Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

A historical repetition, Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard reminds us, is not possible, because it is not possible to recreate historically the precise conditions that occasioned the event we wish to replicate. Karl Marx, a poor economist but a passable social critic, put it this way: “History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce.”   The shadow of a not too amusing farce hovers over a recent report in a Hartford paper . The central premise of the report is this: Charlie Barker of Massachusetts is a successful Republican Governor, his approval rating an astonishing 71 percent. Baker is the usual New England moderate Republican, one who is conservative on fiscal issues but liberal on social issues. If only Connecticut were able to field a Charlie Baker-like gubernatorial candidate in the upcoming 2018 race, the GOP might be able to sweep the boards and restore to the gubernatorial office – held for two terms by Dannel Malloy, a p...

Q: President Pro Tem of the State House of Representatives Martin Looney appeared recently on “Face the State” with Dennis House and seemed – though in politics, appearances may be deceiving – to have repudiated progressivism… A: I don’t think he’s ready to give up on progressivism just yet. You cannot have strongman government without progressivism. He did point out a major, perhaps fatal, failing. Q: You quoted what he said in one of your columns.

Former US Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker – now retired from public affairs and living the life in Old Lyme  – once again has stepped forward on the public stage to tell  Republicans in Connecticut what they must do to save themselves from the destruction wrought upon their party by Lowell Weicker, among others. The first thing they must do is to abandon the ideas of former President Ronald Reagan and embrace the ideas of Mr. Weicker. And of course if Republicans in his overtaxed and over-regulated tottering state saw fit to nominate for public office people just like Mr. Weicker, that would be a cherry on the state’s cake. And, oh yes – let us not forget – Mr. Weicker and his enablers on the Hartford Courant’s editorial board want the Connecticut GOP to open its primary doors to unaffiliateds.

Former US Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, the bad conscience of Connecticut’s Republican Party, has surfaced once again in one of his usual haunts, the Hartford Courant , a paper that has in the past managed to oblige Weicker’s whimsy, whether he was muscling the General Assembly into passing an income tax or torpedoing Republican campaigns against then US Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, or supplying the Republican Party in Connecticut with the rope Weicker suspected it would use to hang itself. Having appointed his majordomo, Tom D’Amore, as state GOP Chairmen, D’Amore proposed that the Republican Party should allow independents to vote in party primaries, thus assuring the election for life of then US Senator Weicker. At the time, D’Amore assured the party’s central committee that he had not assumed his responsibilities as Chairman to preside over the demise of the Republican Party. Republicans declined the offer of the rope; D’Amore later was replaced by a cha...

  The morticians are palavering over the corpse of the Foley campaign. Two of them, former U.S. House Representative Chris Shays and former Republican U.S. Senator and Maverick Governor Lowell Weicker, are quoted in  a story in a urban newspaper . Mr. Weicker, who declined to run for a second term as governor after he had fathered Connecticut’s income tax and who as a Maverick Republican Senator often described himself contentedly as a “turd in the Republican Party punchbowl,” thought his former party had pandered to the National Rifle Association (NRA). He said, “I absolutely reject the pandering to the NRA and the gun lobby in Connecticut. They didn't want to rock the boat. Well, Jesus, the boat needing rocking, if you look at what happened up there in [Newtown] with that nutcase.”

Juliana Simone, for nine years the host of the Barkhamsted Republican Town Committee's political interview show "Conservative Chat and Chairman of the BRTC since 2009," has invited me to make a few impromptu remarks during the town’s biannual fundraiser on September 30. If anyone following Connecticut Commentary attends the event, please coral me and say hello. I’ll be touching briefly on a few topics I’ve written about recently. There are some things I will not have time to address. Allow me to do so here.

A few weeks ago, Governor Dannel Malloy said that people in Connecticut would have to wait until May to discover whether he would run again as governor. He then surprised everyone by tossing his hat into the ring during a recent bond hearing meeting. In fact, the campaign had begun much earlier; the cake was baked even though it lacked the cherry on top. Before his official declaration, Mr. Malloy had said he was much too busy running the state to engage prematurely in a political campaign. He told one reporter that it would be inopportune for him to engage in a political campaign before Republican gubernatorial aspirants had an opportunity to beat up on each other? The pretense was a great tease, strategically necessary but still an obvious imposture. The Republican gubernatorial field has now been fully fleshed out. Martha Dean, who previously had engaged in campaigns for the Attorney General, was a little late, but she got in before the door closed.

