Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Democrats across the nation and in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation, all-Democrat since 2009, are assembling their adjectives to describe a recent vote in the U.S. House on the question of an “impeachment resolution,” which is not at all the same thing as a vote in the House on a bill of impeachment. In an impeachment proceeding, the U.S. House of Representatives produces and then votes yes or no on a bill containing articles of impeachment. If the vote carries in the Democrat controlled House, it then passes to the Republican controlled U.S. Senate, which conducts a trial. If a sufficient number of senators, sitting as a jury, find the offender guilty of the charges specified in the bill, the offender is removed from office, the only punishment that can be visited upon an impeached government official.

The notion that Republicans this year lost heavily in the General Assembly because President Donald Trump sank them is a bit too facile. Mark Pazniokas, a writer for CTMirror, explores the notion in a story titled CT GOP had right message, but ‘Trump just trumped it .’ The quoted portion in the title, “Trump just trumped it,” is taken from a remark made by former U.S. Representative Chris Shays, the last Republican standing in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation. Shays, Connecticut’s U.S. Representative from the 4 th District from August 1987 through January 2009, lost to current U.S. Representative Jim Himes long before Trump appeared menacingly on the presidential horizon, and his loss, as well as the losses of longtime U.S. Reps. Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons, had nothing to do with Trump and much to do with changing political dynamics in Connecticut campaigns.

"There ain't no more bottom to this bottom" -- diner wisdom How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America's Worst Performing Economies? ” Jim Powell asked in a stunning piece in Forbes magazine more than five years ago. In the often quoted words of former Prime Minister of Britain Maggie Thatcher, the state ran out of other people’s money. Former Governor Lowell Weicker’s 1991 income tax was followed, taxpayers of Connecticut will recall, by two additional massive tax impositions, the largest and the second largest in state history, initiated by present Governor Dannel Malloy – disapproval rating 72 percent, the lowest in the nation, according to Morning Consult . With the additional taxes in hand, spending spiked. The last non-income tax budget in the William O’Neill administration was $7.5 billion, a figure that tripled within the space of four governors. These tax increases relieved the Democrat dominated General Assembly of the necessity of inst...

While in the South – land of opportunity for Northern expats – I was asked by a Connecticut resident who had moved below the Mason-Dixon line several years ago seeking relief from ever-expanding taxation, the general reluctance to make long term permanent cuts in spending, excessive regulation, and the arrogance of progressives who had ruined his state, “Will President Trump be a help or a hindrance for Connecticut Republicans running for office in 2018?” The non-simplistic answer to the question on everyone’s mind is, as the new moralists might say, complex. The complex answer depends upon a shifting political frame. Will Connecticut Democrats be able to disassociate themselves sufficiently from the ruinous policies of departing Governor Dannel Malloy, whose approval ratings, never high, have now dipped far below the approval ratings of the Democrat’s straw man, the redoubtable Trump, whose ratings are in the ascendancy – though, one supposes, not in Connecticut?

President Donald Trump does not like the press he is receiving. The press – we now call it the media, because bloggers and ideologues with knives in their brains have been folded into it – convinced of its moral rectitude, begs to differ. Trump’s press notices would be very much different if he were the media, and his twitter activity has been taken by some as an attempt to offset this lamentable deficiency. Trump has been setting the day’s press calendar by tweet-twerking. He is, his Democratic and Republican opponents insist, the presidential equivalent of the-guy-in-a-bathrobe-in-his-mom’s-cellar turning the world upside down by loosing upon it nuclear tipped declarations. To Trump, tweets may be no more than a new colorful crayon in his box of tricks. To the contra-Trump media, they are a threat that must be disposed of, as the sixties radicals used to say, “by any means necessary.”

“He deserves a going-out a lot more glorious than the one that the Democrats handed him,” former Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker said of Governor Dannel Malloy, who had been disinvited to budget talks between legislative Democrats and Republicans. “The legislature dumped him,” Weicker added. “I don’t think that necessarily stands to the glory of the Democratic legislators.” Birds of a feather flock together. There is little difference in governing style between Weicker and departing lame-duck Governor Dannel Malloy. Both are autocratic and manipulative; both relied heavily on tax increases to fill budget deficit holes; and both claim not to be guided by popularity polls, lofty governors transcending the grubby hoi-polloi. Both were highly unpopular as governors, Weicker because he muscled an income tax through the General Assembly, and Malloy as the author of both the largest and the second largest tax increases in state history. The tax hike in the current budget – whic...

