Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

At the beginning of November, there occurred on the blog site “Connecticut Local Politics” a fruitful discussion concerning the yet nascent conservative movement in Connecticut. The disputants fell into one of two pews: There were those on the left side of the church who, biting their knuckles, supposed the state was falling into the clutches of wicked national conservatives; and there were those, myself among them, on the right side of the church, who pointed out that the powers that be in the state, what ever the drift nationally, were moderate Republicans, a vanishing species, and left of center Democrats, with nary a conservative in sight. Politically, Connecticut has rested for years -- now uneasily -- in the hands of liberal Democrats. Presently, the state legislature is full of progressives, captained in the House by a former union steward, the redoubtable Speaker of the House Chris Donovan , and in the senate by a committed progressive, Don Williams. The legislature has en...

It’s a mouthful from “ Red Five ,” a commentator on Connecticut Local Politics, but well worth heeding: “So far the committee hearings themselves have appeared bipartisan. “But someone is feeding a steady stream of “dirt” on Downey to the panel, and the media, and it makes you wonder who that might be … and why they’re doing it. “Anyone who actually reads the Downey transcript on (Strom) Thurmond can see he (1) condemned Thurmond’s bigoted past and (2) spoke as someone with a personal relationship to the senator, not as a fan of his politics. “Lawlor and McDonald - and please note here that Chris Healy was as wrong about this as he could have been - said as much themselves. “Yet the damage was done. “Then there’s the “questions” about his comments concerning immigration status. Even the lawyer for the party in question calls the comments innocuous - an intellectual exercise. “Yet more damage was done. “Come today and the committee is forced to delay action due to “surprise” new issues ...

Genghis Conn, Chris Bigelow of Enfield, recently proposed on his blog site, Connecticut Local politics, the question “ Has Dodd’s Moment Passed ?” The Headless Horseman weighed in with this answer: “With Dodd currently polling somewhere in between the guy who fills the soda vending machine at the US Capitol, and Eleanor Roosevelt’s bones, I’d say his time is long passed, if he in fact ever had a shot. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that it took him this long to actually run for president. Look how long it took him to grow up, stop going to Spring Break with Ted Kennedy, and get married and have a child. “I expect him to have a mid-life crisis when he is 143 years old.” That’s a “Yes.” But it’s a “Yes” burbling with what bloggers call snarkiness: a smart answer, deeply layered with irony, a little vitriolic, the sort of response to a reasonable question not likely found on the editorial pages of a respectable hometown paper. Comments in the commentary sections of blogs are anything but ...