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| Machiavelli, republican |
The question foremost in Republican minds these days, at
least in Connecticut, is: What must politically overwhelmed Republicans
do to win office? It is not possible to direct affairs of state if the GOP in
Connecticut remains, as it has been for some time, the loyal opposition. An
obvious solution to the problem would be to do what Democrats do so well – become
an opposition disloyal to the reigning power.
This is the central message to the modern world of
Machiavelli, the much misunderstood fierce republican of Florence in the 16th
century. Florence, by the way, was in Machiavelli’s time the fountainhead of
modern republicanism. The Borgias, ripe with monarchical aspirations, put in
exile such republicans as Machiavelli and Dante, whose departing gift to Italy
was the modern Italian language, still spoken most purely in Florence. The
Borgias plastered Italy with art, and political corruption, and more political
corruption.
A bit like Lucrezia Borgia, Speaker of the US House Nancy
Pelosi has in abundance the Borgia gift for political skullduggery. Her
daughter said about her, intending a compliment, “She’ll cut your throat, and
you won’t even know you’re bleeding.”
Power in politics is like power in a house. Without power –
which is to say, presence in politics – nothing
happens when you turn the switch. The lights remain off; water does not run
through the pipes; and you can’t cook risotto, or indeed any meal. When the postman
comes around, he assumes, noticing the black unwinking windows and the
shattered shutters, that the house has been abandoned.
From the administration of Governor Dannel Malloy, through
the administration of Governor Ned Lamont, the Republican Party in the General
Assembly has been a ghostly presence. Malloy thought nothing of showing elected
Republicans the door when budget discussions were in process. Although his
successor, Lamont, appears to have better manners, he has followed in the same
way. Connecticut’s media has been very obliging to Democrats, much less so to
Republicans. Word on the middle class street is that we have the government we
have because we have the media we have.
That is how, in a republican form of government, both
republics and parties die. People assume after a while that there is no one
home.
So, how did the GOP in Connecticut end up as a party
perpetually, it would seem, out of power, a permanent back-bench party? The
cities in the state, for instance, have been ruled by old Tammany Hall Democrat
Party apparatchiks for about half a century. And large urban crime pots, even
members of Connecticut’s left of center media might admit under oath, are in
sad shape.
Despite the war on guns prosecuted by Connecticut’s two US
Senators, Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, the state’s major cities are
shooting galleries. The war on guns in Connecticut, however useful it has been
in advancing the political careers of both Blumenthal and Murphy, has been a
conspicuous flop in Connecticut’s cities, somewhat like the war on drugs. And
it seems obvious from recent news reports that the shooters do not know how to
shoot. This writer mentioned a particularly painful case last April in a piece titled
“Wasted Crises” that involved the
so-called “accidental shooting” of a three year old child in Hartford.
There is a short answer to the question: How did
Connecticut’s GOP become unplugged? The state GOP has accommodated itself to
the party in power on nearly all social and cultural issues. If all your
fighting is defensive, a rear-guard action, you will never advance. At some
point, you have to move up the court and take a shot at the basket, even at the
risk of missing the shot. The Democrat Party has, owing to an anesthetizing
reluctance on the part of Republicans office holders to capture ground on
social and cultural issues, permanently seized half the political
battlefield.
All moderate Republican slots in the state’s US
Congressional Delegation have been occupied by Democrats since 2008. The last
moderate Republican U.S. Congressional delegate was Chris Shays. Moderate
Republicans strong on fiscal issues and weak on cultural issues have been
replaced by progressive Democrats weak on fiscal issues and strong – but wrong some insist
– on social issues. State Democrats, chatty on regulating assault weapons – any
weapons, including knives and cars used in an assault, may be regarded as
assault weapons – are silent, deathly silent, when a 19 year old kid in Hartford
murders, by “accident,” a three year old child whose name, days
after the accident, no one, least of all empathetic, gun regulating politicians,
will remember.
Connecticut Republicans during the past few decades have won
nearly every fiscal argument and lost nearly every state-wide election. And because
they lose elections, they have lost their place at the political table where
economic issues are decided. Republicans consequently are not merely weak on
social issues in instances in which they might be strong. They are the
political equivalent of absentee landlords.
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