Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in Connecticut roughly by a two to one margin. The largest group in the state is unaffiliateds, sometimes called independents. In a primary contest, a Republican hoping to be nominated by his party will trim his message to a right of center audience; a Democrat, contrary-wise, will appeal to a left of center audience. The “center” in American politics is not a static position; it is a statistical average determined by one’s disposition to side with right or left positions.

It’s been one of those months. Departing President Of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – unlike Supreme Leader for life Ali Khamenei , the presidency of Iran is term-limited – has paid the United Nations, Babel on the Hudson, his final visit. His unvarying spiel was the same. Oil rich Iran is engaged in the peaceful production of nuclear facilities. No, Iran is not building nuclear weapons. Israel is a fake state that historically has no roots in the Middle East . Iran will obliterate the fake state if Israel should be presumptuous enough to attack Iran facilities that are producing nuclear weapons to obliterate Israel -- on and on.

In true blue Connecticut, the left of center media acts like a semi permeable membrane: Conservatives are filtered out at the beginning of post nominating convention campaigns, so that the general election contest between candidates will not be cluttered with inconvenient right of center messages and principles. Conservative corpses are carried out the back door, in the dead of night, and quietly laid to rest. John Zakarian, the longest serving editorial page manager ( 1977– 2004, 27 years) at the Hartford Courant , Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, at one point boasted that conservative political writers would be hired by thepaper only over his dead body , and though Mr. Zakarien left the paper some time ago, the tradition gamely marches on. Because conservatives are strangled in the nursery bed – though lately a few weeds have cropped up – Republican candidates who survive to a general election fall to the center or slightly left of center on the political spectrum...

Like U.S. Senator Chris Dodd before him, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman soon will be leaving the congress with 23 years of service under his belt. Following his leave-taking, Mr. Dodd fell on a plush Hollywood featherbed. Mr. Lieberman’s future is a question mark. His bitterest critics – they are legion – suppose he will worm his way into a lobbyist position in Washington because, as Willy Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks, that’s where the money is. Like Senator Dick Blumenthal, who stepped into Mr. Dodd’s congressional shoes, Mr. Lieberman is Jewish, and when his most hot-headed critics wish to strike a death blow, they revert to stereotypical insults: Jews are motivated by money alone; Lieberman’s principal loyalty lies with beleaguered Israel rather than the United States, that sort of thing. Apart from racism, the two oldest and most perduring prejudices in the United States are anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, both of which still have lots of wind in their sails. W...

Like most professional politicians, former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker tends to filibuster journalist’s questions.   And, solipsistic by nature, Weicker has a way of relating all questions to his own personal experience. Dennis House of WFSB’s Face the State opened his interview with Mr. Weicker -- "the only man alive to serve as both governor and senator of our great state” – by asking what he thought of the U. S. Senate race so far. Mr. Weicker had recently endorsed Democrat U.S. Representative Chris Murphy over Republican challenger Linda McMahon. Mr. Weicker and Mrs. McMahon have a shared past together. Mr. Weicker served on the board of WWE, pulling in, according to one press report $150,000 per year for his no doubt invaluable services. Mr. Weicker was forced off the board, after which his change in salary led to a corresponding change of heart. In his introduction, Mr. House referred to Mrs. McMahon correctly as Mr. Weicker’s “former colleague.”

New England CableNews (NECN) reported   t hat “A man U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal helped to free from Florida's death row more than 25 years ago has been charged in a different case with killing his wife in North Carolina.” While working at a private law practice in 1986, current U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, for more than 20 years Connecticut’s Attorney General, agreed to represent Joseph Green Brown, convicted falsely on rape and murder charges.

