We are coming together this evening to say a few words about Abraham Lincoln, the father of the modern Republican Party. I also want to touch on the dangerously inept Biden administration and the political prospects for Connecticut Republicans in the 2022 off-year presidential elections. But first things first: Lincoln, then Biden, then Connecticut politics.
Lincoln
In the matter of Slavery, Jim Crow and Civil Rights
legislation, The Republican Party has nothing to apologize for. Since Lincoln
was the president who abolished slavery following a bloody Civil War he
prosecuted successfully in due course, one hopes that Lincoln statues across
the nation will be relatively safe from vandals who have assaulted Thomas
Jefferson and George Washington.
Of course, in the postmodern world, one never knows. Such is
the vile passion of self-affirming malcontents that we should not be surprised
if in the near future they lay violent hands on the statues of Fredrick
Douglas, the ex-slave and pamphleteer who had done far more to end systemic
racism in the United States than, say, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York or
Nancy Pelosi of California, the two Democrat leaders in the U.S. Congress.
Before Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, he
shared his pending remarks with Douglas. Portions of that speech were later
engraved – by a woman artist, as it happened – on the north wall of the Lincoln
Memorial. Even today, they startle:
Fondly do we hope --
fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”
Forty one days after Lincoln said these words, he was
assassinated by insurrectionist John Wilkes Booth who, most modern scholars
believe, was in attendance at the inaugural.
Douglas, we may be sure, approved of Lincoln’s just and
severe language. And it should be recalled that the Reverend Martin Luther King
chose this honored spot, the Lincoln memorial, to deliver his “I Have a Dream Speech.”
But little today meets the approval of historical
anarchists. I can only conjecture that the historical and cultural anarchists
of the silly postmodern period may be God’s judgment on an unheeding American
population too full of politically ignorant billionaires, academics -- who
always say more than they know and know far less than they say -- and
politicians who love to stroke the beast that soon, by the grace of God, may
destroy them. Sensible people pray that 2022 will see the end of this nonsense.
But perhaps I am too optimistic.
The Importance of Being Biden
Joe Biden – for 36 years a U.S. Senator representing
Delaware in what has been called the greatest deliberative body on earth, for 8
years Vice President in the administration of earth-healer President Barack
Obama -- became President following the four year incursion of Donald Trump,
whom Democrats twice attempted unsuccessfully to convict on charges brought by
Pelosi’s House. The attempt flopped, as leading Democrats knew it would, but
they made good press copy – until now.
The truth often lies, barely breathing, under a weight of
false narratives. John Durham, the United States Attorney for the District of
Connecticut from February 2018 to February 2021, is a masterful prosecutor and,
for those who in the past have felt his sting – corrupt Boston police officers
and mob figures, among others, including former Governor John Rowland -- Durham
has been also an almost invisible scourge. He does tend to get his man, quietly
and without much fuss.
The Durham prosecution is still unfolding, more slowly than
some would wish. But Durham is not a data producer for partisan politicians. He
is a fearless, plodding prosecutor, one of the best in the business. As Special
Counsel for the Department of Justice appointed to investigate the origins of
the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential
elections, he represents a real and present danger to Democrats still clinging
to the tattered outworn narratives concerning collusion between then President
Donald Trump and anti-democratic Russian menace Vladimir Putin.
Though Biden campaigned as a moderate Democrat, a fast
disappearing political species, he has governed now for more than a year as a
Bernie Sanders Democrat. U.S. Senator Sanders, a Vermont socialist, is not a
moderate Democrat in the fashion of President John Kennedy or, coming closer to
home, former Governor Ella Grasso, both of whom were liberals, not postmodern
progressives.
In the last few decades, beginning with Obama, the Democrat
Party has undergone not merely a face lift but a personality change. If the
Democrat Party of Kennedy and Grasso was an apple, the Democrat Party of Biden
and President Pro Tem of Connecticut’s General Assembly Martin Looney is an
orange. And apples, we know, are not oranges. Polls indicate that most Democrat
voters, in-state and nationally, and a large portion of unaffiliateds, are
beginning to get it.
Virtually all the polls show, that most people are – despite
the frothy approbation of the state’s media – resistant to the kinds of changes
that float, rootless, in the fevered imagination of extreme progressives and
Sanders socialists.
The Democrats themselves – Biden himself – has said he does
not want categorical, revolutionary or radical change. Instead, he wants to
work with Republicans in a bi-partisan manner to effect a gradual, non-alarming
change that will increase the public good of the vast majority of Americans –
just like Kennedy, just like Grasso. Upholding this false front is becoming an
embarrassment to those in the Democrat Party who do not wish to upend the
governing principles upon which this country was founded.
Who will represent the state Republican Party in contested
races will be decided on the Republican Party primary threshing floor this
August, three months before votes are to be cast in the 2022 elections. So far,
there are five announced contenders: John Flynn, a former portfolio manager;
Robert Hyde, a Simsbury landscaper; Leora Levy, an accomplished commodities
trader; Themis Klarides, former Republican State House leader; and Peter Lumaj,
an immigration attorney and real estate investor.
Blumenthal, the news media is now telling us, has an almost
insuperable advantage over his Republican Party opponents. Registered
Republicans are still outnumbered by registered Democrats in Connecticut by a
two to one margin, and Blumenthal already has assembled a campaign war chest of
$6.9 million, according to a Hartford Courant report. What ever
happened, campaign reformers may well ask, to the notion that the money playing
field among incumbents and challengers should be level?
