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Lamont’s Doppelgänger

Ex Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker’s pre-primary election interview with radio talk show host and Illuminati Colin McEnroe was a classic in artful dodging. McEnroe asked Weicker to dilate on the similarity between his fractious relationship with the Republican Party and Senator Joe Lieberman’s uneasy relationship with the Democrat Party. Lieberman, at the time, was being assaulted by leftist purists in his party for having too cozy a relationship with Republicans, even as Weicker once had been under attack from Republican stalwarts for being a better Democrat than, say, Senators Edward Kennedy or Chris Dodd.

The difference, said Weicker, was that he had never been rejected in a primary – even though, after losing to Lieberman, Weicker had fled his party and run for governor as an Independent. Vive la difference, as the French say.

McEnroe nodded assent. Perhaps he was over tired and did not recall that Weicker, having shoehorned his chief aide, Tom D’Amore, into the chairmanship of the Republican Party, once had proposed opening Republican nominating conventions to unaffiliated voters, so that a growing insurrection against the senator among real Republicans might be put down. What a pity Lieberman hadn’t though of that.

Weicker, as must seem obvious even to select members of the Illuminati, never was a party guy. After Watergate, he became combatively independent, a no man but yours kind of guy, a maverick, swishing through the twentieth century in his lonely kayak, battling against the Republican conservative tide.

The differences between Weicker and Lieberman are minimal – and far less important than their similarities. In fact, Lieberman is the anti-Weicker, just as Ned Lamont is the anti-Lieberman. In an odd sort of way, this makes Lamont Weicker’s Doppelgänger. There’s a real story here for any enterprising reporter with a nose sensitive enough to sniff it out.

The Doppelgänger has now taken a job with Lamont’s campaign, not that Weicker needs the money. Both Weicker and Lamont are independently -- even redundantly -- wealthy.

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