State auditors recently concluded an audit of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). Their findings, both depressing and alarming, suggest no adults have been directing the agency. The audit covered only the fiscal years 2009 and 2010. Among the findings were these:

Hell hath no fury, to vary a well-worn phrase, like a Weicker scorned. Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent The base Injustice thou hast done my Love: Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress, And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd; Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd. William Congreve, in The Mourning Bride , 1697 Once again – a bad habit in former Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker’s case – Mr. Weicker has brought his hobnail boot down upon yet another Republican and   former friend, according to a piece in CageSideSeats (CSS) , “ Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. sticks the boots to former friend Linda McMahon .”

It has been well established ever since Governor Dannel Malloy had been hoisted into the governor’s office by a slim vote margin that Mr. Malloy rarely has met a political opportunity he has not eagerly taken advantage of. If former Governor Jodi Rell was modest in this regard, Mr. Malloy is in comparison shameless. In the last few weeks alone, Mr. Malloy has appeared as a speaker at the Democratic National Convention where he gleefully skewered Republicans ; he joined a picket line to express his solidarity with union strikers; he traveled to China, where forced abortions are routine, to curry favor with Chinese leaders, presumably with a view of increasing China’s market share in Connecticut. The long list unreels in tandem with Mr. Malloy’s crowded calendar.   Mr. Malloy’s grasp extends much further than those of his Connecticut critics, none of whom make regular appearances on National TV shows such as "Morning Joe .”

Andrew Roraback is a “fiscal conservative,” which is to say he is not a “social conservative,” which is to say he is pro-abortion but not sufficiently enthusiastic concerning abortion to merit the approval of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, a pro-abortion group that will admit no exceptions to abortion on demand. The very term “social conservative” is highly misleading. There are no congressional bills or judicial decisions that have no social ramifications. Everything politicians say and do and think is said and done and thought with a view towards enforcing or changing the society affected by human action. Even budgets – the last real budget was passed by the U.S. Congress in1997   before Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008 -- profoundly affect the social sphere. The science of economics, dismal though it may be, is a science of human action.

Polls showing that Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Linda McMahon had overcome a vote advantage once held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy have the left among Connecticut commentators – pretty much all commentators in the state – in a furious snit, best typified by a flare sent airborne by Colin McEnroe, the host of The Colin McEnroe Show on Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR). In addition to hosting his own program at WNPR, Mr. McEnroe is a Hartford Courant columnist: “ When all else fails, hit her with the dirtiest smear: Constantly mention that she's a Republican. She could tip the Senate into Republican control. Republican means you don't get the Medicare you've been paying for all these years. It means pre-existing conditions are back on the list of Gigantic Worries, and your 24-year-old can be kicked off your policy. It means your taxes go up and LeBron James' don't (sic). I am fond of many Republicans, but I wouldn't want to run as one in Conne...

In a recent Hartford Courant story concerning Representative Chris Murphy’s mortgage issue, Courant columnist Jon Lender writes there are details of the loan still shrouded in mystery. Mr. Murphy, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat soon to be relinquished by Joe Lieberman,   has claimed he missed “several” payments on his mortgage. The lapses of memory did not prevent him from receiving favorable credit from a Webster Bank, although Mr. Murphy, a lawyer, had been sued for non-payment of his mortgage.

More has been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other single American politician. He is one of those world historical men who straddle the ages. An Elizabethan in manner and speech, he was never-the-less a modern. Henry Menken, always very sparing in his praise of men, considered him the solar myth of the American idea. From what I have been able to gather about Lincoln's voice, Daniel Day Lewis in the new Steven Spielberg film, “Lincoln,” has it down perfectly. And the film shows him laughing. Oddly, there are no pictures of Lincoln, the most mirthful of men, smiling or laughing.

