Following Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Connecticut,
in the course of which Governor Dannel Malloy short circuited three Sandy Hook investigations -- including an investigation impaneled by the governor himself –
choosing instead to put forward his own gun restriction proposals, all of which
dovetail neatly with President Barack Obama’s gun restrictions, the president,
according to a short piece in the Hartford Courant’s Capitol Watch column,
“tapped Gov. Malloy to serve on the National Council of Governors, making him
one of a bipartisan group of 10 state governors, five from each party, on the
Council.”
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."
Comments
If he is counting on popular approval of his style, of his being a man of action, another "maverick" he is making a mistake. It's not enough to justify the idiotic busway, for example, to point out that he imposed it on us in spite of the fact that nobody wants it. The maverick thing works better when the policies fought for can plausibly be rationalized.
The Hartford Courant has a reader poll on the gun issue. Obviously, not scientific, etc., but encouraging none the less.
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What do you think?
(Note: This is an unscientific poll.)
Is Gov. Malloy right to try to ram through new gun laws?
Yes. The public is fed up with current laws that let anyone buy a gun. As he says, "there are clear, common-sense steps we can take right now." (45 responses)
2%
No. He's short-circuiting the careful work of groups studying the issue -- including his own. Democracy takes longer than dictatorship, but it's generally fairer and better for all. It's not easy to balance constitutional rights with public safety. (376 responses)
13%
Yes. The longer that task forces take on this, the weaker their proposals will get, watered down by the gun lobby. (37 responses)
1%
No. The state has some of the harshest gun laws in the country, and doesn't need any more. The governor is just grabbing the spotlight. (2425 responses)
84%
2883 total responses
"I think it fair to suggest that this Governor is primarily motivated by political self-interest. But, perhaps he's not aiming for future electoral success so much as he is hoping to ascend into the management elite through political appointment."
I agree, and in any event, I think he has no chance of electoral success on the national scale. His own son's multiple run-ins with the law would surely surface in the national media (no doubt pointed to that history by a challenging member of his own party). Remember Joe Biden's campaign implosion in 1988 at the hand's of Mike Dukakis' campaign manager, John Sasso for Biden's happy and willing plagiarism of Neil Kinnock's speech.
See, e.g.: http://unconventionalwisdom.typepad.com/unconventional_wisdom/2004/09/who_is_john_sas.html
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I'm with you. I think his "style" so offensive, his policies so ridiculous and destructive that he'll have difficulty being re-elected even here in Nutmeg Land.
Don: Somehow I don't see Malloy getting the same "deference" from the MSM that it showers on Obama.