By endorsing Mark Greenberg’s candidacy for the U.S.
Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District, a seat now held by U.S.
Representative Elizabeth Esty, state senate leader John McKinney has tossed a
wrench into the political machinery.
Mr. McKinney is an announced candidate for governor, a
position now held by Governor Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic chief
executive in more than 20 years and the nominal head of his party.
The march to Washington through the 5th District
has been traveled before by Mr. Greenberg. At the 2012 Republican nominating
convention, Mr. Greenberg was a contender for the position, which ultimately
fell to then state Senator Andrew Roraback who, following his loss to Ms. Esty,
was appointed a superior court judge by Mr. Malloy. Mr. Greenberg endorsed Mr.
Roraback. The Democratic contenders at the time were Ms. Esty and then Speaker
of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan, whose campaign was
derailed when the FBI moved to arrest Mr. Donovan’s campaign finance manager and
others associated with his campaign. A moderate Republican who was liberal on
social issues, Mr. Roraback lost to Ms. Esty by less than 7,500 votes.
Mr. McKinney’s endorsement of Mr. Greenberg was immediately
denounced by state Democrats in terms that mesh nicely with an effort on the
part of national Democrats to tie Republican candidates to the U.S. Congress to
the Tea Party, regarded by many Democratic strategists as an anvil that, once
effectively fastened to the neck of any Republican running for office, would be
certain to sink a campaign.
In the national campaign script, written for the most part
by left of center progressives, the Tea Party is treated as a devilish
institution. It was uber-propagandist V. I. Lenin who said that if you label
something effectively, you don’t have to argue with it, and there are some who
believe that Beltway script writers and labelers set a standard for political skulduggery
when national agencies answerable to the executive department, such as the putatively non-partisan Internal Revenue Service (IRS), set out to frustrate
conservative-minded groups by means of contrived and corrupt investigations. Last
May, the internal auditor for the IRS reported that the agency had asked
inappropriately probing questions and delayed conservative groups’ applications
— in some cases for three years.
The Tea Party in Connecticut is
a convenient campaign foil for Democratic Party leaders. During the last Jefferson,
Jackson, Bailey gathering, Mr. Malloy singled out the Tea Party, took aim and
fired: “They don’t give a darn about our economy. They would sink our economy
for their own political good.”
Mr. Malloy would be hard pressed to name a single representative
of the Tea Party in Connecticut. Certainly he has never invited any member of
the Tea Party in in his state over to the governor’s mansion to have a beer
summit on the state’s sinking economy, though Mr. Malloy has now been given the
opportunity. Following the governor's strained attempt at Tea Party labeling, Bob MacGuffie, the co-founder of Right
Principles, a conservative-libertarian blog, invited the him to a debate
in the course of which the two might amicably discuss Connecticut’s hobbling economy.
One of the distinguishing marks of the Tea Party movement is
a fervently held belief in what might be called a politics of limits. In insisting
on constitutional probity, Tea Party folk are treading heavily on a very sore
corn. One of the deepest buried assumptions of the progressive movement is that
-- the sky’s the limit, constitutional prescriptions be damned.
There is nothing demonic about the Tea Party movement,
though campaign demagoguery may yet succeed in putting horns on the heads of what
Mr. MacGuffie has called Mr. Malloy’s neighbors. In Connecticut and throughout
the left of center northeast, where progressives are feeling their oats, the
once vital moderate center of Democrat Party politics has all but disappeared. In Connecticut, where radical
progressives presume to call Tea Party Patriots “extremists,” the sky is the
limit, and the state Tea Party is not political force to be reckoned with –
yet.
Connecticut’s Tea Party, however, can cause a world of hurt
for members of the loyal opposition party who stray from constitutional
orthodoxy. Just now, some members of Connecticut’s Tea Party are sorely disappointed
with Republican leaders in the General Assembly who conspired with Democrats to
write a gun restriction bill in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre that will
not put a large enough dent in the criminal acquisition of weapons regularly
used by gang members in urban areas to assault both peaceful and non-peaceful.
Mr. McKinney’s endorsement of Mr. Greenberg, who has managed
to avoid arousing the enmity of Connecticut’s Tea Party, may take some of the sharp
edge off a few highly charged opponents within the Tea Party. At some point,
members of the Tea Party in Connecticut must decide whether opposition on a
point of principle that may sink a vigorous Republican challenge to Mr. Malloy
will advance or retard their long term goals, robustly stated by Mr. MacGuffie
in his debate challenge to Mr. Malloy:
“Our movement is largely about
reducing federal power by urging our representatives to pass only the laws
permitted by the Constitution and to unwind those that are unconstitutional. We
are part of the greater liberty movement of Tea Party members, conservatives,
libertarians, and constitutionalists who propose a free-market alternative to
every failing liberal boondoggle the Democratic Party has foisted on us.”
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