Kathy McShane, who leads a coalition called “Women for Linda [McMahon],” has taken umbrage at U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, an aspirant for the U.S. Senate, for having called Mrs. McMahon “anti-woman.” She begins her critique of Mr. Murphy  by noting an obvious distinction between Mr. Murphy and Mrs. McMahon:

President Barack Obama’s past has come up several times in the national debate. Is this a legitimate issue? The disreputable pasts of other presidents have been noticed in other campaigns. President Bill Clinton, some people recall, had a “bimbo” problem. President John Kennedy had serious health problems, and he also wandered from his marriage vows. President Nixon may not have been a crook, but his politics was not always straight and narrow. Mr. Obama’s past has been examined since he has been in office. It turns out the book that introduced him to the American public, “Dreams of My Father,” was not, as many people supposed at the time it was issued, a strictly factual production. There are huge chunks of Mr. Obama’s past that are only fleetingly touched upon in his supposed autobiography. Many of the incidents in the book, it appears on close examination, are fictional; some of the characters in the book are “composites.”

The prospect of a Republican victory in a U.S. Senate race brings out the worst in former Republican U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker (Maverick CT), famous for poisoning the well against members of his own party. In his 1986 race against then U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, Roger Eddy went to Washington to secure the support of Mr. Weicker, who promised the Republican prospect he would support him a hundred percent.

Republican Party nominee for the U.S. Senate Linda McMahon, who has money enough and time to spare before voters go to the polls on November 6, continues to jab at Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate Chris Murphy in a series of media releases that would bring a blush of envy to the cheek of present U.S. Senator and former Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, known for his Gatling Gun media releases. Mrs. McMahon’s latest is below:

Referring to President Barack Obama this political season, Peggy Noonan writes somewhere – I haven’t the patience or inclination to look up the quote – that the fizz has gone out of the bottle. We loved Obama when he was a mystery and voted for him in great numbers. Now that he is a known quiddity, now that there is some writing on the blank page, our affections have wandered. Is it not odd that shortly after Democratic minders launched their war on “the Republican war on women,” polls showed a drop off of support on the part of women for Obama? One might assign any number of reasons for this: Women have had their first date with Obama and found his performance wanting; a woman's prerogative is a normal part of the arsenal of womanhood, by which means women retain their power and mystery over poor stupid men; women long ago have crashed through the so called glass ceiling and resent the Democratic view of them as manikins with ovaries… For whatever reason, woman seem to have...

If a Christian is one who turns his slapped cheek to the slapper for more roughhouse, the American male is no Christian. We are more like Lafcadio Wluiki, the hero of Andree Gide’s novel, “Lafcadio’s Adventures.”   Lafcadio keeps a small knife handy, and whenever he is insulted, he stabs himself in the thigh to memorialize the insult. Forgetting is forgiving. We are not braggarts. An Ahmadinejad here would be laughed to scorn. But we know how to nourish scorpions in our hearts. That we do well. And when the time is ripe, BANG goes the stinger.

The Democrats, with President Barrack Obama leading this time from the front, are anxious to portray Republicans as being the party of the past. It was Orestes Brownson who said, way back before the outbreak of the Civil War, “that mankind are always divided into two parties, one of which may be called the stationary party, the other the movement party, or the party of progress .” Americans, a highly experimental people, are temperamentally disposed to align themselves with the party of progress. It was something of a coup for presidential candidate Obama to structure his first bid for the presidency around the pillars of hope and change, too often mistaken for progress.

Former President Bill Clinton’s hour upon the stage at the Democratic National Convention – actually, it was 48 minutes – was mostly a 5,896 word defense of Obamacare. Following his speech, the fact-check vultures at the Washington Post dampened some of his fanciful political rhetoric. Mr. Clinton is sometimes lovingly remembered by both moderate Democrats and Republicans as a president who was willing to reach across party lines to slay ungovernable deficits. During his first term, Mr. Clinton cut spending and raised taxes on upper income taxpayers. Because the economy of his day had been revved up by traditional methods employed by his predecessors – tax reductions and moderate regulatory reform – Mr. Clinton was able to use additional revenues pouring into the treasury to offset an alarming deficit . The budgets offered by Mr. Clinton and affirmed by the U.S. Congress were in balance – indeed, they contained surpluses -- unlike the current the non-budget offered by President...