M en are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions -- Niccolò Machiavelli     A bit of advice for Democrats in Connecticut: First of all, stop worrying. You outnumber opposition Republicans by a margin of two to one, and there is no viable third party on the horizon, just a few Tea Party groups vowing to end the public careers of middle-of-the-road Republicans.

On “social issues,” as defined by Democrats in the Northeast, here is no “there” there within the Republican Party’s ancient regime. Northeast Republicans have only one election card on their table – the economy, stupid. There ain’t no more.  Slothful Northeast Republican Parties have permitted Democrats to define all the social issues; for them, such subjects as abortion on demand, gay marriage and the abolition of the death penalty are strictly verboten.  Among gentlemen Republican moderates in Connecticut, discretion on social issues has been the better part of valor for more than two decades, which may help to explain why there are no more social issue averse Republicans in New England.

The split between Connecticut’s two major parties is most dramatic on the question of spending. Governor Dannel Malloy took a pledge early in his administration, after he had imposed upon the state the largest tax increase in its history, reminiscent of a pledge made by former President H.W. Bush: No new tax increases. Internal pressures were such during the Bush administration that the president reneged on his pledge. The pressures are always there, especially in tax prone Connecticut. It was the fashion during the administration of Republican Maverick turned Independent Lowell Weicker to regard deficits as revenue rather than spending problems; and, of course, the solution to a revenue problem is to boost revenue.

A number of conclusions may be drawn from the presidential campaign. Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, lost, and Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, won. That datum you can take to the bank. Republican Party internecine quarrels arise over the “why” questions.   Why did Mitt Romney lose? Why did Mr. Obama win? What are Republicans doing right, and what are they doing wrong?

In an interview following his last primary debate with Linda McMahon, former U.S. Rep Chris Shays whispered a Swan’s song , a stark admission that the debate just concluded very well might be his last: “It may be the last time, and I think that would be a loss for the state.” According to the most recent poll, Mr. Shays entered the debate trailing Mrs. McMahon by 29 points, a lead put down by Mrs. McMahon’s critics to her money advantage, which is considerable. During her last campaign for the U.S. Senate, Mrs. McMahon poured $50 million of the sweat of her own brow into her campaign against then Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Mr. Blumenthal prevailed in that race, even though he was hobbled by charges that he had lied several times concerning his military service. It was an easy matter for Mr. Blumenthal to deflect these charges: He hit the mattresses towards the end of his campaign, after it had become apparent that he had stolen valor from Vietnam veterans, having claime...

In the course of his interview with former State Rep. Chris Shays, host of Face the State Dennis House pressed Mr. Shays on a series of issues. A transcript of portions of the interview follows below, accompanied by some Connecticut Commentary notes. Dennis House (DH): So, you’re planning on a primary, regardless of the convention in May, right? Chris Shays (CS): There will be a primary. If I win the convention, I assume others will want to primary; and if I don’t win the convention, I’m in a primary. This is a pretty straightforward declaration of Shays’ intentions. It is not altogether certain that Linda McMahon would primary should Mr. Shays be declared the Republican convention nominee. In her last run for the U.S. Senate, Mrs. McMahon snatched the convention nomination from former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, who went on to wage an on-again off again campaign against her. DH: If you lose in a primary, would you run as an independent? CS: Well, I don’t think about losing, but I’...

A recent poll by Public Policy Polling indicates that Chris Shays may have a certain value, among Democrats mostly, as a spoiler candidate. The poll shows Linda McMahon leading former U.S. Rep. Shays in a Republican Party primary by an unsurpassable margin of 60-27 percent. Since primaries were first introduced into party politics, more or less as a democratic instrument to pry decision making from party bosses, primaries have been the gateway to general elections. The 60-27 spread is a hurdle that would inspire second thoughts among most supermen politicians who are used to leaping tall buildings in a single bound. The spread among those in the state identifying themselves as “very conservative”, 81-14, is even more daunting. Is it possible that Mr. Shays has agreed to play Rob Simmons to Mrs. McMahon in her second bid for the U.S. Senate? Very early in the campaign for U.S. Senator Chris Dodd’s seat, Mr. Simmons was leading the senator in some polls. Mr. Dodd’s prospects...

