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| John F. Kennedy-- the last liberal? |
When we say “Throw the bums out!” -- a common expression in politics -- by “bums” we generally mean incumbent politicians. Politically neutered minority politicians warming their backside on the backbenches are no threat to the state or voters. A politician unplugged is like a lamp disconnected, powerless and incapable of shedding light or producing active policy prescriptions.
In Connecticut, during the last few decades, Republicans in
the state have been unplugged. We may leave it to academics to tell us when
this political mudslide began. Presently all the constitutional offices in
Connecticut are occupied by Democrats; all the members of Connecticut’s US
Congressional Delegation are Democrats; in the General Assembly, Democrats
enjoy a nearly veto-proof majority, and Connecticut’s media appears to be
suffering from a severe leftward-ho tropism.
As is the case with the national media, Connecticut’s
corporate media, less independent every day, is owned by large national media
chains. If there were a national neo-progressive party, corporate media would
be petting it daily in the same way they now are stroking affectionately
Connecticut’s left-leaning Democrat incumbent politicians.
Former 4th District US Representative Chris
Shays, tossed out of office in 2009 by neo-progressive Jim Himes, was the last
casualty of a Democrat neo-progressive insurgency that left the state’s US
Congressional Delegation shorn of “moderate” Republicans. Prior casualties
included Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons. Republicans serving for years within a
nearly evenly divided US Congressional Delegation billed themselves as moderates
who were “fiscally conservative” but liberal on social matters.
In a not so odd twist of fate, all Republican social liberals
have been displaced by leftist neo-progressives. And Republican fiscal
conservatives have been displaced by left of center neo-progressives deeply
committed, whether they know it or not, to discredited quasi-Marxist notions.
As the new political plant matured in the following years,
once liberal Democrats became neo-progressives, Republicans were unplugged, and
the media, always in service to the reigning political power, purred
uncomplainingly in the heart of the new political dispensation.
The current Democrat majority in Connecticut may best be
described as out-of-the-closet neo- progressives, none of whom draw from the
same intellectual well as did traditional Democrat liberals such as former President John F. Kennedy, former
Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso, or former US Senator Joe Lieberman.
The reader may wonder why I am using the term “neo-progressive.” I am using it to
sharply distinguish former President John F. Kennedy from current President Joe
Biden and his supporters, among whom we may count current Democrat Party
presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
It is, a few remaining non-partisan political reporters may
note, a bit of political sleight of hand to regard Harris-The-Joyful as having
been “nominated” by Democrat primary-pledged delegates to the Democrat Nominating Convention of
August 19 through August 22. When the convention convened, only a handful of
delegates were not pledged to cast their votes for Democrat primary winner
President Joe Biden. The convention, in fact, was a subversion of normative
convention processes – not excluding the presentation to the delegates of a detailed
party platform. Harris’ platform was, then and now, a string of glowing platitudes
– not well defined planks that would give footing to Democrats in a
presidential campaign. No planks, one political writer pointed out, no mandate
to govern. Policy-wise, Harris remains, less than a month
before the election, an unknown quiddity.
Kennedy was a classic liberal. That is to say he was one
among many Democrats in a formative queue -line that runs down the ages to the
great defenders of the Roman Republic such as Cicero, the author of The Roman Republic, assassinated by
agents of Julius Caesar, dictator and autocrat. Nearly all the founders of the
American Republic were familiar with Cicero’s valiant defense of the republican
state.
Sam Adams was playing Cicero when he wrote, encouraging his
compatriots to join a small “r” republican military offensive against
autocratic government, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility
of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in
peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which
feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that
ye were our countrymen.”
So then, here we are.
Connecticut, virtually all political reporters will
acknowledge, has dodged a conservative bullet. Political progress on the
entire east and west coasts has moved left – very far left, conservatives
sometimes admonish – because in the views of leftists there are no enemies to
the left, and even a shriveled conservative response to a regnant far left
political conglomerate is an insult never to be born in silence.
That, by the way, is one of the reasons reportage and
political commentary in Connecticut and environs is so damned boring.
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