Well, that didn’t take long. Morning Consult tracks the favorable and unfavorable
ratings of governors across the United States. According to the rating service,
Governor Ned Lamont’s favorability rating is hovering around 33 percent 100
days into the new administration. The bulk of the discontent can only be
attributed to disappointed expectations.
Former Governor Dannel Malloy, who
high-tailed it to his old alma mater, Boston Law, following his not unexpected
decision to abandon thoughts of a third term in office, absconded with an
approval rating of about 29 percent. Shortly before he threw in the towel,
Malloy was the most unpopular governor in the United States.
Ironists – if there are any such creatures among Connecticut
political watchers – will dwell on the as yet unexamined ironies. How did it happen
that an electorate that had registered such profound disappointment with Malloy
never-the-less elected as his successor another Democrat who managed to acquire,
after only 100 days, an approval rating that puts him in 5th place
among the lowest rated governors in the country?
There are various theories bouncing around that may square this
apparent circle.
1) Pogo was right. The enemy is us.
Some days ago, an intemperate Speaker of the State House,
Joe Aresimowicz, characterized town governments that had passed resolutions
against prospective toll taxes as “moronic.” Aresimowitz beat a quick retreat,
but not, some of his critics supposed, because the Speaker had suddenly perceived
the vital connection between municipalities and state governance. Not at all.
Reelected to office with a very slender margin, Aresimowicz likely felt the hot
breath of discontent at the back of his neck. No fool, he grudgingly apologized
for calling moronic municipal politicians who disagreed with a new tolling
measure that they regard as moronic.
2) Trump sunk Republicans. In the off-year presidential
election, sticks and stone really did break bones., according to this theory.
True, there were very few Connecticut Republicans hurling Trump accolades from
Connecticut rooftops; and true, Trump’s name did not appear on any Connecticut
ballot; and true, the worm in the Trump apple – that the president colluded
with the Ruskies to deny St. Hillary Clinton her ordination to the presidency –
had yet to be exploded by the much anticipated Special Council Mueller Report;
and true, the tribunes of the people could hardly be expected to approve of a
president who had condemned all too frequently as fake newsmakers from his
Twitter soapbox … but still …
3) The Republicans ran a lousy campaign, top-heavy with
economic jeremiads, while Democrats campaigned as usual on “social issues.”
Then too, the Republican’s white-hatted gubernatorial prospect stumbled badly
when he announced that he had planned to rid the state of its income tax
incubus within ten years. The vow, it was said later, was aspirational --
somewhat like The Green New Deal, which envisions cars disappearing in 20
years, just in time to save the planet from ecological destruction.
4) Mathematics is determinative. Republicans are simply
outnumbered by Democrats in Connecticut, and it is numerology that is driving
Democrats ever further from the centrist politics of, say, Democratic
Governors Abraham Ribicoff and Ella
Grasso.
5) Dominant
Democrats have now reverted to an older, more politically convenient, outworn
formulation: Connecticut is suffering from a revenue not a spending problem. As
long as it remains possible to discharge state debt by raising revenue, Connecticut
politicians who owe their seats to politically muscular organized labor and
superior voting numbers need never pluck up the courage to cut spending. Among
Democrats, permanent, long-term cuts in spending are political planks leading
over shark infested waters. Broadening the tax base or, better still, imposing
a progressive tax on the state’s redundant millionaires; enlarging the margins
of so called “fixed costs,” i.e. costs that timid legislators lack the courage
to cut; and pushing onto future generations costs Democrats find it inconvenient
to reduce, all are measures that save incumbent politicians the trouble of
honestly confronting problems that are pushing Connecticut closer to
insolvency. After all, the purpose of government, some politicians hastily
suppose, is to smooth the path for those who govern, not to enlarge the
liberties of the governed.
Caught up in the political moment, it’s all too possible for
so-called “reformist,” more-of-the-same governors to forget even recent political
lessons and simply assume—see Einstein’s definition of insanity – that doing
the same thing over and over will yield different results
Lamont is a protégé of the tax and spend policies of former Governor
Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, and tolls are to Lamont
what the income tax was to Weicker – a new stream of revenue that will swell
the reputations of non-moronic, leftist politicians such as Aresimowicz, at the
expense of long suffering, liberty-loving taxpayers who, placed on the tax and
regulation griddle, will move their dwindling assets to politically cooler
states.
Lamont’s far from
rousing election to office and his dipping favorability rating in the Morning
Consult poll are indications that Connecticut voters were perfectly willing to
give a leg up politically to a politician who appeared during his campaign to
be open to reversing the course of the
state’s nose-dive into economic and political chaos. But the polling results suggest
that Pogo may have been right. Voters in Connecticut may be their own worst
enemies.
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