Hey, Geoff “Landslide” Diehl, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.
Take the hint, pal. And then take a hike. And while you’re at it, take Jim “Jones” Lyons, the state Republican party chairman, with you.
Geoff, you have now been defeated in successive campaigns for a) the state Senate, b) the US Senate, c) party chairman (by your pal Jim Jones Lyons) and finally d) for governor.
You have become the GOP’s “Marsha” Coakley. Anyone lucky enough to get into a general election against you can confidently start drafting his or her victory speech.
What Beto O’Rourke is to Texas, what Stacey Abrams is to Georgia, Geoff Diehl is to Massachusetts – a political punching bag.
Seriously, though, the Commonwealth needs a real opposition party, not a cult. But a cult is exactly what Lyons and Diehl have reduced the state’s once-proud Republican party to.
How hopeless was the Diehl campaign? Last week, he put out an invitation to his big weekend event in Worcester (which drew maybe 200 people, including exactly one elected official).
Here’s how Diehl promoted it:
“The 2022 election year is shaping up to be 2010 all over again.”
Um, in 2010, the local Republicans lost the governorship. Against Deval Patrick, Charlie Baker could only manage 42 percent of the vote. So yeah, I guess you could say Diehl was right – 2022 did shape up to be 2010 all over again.
If you don’t like Geoff’s political stands, just wait five minutes.
When he announced in July 2021, Diehl said the 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen. In August he said it was. In October, he said it wasn’t.
On a Wednesday in June, Diehl announced he would take state funds for his campaign. A day later, he announced he wouldn’t.
When his opponent in the GOP primary challenged him to a series of debates, he ran like a frightened rabbit. Then he challenged his Democrat opponent to a series of debates, knowing she’d never agree. Why waste time on the Nowhere Man of Massachusetts politics?
Diehl was merely a vessel to get rid of Charlie Baker, nothing more. Once that mission was accomplished, he should have stepped aside for a real candidate, one who actually had a shot at winning, or at the very least contending.
But Diehl had an enabler – Jim “Jones” Lyons, the state GOP chairman. His record of recent electoral catastrophes rivals Landslide Diehl’s.
Lyons lost his state rep’s seat in 2018, the same year Diehl lost his after being crushed by the fake Indian.
Lyons became party chairman in 2019. Since he took over, there have been five special elections for legislative seats, three of which were held by Republicans. Lyons’ record: 0-5.
In the 2020 general elections, the GOP lost a net of two more seats in the General Court.
Lyons launched three petition drives for this year’s ballot. All three failed to collect the needed 80,000 signatures. (He finally made it with Question 4, which only required 40,000 signatures. But then the illegal aliens outspent the GOP by a 15-1 margin.)
Lyons’ tenure as party chairman has been so catastrophic that last year 16 major local GOP fat cats announced that they would raise $1 million for the flat-broke state party if only Lyons would quit, which of course he wouldn’t.
At least two Republican Congressmen and former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer all backed out of scheduled fundraisers after they were informed of Lyons’ horrific stewardship.
Diehl and Lyons would never admit it, but the fact is, they don’t even care that much about yesterday’s disasters for Republicans, even as across the rest of the country the GOP was romping to huge victories.
The only thing that matters for the Lyons-Diehl death cult is to maintain control of the state committee. The committee is supposed to have 80 members, but right now there are six vacancies, because Lyons hasn’t been allowing caucuses to fill the vacancies.
You see, of the remaining 74 members, about half want to offer a real alternative to the Democrats, and the other half are Kool Aid drinkers in Jim Jones Lyons’ political death cult.
So today begins the real campaign, as far as Diehl and Lyons are concerned, for the chairman’s election in January. One anti-Lyons committeewoman may soon be sued in court to get rid of her. Caucuses may be held –if Lyons thinks one of his stooges can win the vote.
As for Diehl, he just doesn’t want to have to go back to his old post-state rep job as an Uber driver in Greater Brockton.
In March, he brought in Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, as a $12,500-a-month campaign consultant. The day after the primary, Lewandowski quit. According to OCPF records, he hadn’t been paid since his first check on St. Patrick’s Day.
Last month, though, even though Diehl’s campaign was destitute, Geoff began cutting Lewandowski checks, five of them in all, each for $9,375 each – for a total of $46,875.
Campaigning, TV spots, press conferences? Nah, who needs any of those? The big thing for Diehl was, paying Corey.
Trump will announce his 2024 candidacy next Tuesday at Mar-A-Lago. And Diehl and Lewandowski are presumably pals again. Maybe, just maybe, Geoff can grab a (paying) job in the campaign – writing concession speeches, perhaps, or just consulting on how to lose winnable fights.
Jim Lyons was a huge Ted Cruz guy in 2016, but now he too would love to attach himself to Trump’s backside, to keep his phony-baloney job as state chairman. And Lyons also has an ace in the hole – if he can somehow remain chairman, he’ll control 42 votes to the GOP national convention in Milwaukee in 2024.
If Lyons could just wangle an endorsement from Trump for his bid to retain the chairmanship in January, he could promise… well, you know.
Personally, I don’t see that in the cards. Massachusetts is never going to be Trump country, and especially not with the bleep-show that the state GOP has degenerated into under the Lyons-Diehl regime.
One thing about Trump: he prefers winners to losers, and that should rule out any aid and assistance to these feckless stumblebums.
This is written before the final returns, so I’m not sure how many votes Diehl ended up with in this latest defeat. I’m sure if he got a higher percentage of the vote that he did against the fake Indian in 2018 – a very low bar at 36.2 percent – he probably proclaimed victory, and announced his plans to run for… something, anything else.
Please, Geoff Diehl and Jim Jones Lyons, how can we miss you when you won’t go away?
Don’t go away mad, guys. Just go away.