Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

This may be the first time in Connecticut history that an irrelevant former Republican U.S. Senator of long standing has warned his former party that it faces irrelevancy. The new crop of Republicans in Connecticut – young, brash, conservative and determined to remember but overcome their past – may have trouble recalling who former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker was. The past tense is important because Mr. Weicker, who once dubbed himself “the turd in the Republican Party punchbowl,” scooted out the political door after he had, as an independent governor, imposed the second largest tax increases on young Republicans he now seductively courts in the op-ed pages of the Hartford Courant .

Anyone who has been following Connecticut Commentary – and the stats suggest many people are – knows I  have written extensively on cities, territorial pools more or less owned by Democrats over the years. Here are some few columns , all of which have been printed in a handful of Connecticut newspapers. In one of them, I fell to my knees and beseeched Republicans not to cede this fertile ground to Democrats. That cry has not resonated with many Republicans, but it should. And by Republicans I mean the whole enchilada:  Republican leaders safely ensconced in the General Assembly; Republican worker bees of every kind; African American and Hispanic Republicans who have found, much to their surprise, that one of the chief difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties is that The Republican Party is NOT a closed shop; and minorities and whites who have survived the left leaning biases of academe and are familiar with the history of both parties from the post-C...

The Harford Courant is reporting that Gov. Rell has reversed her stance on the budget from February: “… Rell would raise the state income tax to 6.5 percent on couples earning more than $1 million per year and individuals earning more than $500,000 per year. The current maximum rate is 5 percent.” The tax increase, retroactive to Jan. 1,2009, is expected to hall in more than $1 billion in the next two years. In addition, the sales tax would be cut a half a percent to 5.5 percent. Pointing to a survey, Rell expects the cut in the sales tax to produce 8,300 jobs. There is no indication at present that the Democrats, who have promised to produce their own budget, will agree to any of these terms. What the new plan really does is to cut no-tax-increase Republicans out of the negotiation loop.

It has now become possible to speak of former Rep. Chris Shays in the past tense. The last “moderate” Republican in New England, Shays is no longer in office for a number of reasons. There was, of course, the President-elect Obama phenom . One of the reasons Obama had coattails was that he had managed to sweep newly registered voters into his party; Jim Himes rode the wave into office. But tactically Shays was bound to lose this one. He’s danced cautiously on the Republican-Democrat balance beam in Connecticut for 21 years in office, not a bad run. But the danger for Republocrats in New England always has been that, asked to vote for a real Democrat or a pretend Democrat, voters would see through the mask and choose authenticity. If someone offers a hungry man the choice between a real apple and a wax apple, the hungry man will choose the real apple every time. Wax apples are useful as decorative elements on a mantelpiece, or curiosities in a museum. It should come as no surprise...

Republicans who lean to the right in Connecticut are used to running the knout. This is because the mainstream media in the state is 99 and 9/10 percent pure liberal or, as timid liberals now prefer to call themselves, progressive. But there are two kinds of Republicans in Connecticut. Among a certain kind of Republican, prolonged exposure to the knout produces an amused weariness best glimpsed in the famous Reagan remark, “There you go again.” Reagan ran the knout, put salve on his wounds and lived to fight another day. Battling made him more resolute because he was not entirely absorbed by political considerations alone. He had a life. He was amused by the opposition. He had a flag to defend, and he defended it stoutly. He could boast, along with other principled warriors, that there were no scars on his back, while his front was loaded with them. For a host of reasons, there are very few Republicans of this kind in Connecticut. Politicians running for office really do, when al...

In choosing to embrace proportional rather than winner take all primaries, the Democrat Party, true to its nature, was being democratic. But, in fact, proportional primaries, in which delegates are assigned in proportion to the votes cast, this year have elongated the primary season. For Republicans, the primary season was closed at the beginning of March. Democrats have miles to go before they sleep. The long Democrat primary season virtually assures a brokered convention, bruised egos and a disappointed Democrat electorate. This is simply another way of saying that Democrats have shortened the time they may devote to the general election. Whether or not a shortened general election will prove to be a bust or boom for Democrats is very much an open question. There are two schools of thought: One holds that the incessant squabbling between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the duration of the Democrat primary will keep the two in the news, while Republican Sen. John McCa...

