Skip to main content

Weicker Revisited, and the End of Two-Party Governance in Connecticut

Weicker paying court to Castro


Facts always arrive at our doorsteps with tattoos attached.  It is important to get the facts straight so that, as Mark Twain somewhere says, you may them misinterpret them as you will. The tattoos are conventional interpretations.

 

Most reporters do not neglect to mention the fact that former U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker was, until he was relieved of his congressional responsibilities by then Connecticut Attorney General Joe Lieberman, a Republican. Weicker called himself a Jacob Javits Republican.

 

Republicans in Connecticut, many of whom heeded the call by Bill Buckley to cast their votes in the 1988 US Senatorial election for Lieberman rather than Weicker, had some doubts concerning Weicker’s true affiliation. During his last year as a U.S. Senator, Weicker was awarded high marks by the left leaning Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). The senator’s voting record in Congress during his last year in office was 20 points higher than that of Democrat U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, with whom he was fast friends.

 

Some political writers pointed out at the time that Weicker’s tortuous political journey from right wing Republican – he once proposed arresting antic left wing political protestors opposed to the Vietnam War – to moderate and virtuous Jacob Javits Republican, to anti-conservative Maverick Republican, the title of his ghostwritten biography, began fairly earlier in his political career.

 

Weicker did not keep under his hat his disdain for Connecticut’s Republican Party. He was quoted in a Hartford paper as having told his political majordomo, Tom D’Amore, also a Republican of sorts, “Why doesn’t someone take over the Republican party? It’s so small.” D’Amore later was duly sworn in as the chairman of the small and insignificant party. During his administration as party chairman, D’Amore would propose that the small and insignificant party should open its primaries to groups not bound by party loyalty. Weicker, Republicans knew, had always leaned heavily on support from Democrats, and they weren’t buying the Weicker gambit. D’Amore’s tenure as party chairman was mercifully short.

 

In 1988 Weicker lost his four-term seat to then Connecticut Attorney General Joe Lieberman. The state Republican Party clearly was not impressed with Weicker’s flacid devotion to it, and state Republicans thought the man was much too big for his party breeches.

 

Having lost his senate seat to Lieberman, Weicker ran for governor of Connecticut in a three way race and, to no one’s surprise, won office, leaving the governorship after a single term during which he was able to muscle through a Democrat dominated General Assembly a successful state income tax proposal that passed in the General Assembly by one vote. Weicker’s revenge, one deep pocket Republican called it.

 

Within Connecticut’s media, there are reporters and editors even today who are convinced that the State Republican Party might prosper if only it were possible to return to the golden years of the Weicker ascendancy: this, even though they must admit, always reluctantly, that all the Republican members of  the state’s U.S. Congressional delegation who had presented themselves as fiscal conservatives but social liberals had been turned out of office by neo-progressive Democrats such as U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, U.S. Senator Jim Himes and U.S Representative Jahanna Hayes.

 

In the intervening years, the number of neo-progressive Democrats in Connecticut’s General Assembly also has increased. These superior numbers apparently have convinced members of a once adversarial media that there really is such a thing as a “free lunch,” that neo-progressives will be able by bluster and political force to tax and spend their way out of debt, and that a one-party state is a blessing in disguise.

 

Tyrants from Julius Caesar onward to Hitler and Stalin have always thought the efficiency of the one party state was superior to a messy republicanism, and Caesar thought Cicero, assassinated by Mark Antony in 43 BC, was a subverter and an existential danger to the Roman imperium.

 

The two party system is a hedge against tyranny, a danger to politicians and one-party rule, the true enemies of anti-republican tyrants, as are constitutions that vest political power in the people, and tripartite governance in the United States -- that is to say, governance divided between federal, state and municipal powers, each fully functioning, dominant within their own spheres, and unchallenged by what we should call Caesarism.

 

Cicero was the best journalist of his day, as was Samuel Adams at the beginning of the American Republic, known in his own time as “the Father of the American Revolution.”

 

Small “r” republicans find that Cicero and Adams are closer to them – indeed, more alive to them – than a whole universe of modern politicians. “It does not take a majority to prevail,” said Adams to a tepid future generation, “but an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

 

Connecticut, now a one party state, could use a few “brushfires of freedom” if republican virtues in the state are to remain at a boil.  Weicker was not a Ciceronian republican.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Donna

I am writing this for members of my family, and for others who may be interested.   My twin sister Donna died a few hours ago of stage three lung cancer. The end came quickly and somewhat unexpectedly.   She was preceded in death by Lisa Pesci, my brother’s daughter, a woman of great courage who died still full of years, and my sister’s husband Craig Tobey Senior, who left her at a young age with a great gift: her accomplished son, Craig Tobey Jr.   My sister was a woman of great strength, persistence and humor. To the end, she loved life and those who loved her.   Her son Craig, a mere sapling when his father died, has grown up strong and straight. There is no crookedness in him. Thanks to Donna’s persistence and his own native talents, he graduated from Yale, taught school in Japan, there married Miyuki, a blessing from God. They moved to California – when that state, I may add, was yet full of opportunity – and both began to carve a living for them...

Lamont Surprised at Suit Brought Against PURA

Marissa P. Gillett, the state's chief utility regulator, watches Gov. Ned Lamont field questions about a new approach to regulation in April 2023. Credit: MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Concerning a suit brought by Eversource and Avangrid, Connecticut’s energy delivery agents, against Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Agency (PURA), Governor Ned Lamont surprised most of the state’s political watchers by affecting surprise.   “Look,” Lamont told a Hartford Courant reporter shortly after the suit was filed, “I think it is incredibly unhelpful,” Lamont said. “Everyone is getting mad at the umpires.   Eversource is not getting everything they want and they are bringing suit. It was a surprise to me. Nobody notified me. I think we have to do a better job of working together.”   Lamont’s claim is far less plausible than the legal claim made by Eversource and Avangrid. The contretemps between Connecticut’s energy distributors and Marissa Gillett , Gov. Ned Lamont’s ...