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Connecticut’s Democrat Party Hegemony
On the Sunday following the conclusion of the off year
elections in Connecticut, Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant raised the
following question: How did Dems do so well in state?
The short answer to the question is: The Democrat Party
hegemony won because hegemonies most often win. The more interesting and
illuminating questions are: How did Connecticut become a one party state? When
did the erosion of competitive politics begin? And is there a turning point at
which formerly Republican strongholds in the state – Greenwich and West
Hartford come to mind – will revitalize Republican Party ranks?
The extent of the Democrat Party hegemony was most
accurately depicted by Dr. Eric Ostermeier in a short piece, Connecticut Democrats Set New US House
Electoral Record, that
appeared in in Smart Politics five days after polls closed in
Connecticut.
“Since 2008,” Ostermeier wrote, “Democrats [in Connecticut]
have now won 40 consecutive U.S. House elections, not only adding to their
party record but also setting a new record in the Nutmeg State for the longest
partisan winning streak for the office since the founding of the modern
two-party system in 1828.”
Journal Inquirer columnist Chris Powell struck a sour note
following Connecticut elections in his column, Can competition in politics ever return to
Connecticut?
However sour, the note rings true alarm bells: “Governor Lamont and the renewed Democratic
majority in the General Assembly have won a great mandate that will
feed desires for more government programs that only employ more Democrats, erode
the private sector, and make more people dependent on government.”
Whether it will be possible for Lamont to strap himself to a
“moderate” main mast and, like Odysseus, stuff his ears with wax to silence the
bewitching song of progressive sirens in his state remains a doubtful but still
open question.
Not even former Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of
Connecticut’s income tax, was able to curb the progressive Democrat appetite
for improvident spending. At the present time, Connecticut’s often scratched
spending itch has increased its state budget from $7.5 billion when Weicker
first assumed office in 1991 to $24.2 billion today – not that anyone is
counting. And the state’s indebtedness is among the largest and most
debilitating in the country at $79.5 billion. Even Weicker knew
that improvident spending fuels inflationary fires – not that millionaires in
the state clustered in Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” need worry overmuch about
state taxes and spending.
Rather than cry over spilled milk, let us attempt here to
address one of above important questions.
How did Connecticut
become a one party state?
The slow and agonizing destruction of Connecticut’s
Republican Party through gradual attrition began long before 2008. At the risk
of disappointing half-baked “moderate” Republicans – i.e. GOP’ers who have long
claimed to be “fiscal conservatives” but “liberals” on social matters – this
writer has more than once pointed out that such an artificial division between
economics and culture is a fraudulent dichotomy, useful chiefly for campaign
purposes. Politics is downstream from culture, and the way to change politics,
postmodern Marxists such as Antonio Gramsci (read the link, will’ya?) have rightly pointed out, is first to --
change the culture.
Connecticut is now “the abortion state,” “the casino state,”
“the pot state,” “the deficit state,” the “repeal the second amendment” state,
the “who needs energy?” state, the “rule by executive fiat” state, the “I’m
aboard, tow up the lifeline” state, the “crumbling large cities” state, full of
empathetic, wall-eyed Democrat politicians who genuinely feel that the best way
to help the struggling poor in Connecticut’s state-dependent cities is, first
and foremost, to help themselves to large gobs of middle class taxes so that,
when the recession promised by progressive Democrats finally washes up on
Connecticut shores, state government, its lips firmly fixed on a withered
middle class tax teat, will survive the battering in good order.
Weicker, the progenitor of Connecticut’s continually
expanding state taxes, who once referred to himself as “the turd in the
Republican Party punch bowl,” noted little of this in his ghost written
biography, “Maverick,” an oversight perhaps.
An answer to yet another pressing question – To what extent
is Connecticut’s non-contrarian media responsible for the state’s dominant,
progressive, status quo hegemony? – must await further status quo
non-developments.
Democracy in Connecticut
In the meanwhile, we may all rejoice that Democrat
democracy, somewhat different from Republican democracy, has in our state
survived the presumed depredations of former President Donald Trump, largely
because Connecticut Democrats have artfully used Trump as a foil in their
campaigns, even though the former president has been politically unplugged and
out of office for the past two years. And the insistence of Connecticut
Democrats that a Republican governor may overthrow a statute that affirms Roe v Wade is preposterous,
given that The Supreme Court’s most recent decision affirmed and strengthened
the right of states to regulate abortions.
In a one party state, right reason, when it does not conform
to a party line, is easily – even gratefully – overthrown by an agitprop state
apparat and an army of enablers.
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Marty