It’s always a hazard to make predictions, because future events depend upon current events that change rapidly. The best sort of prediction is a vow: “I pledge in the New Year to be kinder to my friends and more hostile to my enemies.” This sort of prediction depends solely on will power and determination, which always lie in the hand of the vow taker. Predictions about historic events are always iffy. History, as a rule, snatches the better angels of our nature from us and consigns them to Hell. The careful reader will note that I have capitalized “Hell.” This, with apologies to honorable atheists among us, is because it is a place name for a real place, as yet undiscoverable by the spiritually vacuous tools of modern science. The following are safe predictions because, with the exception of #7, they are limited to what will not happen in the coming year. 1) Bloggers -- who are nasty, brutish and short (with just about everybody) – will continue on their private path to Hell (note the...

Richard Armey, co-chairman of FreedomWorks in Washington (DC) and a former Republican U.S. House Majority Leader, has stuck his toe into Connecticut politics. So far, his reception has been chilly. Armey issued a mass e-mailing and press release critical of Gov. Jodi Rell, the titular head of the state’s Republican Party, that took aim at her promised income tax hike. "With a current budget surplus,” Armey wrote, “the idea of a new multi-billion-dollar tax hike is even more outrageous. If enacted, this tax hike will drive businesses and residents out of the state to seek more tax-friendly havens. As a result, Connecticut's economy will be left in ruins, and Gov. Rell's bloated education budget will do little for the residents of Connecticut." These are strange times in Connecticut politics. During her rather uneventful gubernatorial campaign, Rell emerge from the ordeal as a tax and spend Republican; who’da thunk it? Recent polls indicate that most voters and taxpayer...

Is the Republican Party in Connecticut worth saving? The short answer is “No.” The long answer is, I’m afraid, longer. The Republican rot begins, as may be expected, with former senator and governor Lowell Weicker. When Weicker was senator for several terms and full of the puss of hubris, he sighed in the presence of a Hartford Courant reporter, “The Republican Party in this state is so small; someone should take it over.” So Weicker did, and the Courant , of course, obliged him. Weicker considered himself a Republican in the mode of Jacob Javits of New York – a moderate, anti-conservative with a lively social conscience. Weicker appointed his handmaiden, Tom D’Amore, as chairman of the party, and together they proceeded to reform and destroy it. What we see now in the age of Jodi Rell -- more popular, apparently, than salt -- is an empty husk of a party, paralyzed and useless. I am not speaking hyperbolically: Except as a reflex action to the preposterous and ruinous agenda of the De...

The short answer to your question, Virginia, is: Yes, there is a Democratic Party here in Connecticut. There are at least two, possibly as many as three or four in-state Democratic Parties. The Republican Party, as you may know, is little more than a Potemkin village governed by village idiots. As both political parties shed their substance and become more moderate, they assume a ghostly shape and become mere shadows of what they once were. It was not always so. Every so often, one finds a person who possesses what used to be called an institutional memory. Nowadays we call such people “party activists,” and they are especially energetic during primaries. But wait … I see I shall have to explain what a primary is. I think you have a rudimentary notion of what a political party is: It’s a political organization centered in a body of ideas designed to elect people to office. Primaries were supposed to wrest from party bosses decision making powers concerning what people shall occupy po...

Said the wizened Republican Party activist, “Rell won’t have a problem raising money (for the upcoming gubernatorial campaign), but any other Republican unfortunate enough to embrace her ideas is going to find himself down and out.” Governor Rell, dubbed “Snow White” by former Democrat Party Chairman John Droney, can well afford to forego tainted campaign contributions from the usual suspects, lobbyists and state contractors on the make, but her fellow Republicans may find themselves unable to mount successful campaigns by relying solely upon the kindness of strangers. It is no secret that Democrats who control the legislature are not anxious to adopt before statewide elections begin many of the reforms proposed by Rell. In the absence of statutory restrictions, they can plausibly argue that the acceptance of funds frowned upon by Rell is perfectly legal, though it may be morally questionable. But Republicans who support Rell’s vow to forgo such funding in the current election season w...

Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell, said to be a moderate Republican, attempted at the end of June to bring together under the state GOP's big tent abortion advocate Jennifer Blei Stockman, the recipient of this year’s prestigious Prescott Bush Award, and possible Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts. A Greenwich resident, Stockman is the wife of Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, David Stockman, and co-chairwoman of The Republican Majority for Choice. Romney was featured as a presidential possibility in the June 20, 2005 issue of National Review under the title “Matinee Mitt.” Attendance at the dinner was considerably lower this year than in previous years. The event usually draws about a thousand Republican stalwarts. This year, only 550 Republicans showed up. Surveying the crowd, Rell said,“I think we have excellent attendance. She noted that some people had come expressly to see Stockman. At least one Greenwich Republican begged to differ. Sam R...