Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Former Governor Lowell Weicker has been dragged out of mothballs by Neil Vigdor in The Connecticut Post to offer comment on the lamentable and Weicker-like Donald Trump. “’Out of 350 million people, we’re left with Donald Trump? You’ve got to be kidding me,’ said former Gov.  Lowell Weicker  Jr., an estranged Republican who has butted heads with Trump. ‘I think it’s the last act in what has been a long string of Republicans destroying themselves. I suspect after this election there will be a total reformation of the party.’” “Estranged Republican” is a delicate touch. During his last year in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Weicker managed to compile an Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating twenty points higher than that of U.S. Senator Chris Dodd. The abrasive Republican continually abused his own party as a foil to ingratiate himself with Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in his state by a two to one ratio, a case of mathematics determining political orientation....

Ann Coulter, universally despised by left wing Democrats, became a bit cuddlier when she demanded in one of her columns that Linda McMahon, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate go back to wrestling, her spot on the ticket to be taken by Rob Simmons, who stopped campaigning officially after the Republican nomination convention folded its tent. Coulter has called upon Sarah Palin, whose relationship with the Tea Party Patriot movement remains strong, to rally to Simmons’s side. In Connecticut, part of the movement seems to be drifting in Peter Schiff’s direction. The likelihood of Palin supporting Simmons is remote. But following Coulter’s column, it may now be safe for the Connecticut resident to return to UConn or Canada as a public speaker .

Rick Green, a Hartford Courant columnist and blogger , reports on his blog CTConfidential that “Rowdy students prevented New Canaan's Ann Coulter from speaking in Ottawa” Canada, and he added “That will stop her” in apparent approval. Closer to home, UConn students successfully blocked Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton   from speaking on campus. Coulter said later that the Canadian university that scheduled her to speak was a second rate institution, and Boughton, who is running for governor on the Republican ticket this year, politely protested his exclusion from a law school panel before which he had been invited to speak. Boughten did not characterize UConn as a second rate college. Canada, more or less patterned after European models, has no First Amendment rights. Mark Steyn, a Canadian writer much published here in the land of Jefferson and Madison, has had a tougher time of it in Canada, where a quasi governmental agency – the amusingly miss-named Canadian Human Rights Comm...

Ann Coulter, a constant irritant, finally has upset the wrinkled old white guys at NBC. The Drudge Report is citing "insiders" at NBC on Coulter’s banishment from their airwaves. "We are just not going to have her on any more, it's over," a top network source explains. However, “a second top suit strongly denies there is any ‘Coulter ban’. "’Look for a re-invite, as soon as Wednesday,’ said the news executive, who asked not to be named.” “NBC's TODAY show abruptly cut Ann Coulter from its planned Tuesday broadcast, claiming the schedule was overbooked. Executives at NBC TODAY replaced Coulter with showbiz reporter Perez Hilton, who recently offered $1,000 to anyone who would throw a pie at Ann Coulter. Hilton is also launching a new book this week, RED CARPET SUICIDE.” Coulter has written yet another blockbuster book on liberal idiocies, this one entitled “Guilty.” “One network insider claims it was the book's theme -- a brutal examination of libe...

Everyone should understand that conservatives are a subset – though a very large one – of the Republican Party. There is no question that John McCain is a Republican, as are Mitt Romney, who recently withdrew from the race, and Mike Huckabee, who has yet to withdraw. Conservatives have doubts, some supportable, some not, that McCain is a real rather than a virtual conservative. As part of their laundry list of anti-McCain points, conservatives recall that McCain once said he might consider a spot on a national ticket with Sen. John Kerry, then running for president as a Democrat. At the time, this rightly enraged the thinking wing of the Republican Party. Ann Coulter, may the blessings of Joe McCarthy be upon her, still has not gotten over it. In a recent column she said that she would stump for Sen. Hillary Clinton, now running for president on the Democrat ticket, should Republicans choose McCain as their nominee. Though Coulter has threatened to support a liberal Democrat for presid...

Camille Paglia , whose enticing column appears in Salon, an on-line publication, does not dread going where even dark angels fear to tread. Here is Paglia commenting on Hillary Clinton’s less than adroit handling of David Geffen’s defection from the Hillary camp: “What in tarnation was the Hillary Clinton camp thinking when it threw a tantrum about Hollywood producer David Geffen making a few critical remarks about her to a fagged-out media scold? Most people in this country have never heard of David Geffen and don't give a damn about whether or not he defects to Barack Obama.” The “fagged out media scold” is none other than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Paglia praised Obama’s “lofty assertion of statesmanlike unconcern” and then drove the shaft home: “Hillary didn't help herself with her over-the-top sermon at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, two weeks ago. Her aping of a black Southern accent from the pulpit was so inept and patronizing that it should ge...

“ My mother cried, my father wept, into the wicked world I leapt ” – William Blake In her forthcoming best seller, rumor has it that Ann Coulter will apologize profusely for using the “F” word – no, not that one – while adamantly refusing rehab. Meanwhile, over on the less far right, Jonah Goldberg of National Review On Line has offered a luminous piece on the Wilsons , Joe and Valerie Plame. And Binny turned 50 on Saturday. Assuming he is yet alive, Osama bin Ladin will have celebrated his fiftieth birthday on March 10th. A celebrant, Abu Yacoub , offered his good wishes on a website commonly used by insurgents and possibly by CNN. Said Mr. Yacoub, “Osama bin Laden turns 50. God protect our leader, our Sheik Osama bin Laden. God reward him for his words and actions.” He will Mr. Yacoub, He will. Someone has turned up a article written by Winston Churchill in 1937, “How The Jews Can Combat Persecution,” that seems to assign partial blame to Jews for the reprehensible way they were trea...

The Hartford Courant has now zinged – in an unsigned column in the paper’s Northeast newszine – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Antonin Scalia. The piece in which Scalia is zinged is titled, appropriately, “Zingers.” The lead line is breathtaking: “There's nothing like a visit from the biggest homophobe on the U.S. Supreme Court to stir up emotions at the University of Connecticut School of Law.” Scalia agreed to teach two classes in constitutional and administrative law at UConn and then – Perhaps Scalia read about Ann Coulter’s reception at UConn earlier in the year – give a lecture to “invited guests.” Coulter’s event, open to the general public, was dismantled by grunting students shouting obscenities at her from the safe remove of the galleries. And what they said could not be printed in the pages of Northeast. So then, it’s come to this at UConn, a place where the rights specified in the First Amendment are in full retreat – a private lecture; in other words, a frank a...