Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal is not just your run of the mill senator. Mr. Blumenthal entered the U.S. Senate a little over three years ago after having spent twenty one years as Connecticut’s Attorney General. The new Senator has had some difficulty shedding his attorney general’s skin.  Some critics in Connecticut – there are not many – occasionally refer to him teasingly as the nation’s first consumer protection congressman. As Attorney General of Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal often seemed to be a consumer protection firebrand armed with subpoena power. The statutory obligations of the Attorney General’s Office have little to do with suits brought on behalf of consumers such as Big Tobacco. The Connecticut Attorney General is charged principally with representing Connecticut in legal matters involving state agencies, duties and responsibilities of the office that are detailed in the Connecticut General Statutes, Section 3-125  as follows:

“The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning”-- Adlai Stevenson In her most recent press release, one can almost see state Democratic Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo ticking off the “made in Washington” campaign talking points: Boughton, “war on women,” check. Boughton,” anti-gay,” check. Boughton, “Tea Party,” check. Boughton, “extremist,” check. A busy demagogue, Ms. DiNardo usually is able to mold her mud pies into brief media bites at a moment’s notice. Here is the core of her media release :

The war on the Tea Party, much more than a rhetorical offensive, continues unabated months after the putatively non-partisan Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – the guys and gals that audit you to make sure you are paying your “fair share” to support your president, your U.S. Congress and your federal courts – had targeted tea party political groups for punitive audits. The same “death to the Bill of Rights” progressives at the U.S. Treasury Department have now promulgated rules that will, they hope, insure the extinction of the political sons and daughters of Sam Adams, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and – coming closer to Connecticut  -- Roger Sherman, William Samuel Johnson, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott, Lyman Hall and the authors of Connecticut’s 1818 “ Declaration of Rights ,” Governor Oliver Wolcott Jr. among them, which declares in section 4:

The Tea Party in Connecticut is likely to loom large in future state-wide campaigns, even though Democrats in Connecticut would be hard pressed to name any incumbent Tea Party members in the General Assembly. There are no Tea Party incumbents in Connecticut’s left of center U.S. Congressional delegation, all the members of which are Democrats, and Governor Dannel Malloy may safely be ruled out as a Tea Party enthusiast. “What was once the Republican Party,” Mr. Malloy said at the 65th Annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinner  “is now the Tea Party – this is a case were (sic) the tail is literally wagging the dog. They don’t give a darn about our economy, it’s quite clear that they would sink our economy for their own political good.” The brute fact is: There are no enemies on the left in Connecticut politics, which is why the state over the past few decades has moved steadily left of center. The same Democrats who find it politically expedient to regard the Tea Party in Co...

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.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act ” -- George Orwell George Orwell, like Jonathan Swift before him, is one of those large writers who simply straddle ideological categories. He was fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view – to have been born in what the ancient Chinese call “interesting times,” the bloody and totalitarian 20th century. The revolutionist speaking truth to power often appears among us with a rope braided by the reigning powers draped about his neck. He steps towards gallows with a wan smile on his face.

While President Barack Obama was doubling down on his discredited narrative concerning the attack by terrorists on the Benghazi consulate, in the course of which Mr. Obama’s personal minister – that is what an ambassador is; the personal minister of the president – was murdered, it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted Tea Party groups for what may turn out to be punitive audits.

Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy confirmed on the Dan Lavallo Talk of Connecticut show that he does not intend to run for re-election. In an ironic way, Healy, and all future chairpersons of both parties, may be the victims of party reform. Party chairmen are not what they used to be in the heyday of party bosses when giants – John Bailey in the Democratic Party and his compliment in the Republican Party, Meade Alcorn – ruled the roost with iron fists in velvet gloves. Myths outlive reality, and the myth of the party chairman ruling autocratically by cleverly manipulating events in now smokeless back rooms has yet to succumb to reality. Some in the Republican Party who continue to protest that Mr. Healy cleverly subverted the nominating convention to secure the nomination of Linda McMahon to the U.S. Senate -- apparently so that Mr. Healy’s wife, Susan Bibisi, could be put on Mrs. McMahon’s payroll – doth protest far too much on very slender evidence. That said, i...

Detained by two reporters before he entered a closed door session of the Democratic caucus, U.S. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. John Larson let loose a string of metaphors on the Tea Party movement. Politico described the interview as “…an 11-minute, metaphor-laced talk.” Mr. Larson, who runs the Democratic caucus in the House, was identified by Politico as “the top communications arm for the party in Congress.” Some of Mr. Larson’s metaphors were meteorological: "And this week we're told that the tea party will bring yet another cold front to Washington, D.C. And in doing so, it's our understanding that the Republican leaders are standing back and looking to see what kind of shadow is cast to see whether or not we'll have six more weeks of continuing resolution." Republicans, the Democratic caucus leader said, haven't created "one single job." Their attitude, since recapturing the U.S. House in the last elections, owing partially to...

The promo for WNPR’s “ Lifting The Veil ” conference at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) promised: • “A prominent political figure grills political reporters (how’s it feel now?) • New media organizations team up on high-quality, investigative journalism • An influential national reporter covers one of the toughest beats: The media.” As it turned out, the prominent political figure grilling reporters was Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s inoffensive left of center heartthrob described in the promo as: “…an upstart challenger to Senator Joe Lieberman, he rallied an online base of support that allowed him to beat Lieberman in the Democratic primary, and barely lose that seat to the Senator in November. In 2010, he ran a tight race for the Democratic nomination for governor. All along the way, he had to face tough questions from the capitol press corps, local and national talk show hosts, bloggers and thousands of others.” The reporters Mr. Lamont turned the tables on were, for...