MAYBE JUST DON'T BE CRAZY?:

In 2019, Jim Lyons, a conservative, anti-abortion maverick who served in the Massachusetts House from 2010 to 2018, was elected chair of the state's Republican Party. He aligned the party with Donald Trump and rejected Baker's move to the middle. Many of Lyons's backers said they wanted to remain true to their conservative values, even if it cost them votes in the short term. They called Baker a RINO - a Republican in name only.

The state Republican Party and Baker went their separate ways. Before he decided not to seek reelection, many pundits wondered whether the highly popular governor could win a Republican primary for governor in Massachusetts.

The November election was disastrous for the Republican Party. Democrats maintained their control of the state's congressional delegation, won all the statewide offices, and strengthened their already dominant hold on the Legislature.

The party will hold an election for party chairman in January. Lyons has not said whether he will seek reelection, but other candidates are already jumping into the fray.

Baker, heading off to his new job with the NCAA, has shown little interest so far in the party fight, but in the State House interview he made clear where he stands.

"The point behind a political party is to win elections," he said. "You win elections on your core values and beliefs and your ability to bring that growing independent population - 60 percent of the electorate in Massachusetts - to bring them on to your team, or as many of them as you can get."

Baker said the party needs to broaden its reach, just as he did in the 2014 election. "On economic issues, many criminal justice issues, issues that matter to the broad population, there's a lot of common ground within the Republican Party and among those independents who vote in Republican primaries," he said. "There may be shades of gray, but there's not really big differences. Whether or not Donald Trump was suited to be president, yes, there's differences there. How to handle a woman's right to choose, definitely a difference there. But even there a significant minority of pure Republicans and probably a majority of Republican-leaning independents who vote in Republican primaries support a woman's right to choose. The question there comes down to the old Ronald Reagan maxim that if someone is with you 80 percent of the time, the 20 percent is relevant but it shouldn't be game-deciding."

Baker made clear that he has little patience for Lyons's approach, with its devotion to conservative ideological purity.  "You can't govern if you can't win. It's not supposed to be a debating society," he said.

"If you don't have a party that can raise money and field candidates and compete, then what you really do over time is abdicate the opportunity to engage in the act of governing, which I think is hugely problematic for Massachusetts, and I would argue would be problematic in a state where there's no Democratic Party," he said. "One-party government, one-party rule, loses the value and the balance and the purpose that comes with democracy. There's no accountability there. Who's going to hold anyone accountable in that environment?"

Baker said he is not saying conservative Republicans should change their values. "I've never asked them to accept all of my points of view on issues. There are a number of things that Jim Lyons and I, before our falling out, we're completely aligned on -- fiscal discipline, no new taxes, heavy investments in addiction and recovery services," he said.

"I don't think someone has to agree with me 100 percent of the time," Baker said. "I just don't, and I never have because it's a democracy."

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