blinkeredness (word?) holding sway throughout most of the state’s “establishment” — one can realize how all the more amazing it is that Mitt managed to accomplish what he did.
So the radicals are conducting a purge, eh?
“the recent flurry of (frequently successful) prosecutions of various MA state Democratic political figures”
Well, that is what happens in an effectively single-party polity like The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The D-machine has controlled the Legislature since time immemorial making all those R Governors from 1991-2007 pretty clawless. And, yes, the string of House Speakers and assorted bureaucrats convicted of corruption is testimony to that. Adding insult to injury, local media take a see-no-evil-hear-no-evil approach to their malfeasance until, suddenly, the latest pinky-ring wearer is being led on a perp-walk down the steps on Beacon Hill.
That the state’s economy has not ended up more like Michigan, Rhode Island or California at this point is a wonder!
Massachusetts’ economy is far more dependent on colleges than manufacturing, which was gutted by the early 1970′s.
I guess Gov. Patrick omitted what his plan is for electricity in 2013?
And he certainly did not mention all the small taxes – my Verizon bill has a new one every month.
Or how many new residents have moved here just to access MassHealth?
The good (?) news is that Gov. Patrick is all the Dems have on their bench.
Patrick gave a stem-winder of a speech, but it takes quite an imagination to see our current Mass. with its foreclosures and unemployment as being better off than it was under Romney. I have been pushing Romney for years because he did do a good job here, BUT he has had to back-pedal so much on health-care, gay rights, and abortion rights etc. to get the nomination that he has neutered much of that strength (not that the righties saw it as strength.)
Romney can work with the other side better than Obama can. He can make deals which some of his base will not like, but overall, in my opinion, he can move us forward better then Obama can.
Methinks Patrick projective too much….
Party full of empty chairs…that is why the change in the acceptence speech venue.
Silly governor, backbones are for vertebrates!
Met a man from Mass. last weekend; he sang Romney’s praises! He said that Romney saved the Massachusetts economy and Mass. medical plan is nothing like Obamacare! He said that Romney is such a humble man, he will not tout his own horn. He is concerned that because of his high integrity and character, he will not stand up for himself against the Democrats’ attacks. Even more reason for all of us to make it happen!