Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

On Monday (February 6, 2017), the Harford Courant printed a long, 1335 word op-ed column written by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy that previously had appeared in the Huffington Post, “ Trump’s Reckless Path Towards War .” http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-murphy-trumps-reckless-iran-policy-0206-20170203-story.html This is the lede to the column: “Since the inauguration, the White House has taken several ham-handed escalatory steps that bring into question whether  Trump  and his most radical advisers are begging for war with Iran. This would be a disaster of epic scale, perhaps eclipsing the nightmare of the Iraq War.  Republicans  and  Democrats  need to start viewing President Donald Trump's actions and words as a possible accidental or intentional prelude to major conflict, and take steps to counter this dangerous slide to war.” Almost every sentence is parsable. Taken as a whole, the piece amounts to a pawn house of campaign talking ...

The loser in a  political dispute is always willing to negotiate with the winner, if a possible detente will restore some of the loss. To the chicken in the mouth of the fox, compromise is an enticing proposition. The fox, who has the chicken in his jaws, naturally will be negotiating from “a position of strength,” as the diplomatists say, and so would in any negotiation be loath to surrender an advantage that has been conceded to him in a power struggle. Mr. Murphy, in a discussion with theeditorial board of the New Haven Register , has identified himself as a progressive, ticking off some of the identifying marks of progressivism : “I don’t think being a strong Democrat is mutually exclusive with being someone who cares about bipartisanship and reaching across the aisle,” Murphy said. “I am a progressive when it comes to my views on the war and when it comes to my views on the environment and health care. I believe in universal health care. I believe in a strong envir...