Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional
Delegation, the chorus of crying Democrats, is running out of active enemies.
There are no longer any Republicans aboard; haven’t been since the last
moderate Republican in New England, Chris Shays, fell to a young, seemingly
moderate Democrat, present 4th District U.S.
Representative Jim Himes.
In the past 15 years, no fewer than 3 moderate U.S. Congressional
Republicans in Connecticut have been displaced by Democrats. U.S.
Representative Nancy Johnson was displaced by former U.S. Representative Chris
Murphy. Mr. Murphy is now a progressive U.S. Senator. U.S. Representative Rob
Simmons fell to Democrat Joe Courtney.
More recently, moderate Republican Andrew Roraback lost to Democrat
Elizabeth Esty. Connecticut’s Senior Senator Dick Blumenthal defeated moderate
multi-millionaire Republican Linda McMahon. Mr. Blumenthal is now the 4th richest
Senator in the Congress. Connecticut’s other millionaire U.S. Representative
Rosa DeLauro has some catching up to do.
There is a pattern here: Moderate Republicans fall to Democrats who run
in campaigns as moderates and then proceed to govern as progressives.
The Republican Party mudslide began with Mrs. Johnson in 2007. By 2012,
the last Republican moderate, Mr. Roraback, had been carted off to the
boneyard. Following his defeat, Mr. Roraback was quickly raised to judicial
sainthood by Governor Dannel Malloy, who anointed the 17 year veteran of the
General Assembly a Superior Court Judge.
Mr. Roraback’s cousin, Catharine Roraback, was a civil
rights attorney in Connecticut best known for representing Estelle
Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton in the famous 1965 Supreme
Court case, Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized the use
of birth control and created the precedent of the “right to privacy” later
employed by an imaginative Supreme Court to rid the United States of its
anti-abortion demons.
On social issues, Mr. Roraback was indistinguishable from the usual
Democratic lawmaker, but his fiscal conservative instincts did not sit well
with some important shakers and movers in Connecticut’s media. His candidacy
presented the sole opportunity for left of center newspapers editorial boards
to balance the seven progressive Democrats who sit on Connecticut’s U.S.
Congressional delegation with one Republican who was moderate on fiscal issues,
acceptable to Planned Parenthood, not a member in good standing of the Tea
Party movement, a politician whose service as a state legislator was both much
longer and more distinguished than that of his Democratic opponent, and a
politician who long since had established an agreeable working relationship
with Connecticut’s left of center media.
The Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, endorsed
Mr. Roraback’s opponent, Elizabeth Esty, a one-term member of Connecticut’s
House of Representatives who represented the 103rd Assembly District. If Mrs.
Esty, during her single term in the House, had produced a memorable piece of
legislation, none of the editorialists who had endorsed her are likely to
remember it.
So then, Connecticut is now a one party state. The governor is a
progressive Democrat. Four of the six members of Connecticut’s U.S.
Congressional delegation are progressives. The state’s General Assembly is
dominated by progressive Democratic leaders. Connecticut’s only state-wide
newspaper, for years used to strangling potential conservative candidates in
their cribs, has resigned itself to the radical social engineering and
progressive economic experimentation that is the hallmark of the progressive
up-and-comer.
Given this backdrop – a political world in which there are no more
Republicans to conquer – Democrats in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional
delegation have decided to declare war on the Tea Party.
Let’s suppose you are a Connecticut student burdened by a student loan
you cannot pay off unless you secure your dream job -- which, of course, may
not not exist in Connecticut at the present time. The economy has been
prostrated for as long as President Barack Obama has been in the White House;
so the job you hope to secure may have disappeared. But you are prepared to
wait for the clouds to disperse and the sun to shine once more on
entrepreneurial Connecticut. Now you have been told that you must buy insurance
you do not need, and this will put a crimp in your personal budget which,
unlike the national budget, is not $3 trillion in arrears.
End Obamacare, you protest. Or, at the very least, do not raise the debt
ceiling to pay for current expenses. Raising taxes to pay debts would be
equitable, because the cost would be more evenly distributed, but raising the
debt ceiling increases borrowing, encourages profligate spending and places the
burden of payment upon people like you, young upstarts.
How might such protests be received by the intemperate Senator
Blumenthal?
First, you will be identified as a member of the Tea Party. You have
allied yourself, the inflamed senator will tell you, with “a small minority of
fringe extremist ideologues -- most in the House but some in the Senate -- who
have brought their brand of nihilist obstructionism to a new height. Their
position is that no programs will be funded unless some programs like Obamacare
are defunded."
According to a recent report issued
by staffers of Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, It is just such inflammatory language as this that
may have induced IRS officials to target right of center groups for
investigation: “As prominent politicians
publicly urged the IRS to take action on tax-exempt groups engaged in legal
campaign intervention activities, the IRS treated tea party applications
differently. Applications filed by tea party groups were identified and grouped
due to media attention surrounding the existence of the tea party in general.”
So, watch your tongue!
You are a “dead-ender,” Mr. Himes will tell you. Mr. Murphy will tell you
that you have allied with a “group of 30-50 tea party-backed Republicans who
want to burn government to the ground, and they have no interest in compromise."
The anti-Tea Party campaign has now begun in earnest. After all,
progressive Democrats in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, having
vanquished all moderate Republicans, have to run against something. The
National Rifle Association (NRA) has been sufficiently flogged, and the
representatives of Connecticut’s one party state need a new Potemkin Village to
burn to the ground.
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