Skip to main content

Out of the Mouths of Bloggers: or Who, Whom?

Here is a little back-and-forth between two anonymous bloggers, ctkeith and Genghis Conn, on a popular Connecticut blog.


ctkeith said...

GC Wrote,
“What's interesting about this is that in the past, Rell has been able to make compromises break her way. Stem cells, civil unions, public funding of campaigns and even the recent transportation bill have somehow ended up making the governor look good.”


Can you tell me which one of those issues made REPUBLICANS happy?

11:56 PM, April 29, 2006
Genghis Conn said...

To Republican partisans and social conservatives? None of them. In fact, most of the Republicans in the legislature didn't support those initiatives.

Legislative Republicans are irrelevant, and Rell doesn't really care what social conservatives think. This leaves her trying to pass her own agenda all by herself. She may be most effective when she's proposing compromises to Democratic plans.


That exchange pretty much says everything needful about Rell, compromise, the Republican Party, and the nature of reporting in Connecticut.

Most reporters in Connecticut would agree with ctkeith that Rell’s positions on stem cell research, civil unions, public funding of campaigns were arrived at by way of compromise. Gengis Conn lodges an objection: Look, he says, Republican partisans and legislators supported none of these positions. But legislative Republicans, a dwindling minority, are irrelevant, and Rell doesn’t really care what social conservatives think. So, she is trying to pass her own agenda all by herself. And then Gengis Conn adds: “She may be most effective when she's proposing compromises to Democratic plans.”

What do the words “effective” and “compromise” mean in this context?

Now, a compromise is an arrangement between two disputants both of whom give a little to get a little. As titular head of the party, Rell presumably represents the interests of Republicans, while Democrat leaders in the House and Senate represent the interests of Democrats. If Rell gave way to Democrats on the matters mentioned – stem cell research, etc. -- certainly her position on these issues cannot be described as a compromise: At least on these issues, she gave to Democrats everything they wanted and received nothing in return. “Surrender” might be an more accurate word to describe this transaction.

But, Gengis Conn says, since legislative Republicans are unimportant, and since Rell does not care what social conservatives think, she finds herself alone on the wine-dark political sea attempting to fashion an agenda all by herself . And, Gengis Conn adds, She may be most effective when she's proposing compromises to Democratic plans.

What meaning should we here attach to the word “effective?” If Rell’s service as titular head of her party lies only in her ability to edit Democrat plans, in what sense is she effective?

Effective for what – other than accomplishing Democrat Party goals? And effective for whom?

Comments

Genghis Conn said…
Effective for herself, I would say. She's doing what Bill Clinton did (and did very well)--taking the ideas and issues of the party opposite and somehow making them her own. It's going to get her re-elected.

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p