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| Blumenthal |
The 2022 elections in Connecticut are about a week away. Many political commentators agree that nationally Republicans may take charge of the U.S. House of Representatives, depriving California Representative Nancy Pelosi of her well worn gavel once again. The U.S. Senate is up for grabs as well.
Here
in Connecticut, Democrats are the dominant party by far, and have been so for
many years. The governor’s office has been held by Democrats Dannel Malloy and
Ned Lamont for the past eleven years. The General Assembly is solidly Democrat.
All the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation are Democrats,
and all the state’s constitutional offices are held by Democrats. The state’s
largest cities have been in the grip of a rusting Tammany Hall like Democrat
political machine for about half a century -- and it shows.
How
did this Democrat Party hegemony take hold, and is Connecticut’s Democrat Party
fortress unassailable? Can it be successfully breached --- and, if so, how?
Connecticut
Democrats bought their hegemony by shuttling tax money to Democrat special
interest groups. They’ve won elections by pleasing the kinds of people who
determine election outcomes more often than Republicans, and Connecticut’s
media has followed along blithely with ideological blindfolds on.
This
writer has in the past criticized Connecticut’s media for being insufficiently
attentive to the party in power. William Randolph Hearst used to say, “News is
what people don't want you to print. Everything else is ads.”
If
most news accounts of the doings and sayings of U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, continuously
in office for 37 years, appear to be political ads, it may be because they are
political ads or, to be more precise, artfully contrived media releases more or
less untouched and channeled through Connecticut’s largely pro-progressive Democrat
Party pipeline. Blumenthal is not alone. The same may be said of most Democrat
Party office holders in Connecticut.
What
would William Randolph Hearst think of the fawning media coverage of
Blumenthal? In one sense, you cannot blame large media chains for bending the
knee to hegemonic party systems. In Connecticut, the media gets its printable
news from the state’s Democratic Party hegemony. Just as you cannot wring water
from a rock, so too you cannot wring news from a minority party that has been
out of power for -- let’s say, just to put a number to it -- the last 31 years.
How
is it possible to overcome such vast and entangling money and media advantages?
One
way is to change the media message. Another way is to make appeals in political
campaigns to what the voting public already
knows is true. Speaking of which, it was current presidential energy menace
Joe Biden who put the kibosh on an oil pipeline running from Canada to the
lower states. Not a problem, Blumenthal had assured Connecticut voters in his
recent debate with Republican challenger Leora Levy.
Biden
pledged during his presidential basement campaign to destroy the U.S. oil
delivery system throughout the United States. And, so far, he has been true to
his pledge.
Progressive
Democrats, blissfully unaware of right and wrong directions, call this sort of
thing “moving forward.” Owing to Biden’s destructive, costly and misplaced
energy policy, the United States will soon become a net oil importer. During
the preceding Donald Trump administration, the U.S, owing largely to fracking,
had been a self-sufficient oil exporter.
Very
recently, Biden had been forced to bend the knee to Mohammed bin Salman,
the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, because The United States under Biden’s direction
is now suffering from an energy supply shortage – a very expensive energy
supply shortage.
Rather
than lower the price of oil, as commanded by Biden, bin Salman raised the
price. Connecticut U.S. Senators Blumenthal and Chris Murphy are promising retaliation.
If bin Salman does not lower the price of oil, the United States will no longer
supply Saudi Arabia with defensive war material. No oil, no aircraft that the
Saudis might use to ward off attacks by Iran, the principal disturber of the
peace in the Middle East.
Blumenthal
and Murphy, one supposes, would not be averse to buying dirty oil from enemy
states such as Iran and Venezuela. Connecticut’s media has not yet asked either
Senator whether such a “cut off the nose to spite your face” energy policy
would be wise or useful.
In
addition, Connecticut’s media has failed to notice that increasing prices in
Connecticut and the nation are almost wholly caused by a decrease in the supply
of basic commodities. The answer to high gas prices at the pump, and high
energy prices as yet another cruel winter bears down on New England, and the high
prices of all services and commodities, including food, is to increase the
supply of goods and services to meet demand.
Blumenthal’s
Republican opponent, Leora Levy, hit the right nail on the head with the right
hammer when she said during the first and last debate: “This inflation was
deliberately inflicted on us by the Biden policies voted for by my opponent.
The first thing I would do is stop the spending... The Biden-Blumenthal Build
Inflation Back Better Act ... will not reduce inflation, and it will not affect
climate change. ... We also must reignite energy production. This is an
intentional attack [spurring an] energy shortage which has contributed to the
inflation all of us are feeling. ... This is an intentional attack on American
energy production. ... By killing our production on day one in office,
canceling Keystone pipeline, canceling leases, ending exploration on lands and
public waters, we have really crushed our energy industry. We have created this
shortage, and everybody is paying the price.’’
“Blumenthal
countered” the Hartford Courant tells us, “by saying he
successfully pushed for $86.4 million in LIHEAP funding for low-income
households during the upcoming winter.” The debate summary quoted Blumenthal to
this effect: “I pushed President Biden to release more Strategic Petroleum
Reserve. He did it… Prices came down. My opponent opposed it.”
Indeed
he did. The price reduction is temporary, while the reduction in oil reserves
will be long-term, so long as Blumenthal-Biden refuse to exploit the United
States’ more plentiful underground oil reserves. Democrat remediation, such as
Connecticut’s cut in the gas tax, will end after the 2022 off year elections.
Improvident
spending, the leading cause of inflation, having long exceeded tax
acquisitions, the Biden administration will at some point be forced to 1)
reduce spending, not an option, 2) increase taxes on middle class voters, not
an option, or 3) print and pass around
to Blumenthal and other Connecticut Democrats more inflationary dollars they
undoubtedly will spend to purchase more reelection votes.
“The
problem with socialism,” Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Maggie Thatcher
once said, “is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.”
And
Alexis de Tocqueville,
author of Democracy in America, has
told us what the real threat to American democracy is: “The American Republic
will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with
the public's money,” an illuminating proposition that has never fallen
trippingly from the tongue of Blumenthal.
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