Elliot, Lamont
“It could probably be
shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal
class except Congress.” -- Mark Twain
In the opinion of most political commentators in the state,
including reporters, Lamont is a moderate Democrat.
A dispassionate answer to the question might be: It depends
what you mean by “moderate. That goalpost has been moved leftward by New
England Democrats within the past few decades, most severely within the
political lifespan of Lamont.
The governor was first brought to public notice when he
defeated incumbent U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic
primary for the U.S. Senate in 2006,
twenty years ago. Although Lamont gained the endorsement of the state’s
Democrat Party and won the primary, he lost to Lieberman in the general
election.
Four years later in 2010, Lamont ran for governor on a
platform promoting balanced budgets, job creation and economic competitiveness,
sounding much like a northeastern Reaganite. Lamont’s political posture was
plausible for a Democrat politician born to the purple; he was and is a
Greenwich millionaire whose wife is a politically savvy investment
entrepreneur, a millionaire in her own right.
Lamont, ever persistent, lost the gubernatorial race to Dannel Malloy. In politics, persistence is a virtue not
everyone can afford.
Lamont struck gubernatorial gold in 2018, when he defeated
Republican nominee for governor Bob Stefanowski in the general election. He has
served in the governor’s office from 2019 to 2027, having dipped into his own
considerable resources to finance his campaigns.
The Connecticut commentariat regards Lamont as a “fiscal
conservative/social liberal,” a politically useful label.
But the times – they
are a’changing.
All Republican fiscal conservative/social liberal U.S. legislators
serving in Connecticut’s U.S.
Congressional Delegation have been replaced by Democrats who never met a
fiscal deficit they couldn’t live with. The Democrat caucus in the General
Assembly has grown into a veto-proof majority pledged to prevent Connecticut’s
fiscal conservative/social liberal governor from becoming too fiscally
conservative. The word’s “cut spending” as a means of liquidating deficits is
to them a foreign locution or curse words that ought never to be mentioned in
Democrat legislative caucus rooms where political matters, out of sight out of
mind, are decided.
Connecticut’s sister state has just elected to office a New
York City Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who
is a socialist agitator and tub thumper. New York City is where the nation’s
stock market lives and breathes – for now.
Is Josh Elliot a
Socialist?
We are told these days that the “political energy” within
the Democrat Party is on the left. By “political
energy,” those on the left mean successful political agitation. While Connecticut is not New York City, it
has been for many years a leftist playground. Liberals, socialists and
anarchists -- leftists all -- have over the years entertained themselves in the
Democrat Party big tent. They are the
root and branches of a single tree. Historically, anarchists
preceded socialists, who preceded communists, considered the full flowering of
socialism. Communists in Russia – not
considered fertile ground by Karl Marx for the flourishing of his communist
state – produced Joseph Stalin, who put an end to both tepid socialists and anarchists.
There can be no place for anarchists in the soviet communist state.
Both Stalin and Hitler were socialist before they became
respectively communist and fascists, and Mussolini, who coined the term,
defined fascism as follows: Everything in the state; nothing above the state; nothing outside the state –
hardly a conservative or libertarian credo.
Elliot, running in a primary in the Connecticut Democrat Party’s
big tent against multi-term Democrat Governor Lamont, is neither an anarchist
nor a Stalinist. But, it should be obvious, he is not a Lamontist either; that
is to say, he is not a moderate Democrat – a John F. Kennedy fiscally
conservative, socially liberal Democrat.
To put it in brutal terms, Elliot is not, looking toward a future
dominated by anarchists, a loser.
Like Lamont without the millions, Elliot has been for many
years a working Democrat in the General Assembly. Like Ryan Fazio, a
conservative Republican running for Governor against whatever Democrat will
prevail in the upcoming Democrat primary, Elliot is bright, friendly and
personable. A tousle between the two during a recent Vinnie
Penn Project debate showed both were idea-men friendly with
each other. The daggers remained in the scabbards during their well-mannered
discussion.
Chris Powell,
one of the most trustworthy journalists writing today about state politics,
says of Elliot: “ Elliott seems to presume that most Democrats who will vote in
the primary are members of the government class or aspire to become members and
that they can be convinced that he really will do more for them than Lamont has
done, even as the governor often announces new subsidies for one group or
another, also seeming to presume that the primary will be decided by the
government class and its aspirants. So is there any other constituency in the
Democratic Party these days - like a constituency for plain old honest,
efficient, transparent, and effective government, government that actually
accomplishes what it purports to do?”
For many disenchanted Connecticut voters, the answer to that
central question is -- NO. The most
important political question for voters in Connecticut is – who shall decide
what is to be done? When they come to understand that outside the Republican
Party there is no political salvation from a status quo that enriches politicians and impoverishes the middle
class, a cleansing change will occur. You cannot get to democracy by way of a
self-serving Democrat Party hegemony, moderate or radical.
Comments