The shadow of a not too amusing farce hovers over a recent report in a Hartford paper.
The central premise of the report is this: Charlie Barker of Massachusetts is a
successful Republican Governor, his approval rating an astonishing 71 percent.
Baker is the usual New England moderate Republican, one who is conservative on
fiscal issues but liberal on social issues. If only Connecticut were able to
field a Charlie Baker-like gubernatorial candidate in the upcoming 2018 race, the
GOP might be able to sweep the boards and restore to the gubernatorial office –
held for two terms by Dannel Malloy, a progressive governor with an appalling
approval rating of 29 percent, the lowest in the nation -- a “moderate”
governor such as John Rowland, Jodi Rell or Lowell Weicker.
Here is the graph upon which the proposition precariously
rests: “In both style and substance, Baker evokes the New England moderate, a
breed that traces its lineage from Leverett Saltonstall and Henry Cabot Lodge
to John Chaffee and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. On the federal level, this type of
politico has gone largely extinct in Connecticut following losses by former
U.S. Reps. Nancy Johnson and Chris Shays. Since 2008, the state has only sent
Democrats to Washington.”
Just to begin with, U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker was by no
means a moderate Republican. His eccentric political posture is signaled very
clearly in the boastful title to his own autobiography, “Maverick.” Before
Weicker had been dethroned by former Attorney General Joe Lieberman, his
liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating was higher than that of
U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, who was neither a Republican nor a moderate. Indeed,
during Weicker’s long reign as a U.S. Senator, there were many Republicans in
Connecticut who seriously doubted that Weicker was a Republican at all.
As governor, Weicker operated as a fiscal progressive, and
he strained to the breaking point the compromised affections of fiscally moderate
Republicans and Democrats by instituting an income tax. Governors Ella Grasso
and Bill O’Neill, both moderate Democrats, were unalterably opposed to an
income tax – for the soundest of reason.
They supposed, correctly as it happened, that an income tax would spare
legislators in the General Assembly the ordeal of a) reducing spending, and b)
disappointing unionized state workers, Connecticut’s fourth branch of
government. Following the imposition of an income tax, state spending tripled
within the space of three succeeding governors. One can easily imagine Grasso snarling
in that portion of Heaven reserved for moderate Democrat Connecticut governors.
Other Republicans mentioned in the graph – Governors Rowland
and Rell and U.S. Congressional Delegates, Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris
Shays -- were, as advertised, fiscal conservatives and social moderates. But,
as the story notes, a doom hung over them, and they were at last displaced by
fiscally progressive, socially progressive Democrats.
So then, here is the lesson that ought to be learned by
people in Connecticut, both Democrat and Republican, who do not wish to repeat
the mistakes of recent history: 1) “moderate” is a term of art deployed by artful
politicians who are, in truth, immoderate, and 2) the division between fiscal
and social issues is largely imaginary.
Are the urban poor in Connecticut’s larger cities deprived
because of economic or social disruption, and which, in this sad turn of
events, is the chicken and which the egg? Isn’t it obvious that there are two
economies in the state, one urban and one suburban? And there are two social
models in the state as well, one urban and one suburban. But the poor
themselves are indivisible; there is not one part of a poor man that is
economic and another part that is social. The traditional family in cities as we know it
– dad, mom, two and a half children – has been entirely uprooted and destroyed,
mostly owing to programs that finance the production and spread of poverty and
social disruption. And the consequent
pathologies associated with these policies – fatherless families, a high
incident of crime, crippling economic dependence on government for the
necessities of life, poor educational possibilities – are everywhere apparent for
those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
The politician who claims to be fiscally conservative but socially
liberal is a prisoner of a false dichotomy – a willing prisoner, a man
or a woman who simply refuses to confront the truth that lies, as George Orwell
says, right in front of his nose.
And that is why the fiscally conservative-socially liberal
politician has been vanishing from our politics. He will be replaced by demagogues
who can lie in such a way that even the stones will believe them.
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