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| Logan |
As the media in Connecticut is certain to notice, former
State Senator George Logan is Black. The AP style book now
suggests the word “black” should be capitalized. Logan is not a woman, as
anyone can see, but he likely does not regard this as a disqualification for
office in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Jahana Hayes, the present U.S. Representative in
Connecticut’s 5th District, is a “Woman” – the media might consider
capitalizing the word – and Black. At some point during his battle for the 5th District,
Logan may vow, a la Ronald Reagan, to make a strenuous effort not to
hold Hayes’ color or her gender against her. The danger in modern politics is
that one’s political opponents gracelessly may take things said in a humorous
vein seriously. Abe Lincoln could not have survived in such a poisonous
politics.
The Trump Thing
One can only hope Hayes and an objective, non-partisan
in-state media will not hold former President Donald Trump against Logan.
However, Logan, used to partisan tousles – he was accused of being “a token
Black Republican” by a Democrat activist in 2017 -- likely will take
into account the irresistible Democrat temptation to discredit all Republican
campaigners by hanging Trump around their necks like a loadstone for the purpose
of garnering votes.
Having left the presidency in the hands of Joe Biden, Trump
has been nominated by Democrats as their indispensable scapegoat. Pelosi
numerous times attempted and failed to remove Trump from office through
impeachment – once as he was about to leave office, an exercise in redundancy
since the impeachment process assigns but one punishment upon conviction in the
U.S. Senate – removal from office.
Asked if he would consider running for president, William
Tecumseh Sherman responded, “If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will
not serve.” We know from attitudinal soundings that Trump likewise would refuse
to run or serve as a Democrat scapegoat. In Trump, as in most politicians,
vindication is a prime mover.
The national media, and to a lesser extent, Connecticut’s
media as well, has in the near past used Trump as a foil against any
and every Republican running for office, state or federal. This campaign
ploy was not unexpected while Trump was President
Now that he has been an ex-President for seven long months –
politically unplugged, as it were – it does seem a stroke of desperation that
Democrats and the media should continue to frighten voters with
impossibilities. It is not possible for Trump to affect political policy while
out of office except in the same sense as it is possible for any ex-president –
say, former President Barack Obama – to do so.
Still, Trump’s political remains hover in the air. When
Logan is asked what he thinks of The Orange Man, he might turn the trick on his
opponent.
Here is Time Magazine bidding goodbye to Trump in January
2021, seven months ago:
“This is not how Donald Trump wanted
it to end,” a frank admission that the Trump terror had ended.
“He was insistent,” Time continues, “he would serve a second
term. When he lost, he pushed the big lie that the election had been
stolen from him, and then, on Jan. 6 — having exhausted other levers to reverse
the vote count — he incited a mob to march to the Capitol.
“If that deadly insurrection (emphasis
mine) was the clanging climax of Trump’s presidency, his final day in office
was a whimper.”
We may notice three things concerning Time’s unfond
farewell: 1) Trump truly is gone from office, taking a politically
fictionalized rendition of the Trump presidency with him, 2) Trump has been
politically unplugged; therefore, one may conclude, Trump no longer presents,
if he ever did, a clear and present danger to the Republic; and 3) the
insurrection on Jan 6 is no longer referred to as an insurrection, i.e., a
violent attempt to overthrow a government. In current press accounts, the
insurrection has been downgraded, more correctly, to a “riot.”
Joe Biden has been plugged into the Presidency for 7 months,
a longish honeymoon. Nancy Pelosi has for the same period of time
been plugged into the office of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
And Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has for the past 7 months assumed a
leadership role in the U.S. Senate. They are all, so to speak, live wires and,
as such, are prime fodder for Republican campaigners. Trump is a spent
cartridge; Pelosi and Hayes are live rounds.
In the coming campaign for the 5th, Logan may
want to stress that Hayes has consistently voted in lockstep with Pelosi and
Schumer on border policy, and that the Biden administration has executed a
sharp left turn from Bismarckian Realpolitik to a flaccid diplomacy with a
hegemonic Iran, a militarily developed, spook- filled China, and a
proto-Stalinist Russia.
