Republican state chair needs to go

With apologies to Mark Twain, if you didn’t believe the state’s Republican Party could become any more of sideshow, just give Jim Lyons and friends a few feuding minutes.

Lyons, the former Andover state rep and current chairman of the Republican State Committee, recently accomplished the impossible — making the already irrelevant GOP even more of an outlier.

He began his herculean feat by refusing to sanction GOP committeewoman Deborah Martell of Ludlow, who said in an email that she was “sickened” to learn that Republican congressional candidate Jeffrey SossaPaquette and his partner had adopted two children. While acknowledging Martell’s comment was in poor taste, Lyons not only didn’t defuse the controversy, he managed to inflame it by saying he wouldn’t “force a woman of deep Catholic faith to resign.”

We didn’t realize bigotry was compatible with Catholicism.

This example of lame leadership didn’t sit well with Republican lawmakers or the GOP’s LGBTQ bloc.

Last week 29 of the 30 House Republicans called on Lyons to demand Martell’s resignation or resign himself. They’ve since been joined by Gov. Charlie Baker and other prominent state Republicans, including a former congressman and lieutenant governor, who’ve called for Lyons to step aside over his refusal to censure Martell.

Lyons in turn asked his Republican followers Thursday to sign a petition “to push back against the woke cancel culture mentality” of elected GOP officials pressuring him to resign.

The Mass. GOP’s schism spilled into public view Wednesday outside the venue of a party committee meeting in Marlboro, where supporters of Sossa-Paquette demanded Martell’s resignation.

While Lyons remained mum, his top lieutenant vehemently denounced Martell’s objectionable behavior.

“It is our obligation to condemn it, try to mitigate it as best as possible and quite frankly to ask for Ms. Martell to resign because she does not represent the Republican Party of Massachusetts,” Tom Mountain told the Herald.

And the main item of business on that GOP committee’s agenda? To rescind a proposal that would have removed Gov. Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and certain Republican lawmakers from the party’s executive committee.

That body historically has used its authority to endorse candidates in GOP primaries, as it did in 2018 when it backed Baker over conservative challenger Scott Lively.

The proposed bylaw change was amended instead to require two-thirds of the entire 80-member State Committee to back endorsements in a Republican primary, rather than giving the Executive Committee that authority.

It appears the Lyons-led committee took this step under duress.

To summarize, the head of the Republican State Committee failed to penalize a committee member for her outrageously prejudiced email, and in the process squandered an opportunity to showcase this minority party’s inclusiveness, which put him at odds with his own party leadership and the vast majority of the Republican establishment.

And undoubtedly forced by the publicity generated by this internal party squabble, opted not to pursue unseating the Republican governor from an influential GOP committee panel.

And for that show of incompetence, Jim Lyons deserved the lion’s share of the credit.

A party that can barely claim to represent 10% of the state’s electorate can’t afford to be led by an avowed conservative ideologue — a minority within his own minority party.

Resurrecting the state’s Republican Party as a viable political force will never happen if it continues on the dead-end trail Lyons has blazed.

He should do his party a favor by resigning, or be removed by the state committee from his leadership post.