One could only imagine what might have happened at the Hartford Courant’s editorial board offices if one of their investigative journalists had discovered that former Governor John Rowland, now a radio talk show host, had failed to pay his mortgage “several times,” having been sued by a bank anxious to recover mortgage payments from a dead-beat politician. Brains would have exploded.

It’s a little bit like watching a fly fallen into mug of beer wildly flapping its wings. Once the rhetorical mood hits Governor Dannel Malloy, he DOES go on . One has only to compare the talking points in the 20 minute speech given by Mr. Malloy with those given by 1 st District U.S. Representative John Larson to understand that the script from which both borrowed was co-produced at Central Casting. In his pre-speech remarks, Mr. Malloy vowed that he would not spend his time during his strut on the national stage talking about himself , unlike his Republican Party nemesis, Governor Chris Christie of New York. Reporters and commentators who have covered the much traveled, fleet-footed Mr. Malloy since he was first sworn in as governor well understand how the presence of a camera awakens the showman in him. Unlike preceding Republican Governor Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy does not shrink from partisan displays, and be bathes in media adulation more often than other Connecticut politicia...

Women are deserting Dems , according to an ABC/Post poll . “The decline has occurred entirely among women registered voters – from 57-39 percent favorable-unfavorable in April to a numerically negative 46-50 percent now. That’s Obama’s lowest score among women voters – a focus of recent political positioning – in ABC/Post polls since he took office. Unusually, his rating among men, 50-47 percent favorable-unfavorable, is numerically better than it is among women, albeit not by a significant margin.”

Henry Mencken, every good journalist’s journalist, was a prolific writer. Asked if he ever got tired cranking out newspaper stories and commentary, he said -- never. During his whole journalistic output, Mr. Mencken said, he felt like a little boy with two stomachs in a candy store. Many of his writings were devoted to Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, which he hugely enjoyed as a buffoonish spectacle. Of Mencken and conventions, Murray Rothbard wrote:

The first half dozen of 689 reasons to vote against President Barack Obama is listed below. For the remaining 683 reasons, see National Review magazine here. https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/314773/689-reasons-defeat-barack-obama 1. Because he was not the one we were waiting for. 2. “Forward.” 3. Because Julia needs to get off her lazy, federally subsidized butt, get a real job, and pay for her own damned birth-control pills. 4. Because lots of people fail at their first real job. 5. Because “Winning the Future” was not a very good slogan back in 2005 when it was Newt’s. 6. Because the country is ready for its first African-American former president.

  Andy Thibault has written a moving tribute to Larry Cohen, the longtime libertarian commentator who had a regular column in the Hartford Courant. All of us, whatever our political persuasions, used to thrill to Larry’s commentary. In deep blue Connecticut, Larry was a fish out of water, and even seeing a conservative piece scarring the usual uniform commentary pages of the Courant – a rarity beyond belief – invariably sent a thrill up the leg of conservatives and libertarians, and never more so than when Larry, pitchfork in hands, took off after one or another slovenly liberal, some of whom signed his pay checks. For conservatives and libertarians, reading a Cohen column in this setting was like hearing a stone speak: You were just struck dumb.

After it had been pointed out that his drawings were hypercritical and highly unflattering representations of his subjects, a famous caricaturist responded, “What’s the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?” Roy Occhiogrosso, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Senior Advisor and a fierce Malloyalist, should have internalized the quote so that he would be able to flourish it   when asked by reporters why the governor thought it necessary to recruit dozens of state officials as propaganda agents.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread” -- Anatole France While the net worth of the hapless members of the lower 99 percent have been plummeting for some time, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal ($$-CT), a member of the 1 percent clan, last year realized an increase in net worth, according to a story in the Stamford Advocate, “ Blumenthal at high end of Senate millionaires' club .” The story compares Mr. Blumenthal’s wealth last year with that of current U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a relative pauper.