Connecticut Commentary will not here forecast the race of
governor in Connecticut and contingent races. It may be more instructive to lay
out for voters the correlation of political forces in Connecticut most of which
favor Democrats.
The last Republican governor of Connecticut was Jodi Rell,
who got along famously with Democrats, as did her predecessor, Governor John
Rowland, untimely booted from office during his historic making third term. Governor
Ned Lamont hopes to replicate Rowlands’s record.
Since Rell, Republican influence in the state’s General
Assembly has diminished significantly. Democrats now enjoy a nearly veto-proof
majority in the state legislature, not that there is any pressing need to veto
measures supported by Lamont. All so called “moderate” Republican members of
the state’s U.S. Congressional Delegation have been replaced by far less
moderates Democrats who favor, unsurprisingly, leftist solutions to pressing budget
deficits. Connecticut’s continuing deficit is hovering around $38 billion. The
General Assembly is helmed by two left-leaning Democrats, President Pro Tempore
of the state Senate Martin Looney, now in his sixteenth term, and Majority
Leader of the state Senate Bob Duff, both occupying nearly impregnable safe
seats. If we can put aside all the cackling we hear from Democrats concerning
the perils of democracy, some of us realize that in a one-party state such as
Connecticut, political business is managed in caucus rooms closed to both
members of the minority party and the general public. Reporters are not
welcomed in caucus rooms.
Ah, to be a fly on the wall, eh?
Progressive Democrats, in Connecticut and elsewhere, appear
to be the prisoners of their past victories. One commentator put it this way:
Democrats are the victims of their own past successes. Time has moved on, way
past, to choose but one example among many, an authentic feminist movement, now
caught in the undertow of stage three feminism. Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to
Emily Dickinson, among other books, has been a fierce critic
of stages two through three – or is it four? She believes the evolving feminist
movement has overstepped its rational. Like the giant in the fairy tale who
with one step finds himself far ahead of the princess he is pursuing,
postmodern feminists, have gone too far, too fast. And they do not realize that
they are re-fighting battles already won.
Paglia’s feminism is rooted in biology, real rather than
imagined history, and the remnants of the 17th century Enlightenment
period, only scant hints of which repose in 20th century academia, a
postmodern tangle of romantic anarchism and fairytale politics. Biological
differences between men and women, a constant through the ages, cannot be
overwritten by cultural or academic reforms. The ideological fizz added to both
politics and cultural attempts at sociological reform is an anarchic attempt to
resurrect a Marxist-Leninist effervescence that has – sorry about this – gone
flat. And feminism already has won its most important battles.
On December 9, we were told by Hartford Courant columnist
Kevin Rennie, “Eighteen Democratic women serving in the legislature have signed
on to an emphatic call to action in the First Congressional District. No more ‘being
told to sit quietly and wait.’”
Bewildered Republicans cannot recall President Donald Trump,
whose cabinet is top-heavy with strong and capable women, ever telling Attorney
General Pam Bondi to “sit quietly and wait.” And the same may be said for the
eight of twenty-four women serving in Trump’s cabinet, including Susie Wiles,
the first-ever female White House chief of staff.
The eighteen women signatories mentioned by Rennie are
interested in shoehorning a postfeminist legislator, Democrat State Rep.
Jillian Gilchrist, into Democrat State Senator John Larson’s 1st
District. To this end, they’ve signed a manifesto that reads in part: “We’ve
endured a world built without us in mind. We’ve overcome that by standing united. That
unity won women the ability to vote, to get an education, to be financially
independent. Despite our victories today, we’re still waiting for fair pay. For
safe pregnancies [a right to abortion at any stage of a pregnancy]. For the
freedom to make our own health care decisions [More money for Planned
Parenthood or other feticide encouraging organizations, please]. For
representation in rooms where our lives are debated, but our voices are
missing…”
There are no Paglias in this group.
There may be half a dozen reasons for replacing Larson in
Connecticut’s gerrymandered 1st District with a woman. But Larson’s
politics and his cultural misapprehensions differ only in degree, not in kind,
from those of the signatories mentioned by Rennie. Does anyone believe that
Larson, if reelected to office, would deprive Planned Parenthood abortionists
of a single dollar of tax money, or that he would issue a manifesto telling the
anti-Paglia, stage three feminists signatories – or is it four? – to mind their
place in the grand scheme of things?
Comments