Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Ideological battles are not that much different than military battles. Winning, in both cases, involves establishing defensive lines while attacking the enemy aggressively. In politics, capitulation is always the easier course. The first step in the battle is the drawing of lines on a strategic map. The difference between Colin McEnroe , just to pick a thoughtful progressive at random, and Dan Gerstein, Sen. Joe Lieberman’s front man and the progressive everyman’s bête noire, also a thoughtful political commentator, is a matter of ideological circumference. In most matters, moderates like Gerstein and Lieberman have a wide range. Their circle of ideas is wider than that of progressives or conservatives and includes the kinds of inconsistencies Ralph Waldo Emerson boasted of when he said a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Now, here in Connecticut, as everyone must realize, there are few if any entrenched conservative incumbent politicians. Conservatives are regula...

Even Kevin Rennie , widely regarded as a moderate Republican, took a hatchet to Gov. Rell following her budget address. “But Rell now worships in the Capitol village,” Rennie wrote from his berth at the Hartford Courant, “She's gone native. The harder fight would have been to enforce discipline on the state behemoth. That would have required some hard slogging and backbone, and that's no longer Rell's way." Both Rell and Rennie were Republicans together at the Capitol when former Governor Lowell Weicker jammed the income tax through a legislature that resisted the imposition -- to a point. Conservative talk show host Brad Davis recalls both Rell and Rennie ringing him up on the phone during those tumultuous days and telling him they thought they had the votes necessary to axe the tax. The Republicans hadn't counted on the defectors. “‘Trust me,’ the governor said on Wednesday. But why would anyone be so foolish as to do that? She insulted the public by calling he...