R.I.P. Ed Brooke...

January that Killing Month, meanders on beckoning the Mighty to their Rest. *** It ought to be noted up front, that Ed Brooke was for a good long while, the most successful GOP Politician in Massachusetts until Bill Weld staggered onto the scene. Ed Brooke is also a little more ironically the last Attorney General of the Commonwealth who bootstrapped his way to higher office. Apparently he figured out how to do That Job Without Creating any enemies, a trick he clearly declined to teach to his successors as the state's top law person. Ed Brooke's abrupt departure from the US Senate (engineered in part by primary challenge from yappy local wingnut Avi Nelson and more sadly Brooke's own messy divorce) in 1978 ushered in twelve long fallow years for the Party of Lincoln in the Bay State. Ah but the times were turning on Ed Brooke even then, he was literally an endangered species in the GOP, a Bleeding Heart Liberal....he spent two terms in the US Senate fruitlessly trying to pull the republicans back to the center when they all longed to strap on fake cavalry sabers and riding off behind Ronald Reagan. I think if he'd a survived the general election in 1978 the GOP would have broken his heart....or maybe Edward Maximus might've induced him to flip over to the democrats (Ed always was famously independent and bipartisan in his politics)...who knows? In sum, Ed Brooke was a Man of Honor, he consciously wanted to Live Up to the Status of the First African American Elected to the US Senate in the 20th Century and what the hell, His Word Was Good. I can pay him no higher tribute.