Generally, most people understand that politicians --
especially those who have spent much of their lives in politics – lack modesty.
Trump is pretty much the opposite of modest. We should regard self-referential
politicians as teetering on the solipsistic edge of egomania. Because Trump
could, when focusing upon important policies, forget his place in the political
sun, he falls a few steps short of egomania. But there is no question he was –
note the past tense -- an immodest self-referential politician who tended to
use superlatives much more often than necessary.
Trump’s Pluses
The puritanical notion – bad in one, bad in all – appears to
be the dominant utilitarian political strategy of Pelosi, Schumer, and members
of the all Democrat Connecticut U.S. Congressional Delegation. At some point,
strategy will collide with reality. But some of Trump’s significant policy
initiatives were as sound as the liberty bell. They should survive his
character defects and be unabashedly defended by Republicans.
Trump properly refused to regard the border between the U.S.
and Mexico as little more than a demarcation line on a map. That he was right
to do so became apparent after his border policy had been dismantled by the
incoming Biden-Pelosi-Schumer administration. Border States are now screaming
HELP!, as border crashers from multiple countries easily avoid legal immigration
processes, guided into the United States by cash-thirsty coyotes, some of them
connected with south of the border drug cartels.
Speak softly but carry a big stick is always good advice.
With regard to Iran, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Communist China, Trump
sometimes wielded a big policy stick.
The Biden administration, following in the “lead from
behind” footsteps of the Obama administration, prefers diplomacy to
untoward confrontation.
Iran, in particular, loves American diplomacy, which is why,
during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, Iranian revolutionaries
abducted and provided for 444
days compulsory housing for most of the diplomats associated with
the American embassy in Tehran.
Diplomatic engagement with Iran dating from the Carter
administration has consistently failed to produce real dividends, instead producing a surfeit
of dead-end diplomacy. Iran has continually supported terrorist activity
against Israel. Speaking of which, Trump’s efforts in the Middle East –
especially his diplomatic prowess in persuading several Arab states to formally
recognize the state of Israel -- 73 years after a courageous Democrat
President, Harry
Truman, in May 1948, extended formal recognition to Israel – have been
successful and strategically useful.
Most recently, the Biden administration announced a
diplomatic entente with those in Iran who, smarting under Trump’s Big Stick
trade restrictions, continue to regard his and all presidential administrations
following the Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran, including Biden's,
as the “Great Satan” and Israel as a non-state destined to be pushed into the
sea.
Trump was not an anti-vaxxer
Democrats are going to have some difficulty juggling the two
following propositions: 1) Trump supporters are anti-vaxxers, and 2) Trump is
largely responsible for hastening the process of creating quickly successful
anti-Coronavirus vaccines now being peddled by Democrats. It is as if
Jonas Salk were to be accused by fanciful medical “experts” of being
pro-Polio.
Taking the 5th
Connecticut’s 5th District has not been a
problem free zone for Democrats. The 2014 battle for the 5th was,
this writer reported in “Taking the 5th”, full
of starts and stops. A wrench was thrown into then Speaker of the State House
Chris Donovan’s campaign for the 5th by the same FBI that had
twice wrestled former Republican Governor John Rowland to the ground.
Following an FBI sting operation involving bundled campaign
contributions, Donovan surrendered the sweet spot to Democrat Elizabeth Esty
who, with two years in the State House of Representatives under her belt, went
on to defeat in the general election a far more experienced Republican Party
nominee, longtime State Senate leader Andrew Roraback, who served 17 years in
Connecticut's General Assembly and, astonishingly, never missed a roll call
vote.
Mystifyingly, major Connecticut newspapers endorsed Esty
over Roarback, a Republican “moderate’ who had advertised himself as being
fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Roraback’s socially liberal bona
fides were in good order. His cousin, Catherine Roraback, Connecticut
Commentary noted in 2016, “played a prominent role in
litigating Griswold vs Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court decision
that upended opposition to birth control throughout the nation.”
