Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Every time President-Elect Trump bashes the media, his popularity pops upward. Why? The feeling on the street is that however many lumps President-Elect Donald Trump delivers to the media, just or unjust, they deserve it. The approval rating of the media among americana  ordinarius   is on a par with that of Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, hovering as I write around 24 percent. Approval ratings may not matter all that much. Both Mr. Trump and his Democratic Presidential opponent, the vanquished Hillary Clinton, were, according to fallible polls, highly unpopular. The polls themselves, this time around, were highly unreliable. In the post-election period, one imagines pollsters lying on psychiatrist couches, the psychiatrists digging deeply into their psyches in an attempt to salvage their sanity.

Connecticut seems incapable of producing Republican politicians who are not moderate. The media in the state is liberal and tends to strangle in their cribs any politician who exhibits dangerous conservative tendencies. For this reason, when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) issued a press release that sought to tie Simmons to former President Bush’s soiled coattails, most commentators in his home state shrugged off the spitball as politics as usual. "Rob Simmons is no moderate -- he was a staunch supporter of George Bush's failed economic policies and this race will be an opportunity to hold him accountable for that record," said DSCC communications director Eric Schultz. The DSCC also noted that Simmons had once described himself as a “big fan" of Bush. Big yawn. The Washington Post , not in the Bush camp, has noted that on a scale of 1 to100, Simmons’ voting record was 53 percent, which means that Simmons voted more liberally than 53 percent of ...

At least one Briton thinks President Barack Obama is rude and arrogant . How quickly is the bloom off the rose. The James Carville/Stanley Greenberg/Barack Obama attack machine has found a sumptuous target in Rush Limbaugh, according to Politico . President George Bush having retired, Beltway Democrats, not entirely shunning the politics of fear, are in desperate need of a new face to grind beneath their boots. Carville is the author of “And The Horse You Came In On,” an attack on the rude attackers of former president Bill Clinton. Greenberg is a Clinton era pollster who now provides info to President Barack Obama’s administration. Both Greenberg and his wife, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, have been generous in the past to Rham Emanual, chief sniper of the Obama administration, having provided Emmanuel with a free Washington DC rental for many years. A Miami abortion clinic doctor is in trouble, according to a report in the Sun Sentinal , for having killed a baby. And Secretary of...

Gov. Rell , when asked if she thinks Rush Limbaugh is the voice of the Republican Party, said “Some may think so. I don’t.” Limbaugh, said Rell, "speaks for himself and a few selected people.” Dumb questions elicit dumb answers. Limbaugh, whose name former Gov. John Rowland used studiously to miss-pronounce (I know not the man), would be the first to deny that he was the voice of the Republican Party. Certainly his is not the voice of Northeast Republicans, a vanishing species. Where have all those flowers gone? Chris Shays was (please note the past tense) the last moderate Republican standing in New England. Limbaugh’s latest speaking engagement was before the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group not known for their affection for the kind of Republicans who here-about are regularly praised by the liberal press as being “pragmatic” and “moderate.” Here in the Northeast, listening to Limbaugh is a guilty pleasure, a little bit like wandering into a bordello and tasting...

A report from the Connecticut Post by Peter Urban suggests that the attempt to defame Army General David Petraeus by MoveOn.org has created a backlash: “House members voted 341-79 on Wednesday to condemn ‘in the strongest possible terms the personal attacks made by the advocacy group MoveOn.org impugning the integrity and professionalism’ of Petraeus.” Among those voting in favor of the condemnation were all five Connecticut representatives, including freshman Rep. Chris Murphy. Through direct contributions and independent expenditures, the group provided Murphy with $500,000 for his successful campaign against former Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson. The U.S Senate , Chris Dodd dissenting, condemned the ad in late September. Federal Election Commission filings show that MoveOn.org since last year spent more than 90% of $3 million in independent expenditures targeting a dozen Republican candidates, including Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, both of whom are running for president. The group...