Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Why Connecticut Republicans lose elections There is always a great deal of disagreement within political parties. But that is the dark side of a revelation, and the revelation is this:  members within political parties  agree  on most important matters. So let’s begin by describing broad areas of agreement.

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.

Governor Dannel Malloy assured Connecticut’s Democratic Party, early on in the political season, that he will not be running for a third term. Democrats are rather hoping this may somewhat deflate the Republican march to the governor’s office. There are two groups that have been running against Mr. Malloy during his two terms: Republican gubernatorial hopefuls patiently awaiting the moment Mr. Malloy would throw his hat in the ring once again, and Mr. Malloy himself, whose progressive political prescriptions have curdled. His own worst enemy, Republicans will sadly bid Mr. Malloy good-bye. Not so Democrats. Mr. Malloy’s not unexpected announcement has thrown wide the door to multiple possibilities. Perhaps the most amusing is the non-announcement of Democratic President Pro Tem of the Senate, Martin Looney, who was asked if he had plans to enter the gubernatorial race. Mr. Looney did have such plans, but they were narrowly circumscribed by conditions: if Mr. Malloy would do M...

It’s always possible for politicians to learn from current events, mend their ways and move on. Owing to the failure of questionable progressive policies, national Democrats this election year lost the House, the Senate and the presidency, a dramatic reversal of fortune. Republican gains have brought to a full stop a serious progressive entente that began when Barack Obama assumed office in 2009. Flush with success – Democrats that year captured both houses of the U.S. Congress and the presidency – Mr. Obama ran a progressive plank above shark infested waters and invited Democrats to take a stroll. They did. Eight years later, Democrats have lost 12 governorships, 13 Senate seats and 69 seats in the House of Representatives. The losses cut deep and will be long remembered. During Mr. Obama’s two terms, according to MarketWatch  Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the state and national level, leaving Republicans in control of 4,170 state legislative seats. The GOP...

The Presidential Nominating Conventions of both parties this election year will be unconventional, although the Republican Party Convention possibly  will be more unconventional. The rising political star of Bernie Sanders, socialist, dipped below the horizon shortly after President Barack Obama, the nominal head of the Democrat Party, his hand gently touching Mr. Sanders’ sagging shoulder, led him to the White House and there sacrificed the socialist on the altar of progressivism.

Henry Mencken, every good journalist’s journalist, was a prolific writer. Asked if he ever got tired cranking out newspaper stories and commentary, he said -- never. During his whole journalistic output, Mr. Mencken said, he felt like a little boy with two stomachs in a candy store. Many of his writings were devoted to Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, which he hugely enjoyed as a buffoonish spectacle. Of Mencken and conventions, Murray Rothbard wrote:

Over at National Review , conservatives are stumping for Hillary Clinton as the Democrat nominee for president, but the leftists aren’t so sure: “Liberal op-ed writers and disenchanted former Clintonites aren’t huge voting blocs. But they are a symptom of what will be an enduring problem for Hillary. If she wins, she will have to regain support from the party elites. She will have to court affluent liberals, the nostalgic Ted Kennedy crowd, and African-Americans. She already had a problem with the left-wing ‘netroots,’ many of whom have long considered her a sellout over the Iraq War. She went to the Yearly Kos convention — where she was booed — and will be obliged to do much more to repair those relationships. MoveOn.org, the liberal outfit originally organized to defend the Clintons from their series of scandals, has endorsed Barack Obama. The closely contested primary means that Hillary will be wooing the most liberal constituencies among her party’s die-hards just when she would li...