Skip to main content

The Jefferson, Jackson Bailey Dinner

Nancy Pelosi, the powerful Speaker of the US House of Representatives, was a fashionably 15 minutes late, the result, no doubt, of the antique twin engine plane that carries the Speaker hither and yon.

Dodd gave a well-received speech, though the feasters present at the Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey Dinner were anxious to dive into their meals during the last few flagging minutes of the speech.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Dodd protégé from the gerrymandered 3rd District, which has gone Democrat in all but 12 of the last 74 years, gave a rousing speech introducing Speaker Pelosi and congratulated her on being a woman.

Independent Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman was not in attendance; religious obligations impended.

After the event, there was much cogitation in stories and commentaries speculating on how Lieberman, who defeated preferred Democrat nominee Ned Lamont, might have fared if he had attended the event. Dodd said Lieberman would have been politely received, even though the ID took issue with Lamont’s – and now Dodd’s – position on the “war in Iraq.” New protocols in the Democrat controlled US Congress prevent references to “the war against terror.” How nifty that the US Congress has the power to abolish “the war against terror” with a mere stroke of the pen.

For those who may not know, the festive dinner is named in honor of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, both presidents, and John Bailey.

Jackson, the hero of the battle of New Orleans, is thought to be the architect of the modern Democrat Party, while Jefferson, who rid the world of the Barbary Pirates, a scourge on shipping controlled by Islamic pashas in North Africa, is a representative of the ancient Democrat regime. John Bailey, who supported President John F. Kennedy’s venture into politics, was the last party boss in Connecticut. Lieberman wrote the best book on Bailey, which served as his springboard into Connecticut politics as a state senator. He served as Connecticut Attorney General, a US Senator, a Vice Presidential nominee of his party, and finally as a scorned supporter of the war on terror or, as the US Congress now prefers, “the Iraq War.”

Somehow, one cannot help but wonder what old Andy Jackson and Tom Jefferson would have thought of Lieberman’s downward spiral within the party of Franklin Roosevelt, a depression-era war president, and John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman, also war presidents.

The big night, it was generally agreed, belonged to presidential aspirant Dodd.

“Friday was the night,” one blogger attendee wrote, “when Connecticut’s Democrats showed their loyalty to a man who had given extraordinary service to the party and the state for decades and, at least outwardly, to show their support for his presidential bid.” But for the concluding sentence, “… he got a big round of applause for declaring that the Iraq War must be brought to an end, and was warmly applauded at the end of his eight minute remarks,” the blogger might have been talking about Lieberman, the prodigal son of the anti-war party.

Unlike Sen. Hillary Clinton, who is also running for president, Dodd has more or less apologized for having given his congressional support to the war in Iraq. Many Democrats have followed suit by rescinding from their memories, if not from history, everything they knew, or thought they knew, at the time they cast their votes in support of the war.

Across the nation, Democrats have used the unpopular war as a lever to pry Republicans from congressional seats. They were unsuccessful in ousting both Lieberman and Rep. Chris Shays, the two politicians in Connecticut most closely associated with President Bush’s unsuccessful prosecution of the war, and their effort to force the president to retreat from Iraq by attaching conditions to funding – when they could end the war immediately and constitutionally by voting to defund it – is both political opportunism and a course of action that is heedless of consequences, a predictable response for a party that never stops thinking about tomorrow and rarely thinks about the day after tomorrow.

Comments

Anonymous said…
How convenient that the dinner was held on the Sabbath so that Lieberman could not attend.. one has to wonder if that was done on purpose. So much for Democrats and their respect for their Jewish members.

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."

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e