Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

From an address to Windsor Republicans at their annual Republican of the year awards dinner.The award this year was given to Steve Ellingwood. Reading his own obituary in a local paper, Mark Twain once said that the news of his demise had been “greatly exaggerated.” There has been much written lately concerning the death of political parties. But the reputed demise is, I think, premature – which may prove, as it did in Twain’s day, that newspaper writers, columnists and other professional worry-warts have, once again, gotten it wrong. The presence in this room of so many hard working, energetic and committed Republicans certainly gives the lie to that notion. The news that journalism is dead has also been tossed about lately. An exhaustive survey released by the much respected Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates that national newspaper chains may be on their deathbeds. According to the report, the public “increasingly sees the press as slanted… Nearly three quarters of Ameri...

U.S. Rep Chris Shays, R-4th District, had his hair tousled in his recently concluded election with Westport First Selectwoman Dianne Farrell – which Shays won by a whisker. U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, was less than flattering to Shays during the campaign, and when Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader and DeLauro’s gal pal, said of Shays that he was “a rubber stamp for the radical right wing check-your-brain-at-the-door congressperson,” DeLauro did not demur. “This was the first year you really saw Democratic members go after other members,” said Shays. Apparently, the verbal bludgeons hit Shays upside his head: Even now, a month after the election, the genial congressman feels the shock and awe of it. Said Shays, “It was awkward.” Connecticut’s reporters and commentators, visibly shaken at the incivility of recent campaigns, are wondering whether the usual collegial comity that holds sway in Connecticut’s congressional delegation will survive such partisan slights. Awkw...