Advised that Klarides planned to run against him, Blumenthal
summed up his campaign strategy in a single line: “My focus is on doing my job
and working for the people of Connecticut. There will be plenty of time for
politics later in the year.’’
Indeed -- the later the better. Blumenthal’s most powerful
campaign weapon against a competent opponent is to martial his advantages and
refuse to engage. Flight from his critics has always been for Blumenthal the
better part of valor.
What we will not hear shouted from the rooftops by
politicians and their supportive power brokers during political campaigns is
nearly as important as the usual generic messaging – “I am focused on doing my
job and working for the people of Connecticut.”
Are ye’now?
Republican Prospects
The traditional, time honored beef against Republicans is
that they are all millionaire money brokers – somewhat like Speaker of the U.S.
House Nancy Pelosi – blithely unconcerned with the middle class, an oppressed
group always left struggling to pick up an ever increasing governmental tab.
None of this is any longer true. The millionaires and
billionaires who plow political paths in the United States are now investing
heavily in the Democrat Party. According to IRS Data, Democrats have now become the party of the
wealthy, a turnabout when it was the party of the poor and middle class
decades ago when Camelot had been dangled before us by President John Kennedy.
“In 1993, the last time a president asked Congress to vote
in a significant tax hike,” Bloomberg
reports, “the typical congressional district represented by a
Republican was 14% richer than the typical Democratic district, according to
household income data from the Census Bureau. By 2020, those districts were 13%
poorer… Democrats now represent 65% of taxpayers with a household income of
$500,000 or more, according to pre-pandemic Internal Revenue Service
statistics.” Both Blumenthal and Lamont live in splendor in Greenwich, and
wealthy towns such as West Hartford have become progressive Democrat bastions
of power.
Governor Ned Lamont, Rosa DeLauro and Jim Himes are all
millionaires several times over. Klarides, it is true, recently improved her
bottom line by marrying well. But Blumenthal, the 5th richest Senator
in the U.S. Congress, has been well married for decades to the daughter of
Peter Malkin, rich in Big Apple properties. The Malkin family owns the Empire
State Building among other precious real estate ventures.
The face of the postmodern Democrat Party in Connecticut
will be represented on the upcoming 2022 ballot by Dick Blumenthal, the
“Senator from Planned Parenthood”, and Governor Ned Lamont, the Coronavirus
slayer who has been, some investigative journalists now tell us, inattentive to
alleged corruption in his own administration. FBI hounds are now on the hunt.
Everyone should look carefully at the negative space in our
Blumenthal infatuated media. Klarides’
wealth will not figure on Blumenthal’s campaign scratch card, because
Blumenthal is redundantly rich. The same will hold true in Levy’s campaign.
When mention is made of Biden’s bumbling administration,
Blumenthal will fly from the damning data: the unnecessary surrender of
Afghanistan to the terrorist Taliban; the porous southern border of the United
States, a virtual open door through which have passed hundreds of thousands of
illegal aliens, South American drug networks and “Made in China” fentanyl, an
urban kid killer. Blumenthal’s lies and evasions about his purported service in
Vietnam will not fill the pages of Connecticut press for days on end. That
whole episode is already old-hat.
Also old-hat is Hunter Biden’s odd and profitable business
relations in Ukraine, (now in the process of being dismembered by Stalin
protégé Vladimir Putin), and China, whose fascist President, Xi Jinping, having uprooted the last
vestiges of democracy in Hong Kong, now has his eyes set on Taiwan. Hunter
Biden’s name is, for obvious reasons, not on the gotcha lists of any of the all
Democrat members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation.
There will be no mention in Blumenthal’s campaign handouts
of raging inflation – correctly defined as too many dollars chasing too few
goods. The reason there are too many dollars is that Biden has printed,
borrowed and wrested from taxpayers too many dollars. These will be distributed
in Connecticut as vote tokens. One of the reasons there are too few goods is
that the Biden administration and “go along to get along” governors across the
nation have driven businesses out of business for two years and paid workers to
abandon the free market in favor of government largess. Result: Biden’s
government is flush with campaign “walking around money” traditionally used to
purchase votes, and the middle class is daily growing poorer because the drop
in the value of their inflated money is greater than any salary gains.
I’m coming to the end of my 20 minutes, so let me close by
pointing to an Orwellian tinged absurdity. RT advertises itself as
“the first Russian 24/7 English-language international news channel which
brings the Russian view on global news.”
At the end of January, RT reported in a story titled US
calls on arch-rival for help against Russia that American “Secretary of State Antony Blinken” -- where the
Hell is Winken and Nod? – “phoned his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to request
his aid countering what the American official called ‘Russian aggression’
toward Ukraine. According to Chinese state media, Wang instead urged Blinken to
cease ‘interference’ in China’s affairs and to respect Moscow’s legitimate
security concerns.’”
Nice! Biden intention
was to call on China, which has exported Coronavirus to the United States,
stolen proprietary U.S. business information, and now has its eyes set on
destroying Taiwan, having already rolled over and flattened democratic Hong
Kong, to help him thwart Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Yes, you may laugh.
Thank you for your
thoughtful patience. If there are any questions on any matter at all, I’ll try
to answer them.
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