The last few weeks of 24-7 news has been dripping with unintended irony. Just as the Democratic Party was setting up to attribute former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s loss to political stumble-bum Donald Trump as a result of President of Russia Vladimir Putin's interference in her campaign, President Trump bombed Bashir al Assad of Syria, Mr. Putin’s Kewpie Doll. The bombing served to mute some of the more outrageous claims. Everyone but Dick Blumenthal has been investigating the Trump-Putin connection; so far -- nada.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal has not told us in his wanderings within Connecticut whether he believes the general run of citizens in his state feel safer or less safe with the presence in Connecticut of sanctuary cities. There are, at last count, three sanctuary cities in Connecticut: Hartford, New Haven and Willimantic. However, some state politicians have grand aspirations. State Representative Edwin Vargas of Hartford  put forward last January proposed bill 6709 ,   which would “amend state statutes to prevent the state police from demanding information concerning citizenship from individuals with whom they interact," in effect making the whole of Connecticut a sanctuary state, according to a story in the Hartford Courant .  And indeed, why not? If sanctuary is good for the people of Hartford, New Haven and Willimantic, how can it possibly be bad for the people of New Canaan? The term “sanctuary city” has fallen into disuse lately. As is usual in politics, the t...

It is no secret that the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Delegation, nearly all progressive Democrats, are unalterably opposed to the Trump administration. Having lost the White House and both Houses of Congress, undeterred progressives never-the-less are progressing, and few are the Democrats willing to buck the “Never Trump” crowd. Rep. Jim Himes, who fancies himself a Democratic moderate, called the first two weeks of Trump's presidency a “goat rodeo,” according to a Hartford Courant story . Gary Rose, a political science professor at Sacred Heart University, is convinced Democrats in Connecticut are playing to their base: “I would say that for [the Connecticut delegation] to challenge the president, as they frequently are doing and will do, is probably bolstering their own standing within their base," Rose said. "And I think that they would probably, quite frankly, place themselves in a little ... political jeopardy if they were perceived as accommodating thi...

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions soon will assume his duties as President Donald Trump’s Attorney General. His nomination was opposed by leading Democrats in the U.S. Congress chiefly because he was not Eric Holder.  At one point during his cross examination of Sessions, U.S. Senator and mud thrower from Connecticut Dick Blumenthal subtly suggested that Sessions might have a soft spot in his heart for the KKK. Blumenthal noted that Sessions had received some awards during his twenty years in the Congress, among them an award from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the latter of which Blumenthal noted is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to a story in the Washington Examiner . "Given that you did not disclose a number of those awards,” Blumenthal asked, “are there any other awards from groups that have similar kinds of ideological nega...

The Associated Press called it “a striking rupture with past practice.” But it was more than that. It was an intentional slap in the face to Israel, President Elect Donald Trump, and all prior presidents who had manfully resisted the recent UN declaration made possible by lame-duck President Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from a UN Council vote that condemns Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation of international law.” Mr. Obama’s decision to abstain from the council’s 14-0 vote, the AP reported, “is one of the biggest American rebukes of its longstanding ally in recent memory. And it could have significant ramifications for the Jewish state, potentially hindering Israel's negotiating position in future peace talks. Given the world's widespread opposition to settlements, the action will be almost impossible for anyone, including Trump, to reverse.”

The theory went something like this: Governor Dannel Malloy’s approval rating in his home state was scraping the bottom of the barrel at about 24 percent; Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was certain to bury know-nothing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the general election; Mr. Malloy, an ardent Clintonista, would move into an appropriate slot in the  victor’s cabinet; he then would have an opportunity to personally select his successor, most likely Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman; Mrs. Clinton’s gravitational mass would draw other Democrats into Connecticut’s General Assembly; and eventually the state, listing badly and taking on water, would right itself. Happy days would be here again. Birds would be singing, the flower would be driven through the green fuse, angels in Heaven would shout hosanna. The nation and the state would be saved. Then, as November 8 gave way to November 9, reality struck a fatal blow. Mr. Trump was elected the most ...

U.S. Representative Jim Himes, who just won re-election to office, has been pushed over the edge by Donald Trump, according to a story in the New York Post . “What finally pushed me over the edge, Himes said in an interview on CNN’s New Day, “was when the president-elect of the United States criticized the CIA and the intelligence community. Can you imagine what the leaders in Beijing and Moscow and Tehran are thinking as they watch the next president of the United States delegitimize and criticize his own intelligence community and stand up for the defense of Russia, one of our prime adversaries.” Mr. Himes must have been standing very close to the edge, because he believes that Mr. Trump’s remarks on the CIA report show that the President-Elect is unhinged: “We’re five weeks from Inauguration and the President Elect is completely unhinged.” In plain-speak, “completely unhinged” means he’s  nuts. Among Democratic politicians still suffering from painful election losses ...