Roll Call is reporting that former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, who will be filing papers soon to enter the race for the U.S. Senate, is planning “to petition the Federal Election Commission to allow him to raise money to pay off half of the remaining debt, then move the balance to creditors for Sohn to pay off.” Mr. Sohn, Mr. Shays’ former campaign manager, “embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the former Congressman during his previous race.” Mr. Shays’ current $280,000 debt from his loss to present U.S. Rep. Jim Himes results in part from legal expenses related to the embezzlement. Mr. Shays, according to Roll Call, “plans to separately fundraise for his Senate race and his House campaign debt.” Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, whose recent U.S. Senatorial campaign came to grief when Linda McMahon entered the race, will be supporting Mr. Shays in the coming struggle for U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s seat. Mr. Lieberman will be resigning from the Senate at the conclusio...

The late Bill Buckley announced the mission of National Review Magazine , a publication he started and still the best conservative nursery bed of ideas, when he pledged that NR would stand “athwart history, yelling STOP, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” Then as now, much of the nation – and nearly all of Connecticut – was a bastion of a fervent but mischievous liberalism. So, at National Review, there was much yelling of STOP over the years. Mr. Buckley, surely the most prolific conservative in the nation, lived for many years in Stamford, Connecticut in house nestled in a quiet cove but painted shocking pink. When his wife Pat, every inch Bill’s competitor in wit, was asked “Why pink?” she responded – “to attract the sailors.” Although not always the case, Connecticut’s congressional delegation is, some people will have noticed, now entirely made up of liberals. Present U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy styles himself a progress...

Robert Thorson is a professor of geology at the University of Connecticut's Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of The Hartford Courant's Place Board of Contributors. His columns appear frequently on the paper’s op-ed pages. The Liberal Arts at UConn are, as elsewhere in academia, very liberal. Mr. Thorson is certain he knows how the rest of us will know when gas prices are “high enough.” The attentive reader will notice that Mr. Thorson did not write “too high” but used the formulation “high enough.” That is because Mr. Thorson ardently believes that gas prices in Connecticut, now cresting above $4 and heading towards $5, are not as high as they should be. The price of gas will be high enough, Mr. Thorson advised in a column published on May 5, 2011 , when: “… drive-through lanes at fast-food restaurants and doughnut shops would not be lined with mostly oversized vehicles carrying mostly oversized people toward food energy. “…the carpool lanes on local interstate...

“Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem’ – Ronald Reagan If there is anybody in the state of Connecticut who does not know that current Senator Richard Blumenthal has a Vietnam problem, his or her voting rights should be taken away for chronic inattention. During Mr. Blumenthal’s senatorial race against various Republicans, among them former U.S. Rep Rob Simmons and former CEO of World Wide Wrestling Linda McMahon, it was revealed that Mr. Blumenthal had told some stretchers about his service in the U.S. Marines. Mr. Blumenthal, then hanging on to his attorney general position as if he were a drowning man grasping for a straw and assiduously avoiding media exposure, said several times that he had served in Vietnam when in fact he remained stateside during the war. And any lipstick put on that pig during his campaign did not help to restore the honor marines so value . Mr. Blumenthal was one of two U.S. congressmen fe...

It’s usual after elections to see a flurry of post mortems and prophecies in the media. On one point, Connecticut’s media is almost in universal agreement: Money talks, but it cannot alone win elections. This perception was trotted out during the Linda McMahon campaign almost from its inception. The Republican convention, it has been asserted dozens of times, went for money over good sense. The convention might have chosen the superior senatorial candidate, Rob Simmons, over McMahon, but the glitter of gold bewitched Republicans. McMahon had vowed to spend as much as $50 million on her campaign. Her money, spend mostly on TV advertising and campaign staff, reduced Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s early lead from 40 to 9 points. But in the end, the sainted Blumenthal survived handsomely and now will go on in the U.S. Congress to assault businesses with much rhetorical brio as he deployed as attorney general. His replacement as attorney general, George Jepsen, has said often enoug...

It was Henry Clay who said he’d rather be right than be president. The cynic perhaps would retort that such a selfless sentiment could only issue from a man who had never been president; though, Lord knows, Mr. Clay, always ready to serve his country in any capacity, certainly gave it a good try. Drafted for president a few times, he was frustrated by unavoidable political events beyond his control and lost each time, some would say, to lesser men. A Whig leader in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, said Mr. Clay was "my beau ideal of a great man." And Sen. John Kennedy cited Mr. Clay as one of the five greatest senators in U.S. history. It must be supposed that Mr. Clay took his defeats with a certain degree of equinimity. Rob Simmons very well may be the Henry Clay of Connectiut. Mr. Clay’s Whig party, which later evolved into the Republican Party, was strong enough at that point and later to allow for what might be called “second acts” -- and even third and fourth acts. Th...