Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“Thinking about today's show,” Colin McEnroe – blogger, author, Courant columnist and beau viviant – writes on his blog, “ I re-read Genghis Conn's excellent meditation on Weicker's 1970 three-way. (It is fun to wonder how many of the people posting comments, back then, about Lieberman crushing Lamont like a bug have revised their entomology. Hey, we ALL get stuff wrong.)” Gengis Conn is the proprietor of Connecticut Local Politics, a much read progressive blog. The blog is read mostly for its sometimes colorful and disputative commentary section. Among the comments on the particular site to which McEnroe refers is this one: Don Pesci (that would be me) said... GC I believe in God and Senator Dodd and keepin' old Castro down --Phil Ochs, Draft Dodger Rag In the context of the times, Ochs' song is instructive. It's generally forgotten -- and never mentioned in discussions of the Dodd pere/Duffy/Weicker race that Duffey was the anti-Vietnam war dove. Dodd, unlike...

Here is a little back-and-forth between two anonymous bloggers, ctkeith and Genghis Conn, on a popular Connecticut blog . ctkeith said... GC Wrote, “What's interesting about this is that in the past, Rell has been able to make compromises break her way. Stem cells, civil unions, public funding of campaigns and even the recent transportation bill have somehow ended up making the governor look good.” Can you tell me which one of those issues made REPUBLICANS happy? 11:56 PM, April 29, 2006 Genghis Conn said... To Republican partisans and social conservatives? None of them. In fact, most of the Republicans in the legislature didn't support those initiatives. Legislative Republicans are irrelevant, and Rell doesn't really care what social conservatives think. This leaves her trying to pass her own agenda all by herself. She may be most effective when she's proposing compromises to Democratic plans. That exchange pretty much says everything needful about Rell, compromi...