A
friendless Esty left the U.S. House in 2018 after she had “failed
to discharge her chief of staff, accused of having abused a woman in her
office… Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators were among the last to commend U.S.
Representative Elizabeth Esty for having ‘done the right thing’ by resigning.”
Who is GeorgeLogan?
Logan is not an unknown on the Republican side of the
political barricades. His campaign site describes
him as “a family man, engineer, community leader, and a small business owner.”
Logan's grandparents, people who obviously knew how to stay
together during difficult struggles, were Jamaican. They moved from Jamaica,
south of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, to Nicaragua, to Honduras
to escape the Great Depression. Stars and stripes shining in their eyes, they
then moved to the United States and flowered.
Logan’s manners have a touch of island sweetness to them.
That Caribbean music has taken him in its undertow is not at all surprising.
Jamaica is the musical seat of reggae and rap, which developed from Ska, a late
1950’s genre that combined in a musical stew elements of calypso, American Jazz
and rhythm and blues. Logan played some of Jimi Hendrix’s greatest hits on his
Fender Stratocaster at Toad’s Place in New Haven.
As a father of three, two girls and a boy, he stands an
exemplar of responsible fatherhood for the single most neglected
underprivileged group in the United States, urban African American boys.
Having graduated from Trinity College with a bachelor’s
degree in engineering, Logan received a master’s degree in mechanical
engineering from the University of Bridgeport. He has been employed with
Aquarion Water Company for 30 years, first as an engineer, then moving up the
corporate ladder to environmental management and community relations.
Logan’s political experience is deeper than that of Hayes
when she was first elected to the U.S. Congress. He spent two terms in
Connecticut's State Senate fighting, according to his campaign site, “backbreaking
tax hikes and fiscal mismanagement. He tackled the tough issues facing the
wellbeing of his community and brought people together to fight the opioid
epidemic to find solutions that work.”
Inflation, which has increased by leaps and bounds during
the Biden administration spending spree following the Coronavirus pandemic, is
a matter of great concern to him “The cost of everything from a gallon of gas
to food, childcare and healthcare,” he reminds potential voters, “is rising due
to inflation, taxes and one-size-fits-all policies that are breaking the backs
of our workers, families, and small businesses. Simply put, a dollar doesn’t go
as far as it should.”
A businessman himself, he notes that “small businesses
continue to struggle,” most especially after a disabling pandemic now waning.
“Congress continues to pass partisan bills that check Washington D.C.’s
priorities but miss the rest of America.”
The fiscal instability caused by a lumbering Big Government
points to a Reaganesque solution: “We don’t need to grow government. We need to
grow a healthy economy and that starts from the bottom-up by letting workers,
families, and job creators decide how to spend their hard-earned money, not
politicians in Washington.”
And finally: “The status quo isn’t working for the people of
Connecticut, and it’s certainly not working in Washington, D.C., either. It’s
time for someone different to tackle the problems we face and provide a
diversity of ideas, solutions and life experiences that break the mold with
radical sensibility over radical partisanship.”
Logan faces three immediately pressing problems: 1) He does
not presently live in the district he would represent, if elected, to the U.S.
Congress. Logan has pledged to move into the 5th District.
Collectively, the members of Connecticut U.S. Congressional Delegation, all
Democrats, represent the whole state. Democrats in the delegation have marched
in lockstep with Democratic presidents and Democrat congressional leaders.
Hayes’ lockstep march has been nearly flawless; 2) Campaign fundraising is
always a problem for any non-incumbent politician. Virtually all the members of
Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation have jump-started past campaigns
with million dollar war chests; 3) The media in Connecticut, non-contrarian and
non-confrontational to the status quo, has clearly signaled its ideological
preferences since 2008, when the last fiscally conservative, socially liberal
Republican serving in the Congressional al Delegation, Representative Chris
Shays, surrendered his seat to Chis Murphy, presently Connecticut’s
post-modern ultra-progressive Junior U.S. Senator.
Numbers 1 and 2 are manageable. Number 3 lies outside the
province of many Republicans who find during campaigns that, like Blanche
Dubois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, they must throw
themselves on the often hostile “kindness of strangers.”
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