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| Schumer, Blumenthal, Murphy |
One of U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s problems is that familiarity, as the old saying has it, does indeed breed contempt.
That seems to be the
message in a Connecticut paper’s Sunday edition, front page, top of the fold story:
“Blumenthal’s
poll ratings in decline.”
The unfavorable
headline is itself a story. After 40 years “serving the people of Connecticut”
in public office, Blumenthal’s formulation of his long run in Connecticut
politics, something has changed.
Whatever can it be?
Themis Klarides, one
of three Republicans vying for Blumenthal’s seat in the U.S. Senate, has offered an answer to the question.
“I just think that
some people eventually wear out their welcome before they realize it’s been
worn out,” Klarides told a reporter. “The bloom has been coming off that flower
for several years now. I don’t think it was an overnight issue. ... Dick
Blumenthal has become a caricature of himself. He’s known as the person who
gets in front of the camera and jumps to every event. But people want action
from their elected officials.”
Klarides listed a
number of problems facing Blumenthal’s constituents – high taxes, a southern
border bleeding illegal immigrants, a superabundance of fentanyl criminally
ferried over a fictitious border, most of it produced in China, rising gas
prices, and the highest inflation rate in forty years.
Rarely known to hide
her light under a bushel basket, the former Republican leader in Connecticut’s
General Assembly added, “Dick Blumenthal is the Joe Biden of Connecticut,
effectively. He votes with him almost 100% of the time, and it’s those policies
that have led us to all these problems, and that’s where I’m different ... Joe
Biden is digging his heels in, and Dick Blumenthal is standing right there next
to him as his wingman, saying, ‘I agree with what you’re doing.’”
Blumenthal might
justly reply that in hotly contested elections, one can hardly expect leading Democrats
in Connecticut to denounce publically the titular head of their party, even
though some Democrats, Blumenthal among them, might privately take issue with
some of Biden’s more destructive policies. But this defense, reeking of hypocrisy, might seem
somewhat unjust, because the national Democrat Party had fiercely opposed
President Donald Trump, failing to remove from office the former Republican President in impeachment proceedins,
and, in an off year election in Connecticut, the party had used Trump as a
campaign ploy against Republicans, often and loudly calling upon them to
denounce publically the titular head of their party.
What’s good for the
goose in political campaigns, the gander will object, is inappropriate for
ganders. Subtle distinctions of these kinds, all benefiting Democrats, it would
appear are now lost among leading Republicans.
Biden, a sitting
President, will be featured often and loudly on 2022 campaign stumps. Some
creative political antagonist recently got the idea of posting below gas
markups on tanks the message “He did this!” along with a picture of a smugly
smiling Biden.
Here is Connecticut
Republican Party chieftain Ben Proto pronouncing a doom on Blumenthal: “There
comes a time when it’s time to leave or you’re removed from the stage. It’s time
for Dick to leave the political stage. The polls show he’s lost whatever
popularity he had. Dick has always been a liberal, but he’s become a crazy,
radical, left-winger. This is a guy who has held office since the 1980s, and
the best he can do in a poll is 50%. He’s in trouble.”
Maybe not.
When Blumenthal was caught
consorting with New Haven Communists, he implausibly explained that he did not
know the group honoring him was a Connecticut Communist cell of long standing.
He was romancing a
group he knew would be able to help him in his campaign.
"Joelle
Fishman, Connecticut Commentary noted -- whose husband Art Perlo, chair
of the Economics Commission of the Communist Party USA, is the son of late
Soviet spy Victor
Perlo -- has led the Communist Party in New Haven for
many more years than Blumenthal has been U.S. Senator and Attorney General in
Connecticut. Unlike the conveniently semi-conscious Blumenthal, Fishman knows
who she is, where she is, and what she is. A courageous and outspoken
Communist, Fishman has never been in the habit of hiding her Marxist/Leninist
light under a bushel basket.
"The seventy-six year
old Fishman has lived in New Haven since 1968, and from 1973 to 1982, she was
the Communist Party candidate for Connecticut's Third Congressional
District, dominated since 1991 by U.S. Representative Rosa Delauro.
"Every leading
Democrat and union honcho in the southern part of Connecticut knows Fishman. Those who
praise her resourcefulness and rigorous adherence to communist doctrine,
however ruinous, can hardly be accused of McCarthyism in identifying as a
“communist” a woman who has publically and proudly identified herself as such
for nearly half a century."
Some ancient
admirers beginning to catch on to Blumenthal’s unsavory methods: If you must
talk out of both sides of your mouth to acquire maximum votes, just do it! The
results of a general distaste with a man who will go anywhere, do anything and
say anything to gain a vote is beginning to take its toll even on tolerant
state reporters misused over the years by a man who knows how to campaign, if
not how to govern.
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