The GOP Chairman Contest

What does the Republican Party need to do to wrest control of the fate of Connecticut from dominant Democrats who outnumber Republicans in the state by a two to one margin? Pollsters tell us that unaffiliateds slightly outnumber Democrats. Will a change in the party chairmanship do it?

Yogi Berra told us the future ain’t what it used to be. Given the state of the state, guided towards the abyss for the last three decades by a party listing increasingly to the left, why is it so difficult for Republicans to convince a majority of voters that continuing to vote Democrat will doom all of us? And no, changing the chairman won’t do the job. The GOP has tossed its chairman every time Democrats have defeated Republicans. One thinks of Aztec priests leading virgins to the fire to placate bloodthirsty gods.

You need three things to win elections, the three “M’s” – money, message and manpower. The Republican message has been very narrowly tailored, nearly all of it towards economic issues. Traditional Republicans assiduously avoid debate on so called “social issues,” and this abandonment of half the battlefield delivers victory to Democrats – all the time. Republicans truly think they can win on economic issues alone. The last state election should have disproved that thesis. Democrats know they can win on “social issues” alone; so far, they’ve been right. The economy, for Democrats, is a moral not an economic theater of political action.

In both law and politics, silence signifies assent. If Republicans are silent on the matter of the butchery of late-term babies, to take one among many “social issues,” why shouldn’t that portion of the public – Republican, Democrat or unaffiliated – that believes some abortion procedures should be regulated not vote for U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal,  the senator from Planned Parenthood? The narrow Republican message must be broadened to touch voters wounded by leftist social policies, such as the poor suffering in cities controlled by political landlord Democrats for the last half century. Are we assuming that all women, even the substantial number who have had babies, would be unwilling to challenge the unscientific notion that a third term fetus resembles more closely a diseased liver that ought to be aborted than the senator from Planned Parenthood, who will brook no abortion regulations, however useful?

And the money?

Large campaign donors in Connecticut, once considered reliably Republican have for decades been splitting their wallets pretty much evenly between the two parties. It’s a safe bet that massive home-grown Connecticut companies such as Aetna and UTC have sent boatloads of campaign contributions to the leftists in the Democrat Party responsible for nudging them out of state.  Do the CFO’s of such companies ever ask their CEO’s “What are we purchasing?”

They are purchasing protection, special exemptions and political affection from the party in power – in Connecticut, progressives who captured during the last election about half the seats in the Democrat legislative caucus.

Al Capone’s troops used to wander among small businesses in Chicago selling protection to merchants; i.e. insurance policies that would "protect" the merchants from mayhem caused by the protectors. Maybe Yogi was wrong. Sometimes the future is what it used to be, but the cast of characters is different.

The comparison is not entirely hyperbolic. Connecticut government is big into gambling – think casinos. Massachusetts is into marijuana sales. Crony capitalism is a shakedown racket. Attorney General of Connecticut William Tong wants to put out of business Planned Parenthood’s competitors in the state, small mom-and-pop women health centers, because the centers do not perform abortions and are guided by traditional moral precepts. ICE, not illegal migrants, has effectively been deported from the state through a nullification process that has turned Connecticut into a sanctuary laboratory. The state continues to finance failing public schools in inner cities, all the while under-financing successful charter schools. There is no effective Republican presence in any of the state’s larger cities.

And manpower?

No one, least of all narrative writers in the state’s media, wants to leap aboard a sinking ship. Winning is not everything, but losing all the time may be the beginning of the end. There will be no phoenix arising from the ashes of the state’s Republican Party, only an unchallenged Democrat Party hegemony. And, as the state comes more and more to resemble unchallenged Democrat power centers in three of Connecticut larger cities, neither will there be a phoenix arising from the destruction of Connecticut.