The 2020 elections in Connecticut, as complete a rout by Democrats as can be imagined, means, at the very least, that the so called Republican “firewall” has been wholly destroyed. Governor John Rowland and Jodi Rell, now enjoying herself in Florida, are distant bugles. The political choices in Connecticut for the foreseeable future will be 1) progressive, and 2) more progressive. We have been brought to this pass by "moderate” Republicans who were fiscally conservative and socially liberal. The best specimen of the type was Lowell Weicker, father of Connecticut’s income tax.
Unlike the national elections, the consequences of state
elections in Connecticut are crystal clear. Democrats have managed to engineer
a clean sweep, and the state Democrat Party is in the grip of a progressive
floodtide, leaving in its wake both Republican and Democrat moderates. Nearly
half of the Democrat super-caucus is made up of progressives whose resemblance
to John F. Kennedy Democrats is superficial at best. To progressives, liberals
of the Camelot era are now Democrats In Name Only (DINOs).
Following the elections, Republican Representative Dr.
William Petit commented, “The Democrats almost
have a super-majority. It will be whatever agenda they want to put forward —
you need 76 to pass something and they’ll have 98, so they can lose 22 votes
and still pass it.”
Petit’s analysis, while correct, underestimates the potential
power progressive Democrats will wield during the next few years.
Not only do Democrats control all the constitutional offices
in the state, the General Assembly, and the courts, long ago seeded by
progressive governors, including Weicker, with progressive judges, they also
have taken prisoner the undying good will of Connecticut’s media. One may scour
in vain the editorial pages of the state in search of an objective conservative
view, the Republican American based in Waterbury being the exception that
proves the rule.
Following the elections, it is perfectly proper to ask –
where, if not among disappearing Republicans, is the firewall, the break on
ambitious leftists in Connecticut?
Various answers to this question have been offered by
thought leaders in politics and the media.
Answer 1: No firewall
is necessary. Just as in the vanished Camelot era, when national and state
media were fond of proclaiming “We are all liberals now,” so in the new
progressive dispensation now upon us in Connecticut, some thought leaders, an advance
guard of the new age, seem to agree: We are all progressives now. To woke
Democrats, progressivism is simply liberalism improved, nothing more. This is a
fable more fabulous than the Camelot of the Kennedy era. The antecedents of
liberalism and post-modern progressivism are entirely different. Progressives
of old, such as Teddy Roosevelt, really did believe in progress. Modern
progressives believe in a sort of millenarianism in which genuine progress will
necessitate an end to energy as we know it and a central government strong
enough to provide universal equality by eliminating all vestiges of liberty. As
all lovers of liberty know, liberty is individual creativity and innovation,
both of which are stifled by savior governors and presidents.
Answer 2: Wise heads, both in politics and the media,
will serve as a firewall. Sure, sure. Where have the wise heads been for
the last three decades during which the Republican Party ship sank and Connecticut
became an object lesson to other states in how not to run a government? Once
the pearl in New England’s crown, Connecticut is now mired in debt to the tune
of $68 billion, give or take a few billion; the one room school house of the Daniel Webster era was more proficient
in teaching children the three “Rs” than many highly defective but irremovable
public schools in the state’s larger cities; modern progressives in the land of
steady habits have for some time been
advancing the notion that the state should impose a wealth tax on those of its
millionaires who have fled New York for Connecticut because they perceive New
York as a wealth predator. The wealth tax, says Governor Ned Lamont, will deplete
the state’s treasury and chase hedge fund managers clustered in the state’s
“Gold Coast” back into Governor Andrew Cuomo’s tax trap.
Answer 3: Lamont will be a firewall. Like President Donald Trump, Lamont is a businessman, not a politician. As such, he knows that whatever you tax tends to disappear, including millionaires. It would be indelicate of him to propose moving restrictions on the state’s wealthy miltch cows the way he has imposed travel restrictions on people in his state whose relatives have moved from Connecticut to some God forsaken Coronavirus infested Hellhole like Massachusetts, recently added to Lamont’s growing list of travel restricted states.
A relative, by no means
rich, with a rich sense of humor has asked whether a nutmegger traveling to
Massachusetts in search of cheaper gas for her car – Connecticut taxes gas
twice, once at the station and yet again at the delivery port – would be
required to self-quarantine at the gas station for 14 days before he or she
returned home. And she wonders how long she will have to wait before both gas
and cars are prohibited in an effort to save the despoiled earth from a world destroying
climate change. Green New Deal proponents figure about 20-30 years.
Answer 4: Absent a restoration
of constitutional government, there can be no firewall.
All the firewalls are down: The General Assembly has not assembled for half a year; the courts have been in recess for as long a period; and Lamont has been during the same period the most successful autocrat in Connecticut history.
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