For the past eight years of the Barack Obama Presidency, the moderate Democrat, perhaps best represented by the much reviled former Connecticut U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman , has been an endangered political species. Having lost a Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, Mr. Lieberman won in the general election as an Independent, incurring the enmity of progressives whose heads even today explode at the mere mention of his mane. But following the unexpected rise to the Presidency of Donald Trump, the species is making a comeback in the person of U.S. Rep Jim Himes, who has been chosen to lead the New Democrat Coalition , “a group of about 50 Congressional Democrats that calls itself moderate and fiscally responsible,” according to the Hartford Courant . Boastful progressives in Connecticut, hardly a hotbed of progressivism before the advent of Barack Obama, are now fading into the woodwork. Up for re-election in two years, one expects U.S. Senators Chris Murphy to be less...

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut’s consumer protection Congressman, might have been speaking of the Clinton Foundation, a mare’s nest of government-corporation entanglement, when he mused, “Time is not on our side. We really need to move quickly, because the longer it goes without some scrutiny or oversight, the more general acceptance there will be. We need to create this sense of outrage and alarm that pieces of the government are being sold and compromised.” But of course, he wasn’t.  Mr. Blumenthal was drawing a bead on President-Elect Donald Trump. Apparently, there is to be no honeymoon during this post-election season. It used to be considered seemly to wait a few weeks into a Presidency before the political opposition began to seed the political theatre with their Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

Connecticut’s State Senate is split 18-18 between Democrats and Republicans, and this election season – even with “loser” Donald Trump heading the Republican Presidential ticket – Connecticut Republicans made gains in the State House and Senate. Among those crying in their beers the day after the nation sent Mr. Trump to the White House was Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, who remarked to his media columnist, James Rutenberg, “We’ve got to do a much better job of being on the road, out in the country, talking to different kinds of people than we talk to — especially if you happen to be a New York-based news organization — and remind ourselves that New York is not the real world.”

Newsweek was over confident. The magazine set up its front page showing Democratic Presidential nominee defeating real estate mogul Donald Trump – two days before Election Day. Scrap that. Prior to Mr. Trump’s victory, a Hartford Courant political writer instructed a Talk of Connecticut Election Luncheon audience that “The Donald” was sub-human , and Bill Curry, whose support of socialist Bernie Sanders quickly shifted to Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton once Mrs. Clinton had bumped off Mr. Sanders, declared that Mr. Trump was “emotionally unbalanced, a fascist, and a fraud” . Perhaps after Mr. Trump has been in office a couple of years, Mr. Curry will readjust his depreciation of President Elect Trump, even as he has frequently adjusted his politics between the now abandoned Mr. Sanders and the re-embraced Mrs. Clinton.

A Pre-election Luncheon A day before the national elections, Newsweek magazine released its cover. "Madam President" – the nation soon will get used to hearing the title. One week before Election Day, when people were due to march to the polls to cast their ballots for -- or, as the pollsters tell us, AGAINST Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump for President -- Dan Haar, business editor and columnist for the Hartford Courant, found himself in the lion’s den and, like Samson in Holy Scripture, began to layabout with his jawbone. The Talk of Connecticut Election Luncheon audience was prepared to accept Donald Trump as a flawed candidate. It’s a safe bet that the majority in the audience felt Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had not received her due share of the lumps.  Mr. Haar, his chest expanding to the ball, came to read Mr. Trump out of the human race. Here is a partial transcript of some questions put to Mr. Harr and his answers:

Mr. Pesci, I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but… The choices for President this year are almost equally nauseating. I know you make it a practice not to endorse politicians for office, but I am going to ask you, point blank, whether you intend to vote this year for the rock or the hard place. I can only hope you will not retreat into the usual cowardly formula: voting is a sacred and secret right, like a skull and bones pledge, bla, bla, bla… It is a choice all of us MUST make this year, since we live in a time in which both indifference and cagey answers are impossible. Not to choose is to choose. So then, who is it to be, Hillary or Trump? Like the rest of us this year – a pivotal year in our politics, you say – you do not have the luxury of anonymous indifference. You MUST choose – no “if, ands or buts.” Wishing you the best, The Devil You Know.

Democratic sappers in Connecticut have devoted themselves to undermining the re-election efforts of State Senator Art Linares, who is running on the Republican ticket in Connecticut’s 33 rd District, by tying him to Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. A group of women has stepped forward to accuse Mr. Trump of having molested them some years ago. Will the gambit work? Possibly. Democrats committed to returning to the White House a First Husband plausibly accused of rape seem to think so, and they have invested some money in the project.