Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Here is President Barack Obama holding forth in an ad released in September: “Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.” That is the core message of the Obama-Biden campaign. Mr. Obama has repeated the claim often, and Vice President Joe Biden took it for a ride around the block in his recent debate with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Unfortunately, the theory recently collided with fact checker for the Washington Post Glenn Kessler, not a conservative or a member in good standing of the much abused and misunderstood Tea Party movement, who awarded the claim three out of four “Pinocchios,” which places the statement alongside such whoppers as “the earth is flat” and “Vice President Joe Biden is a gentleman.”

The Democrats, with President Barrack Obama leading this time from the front, are anxious to portray Republicans as being the party of the past. It was Orestes Brownson who said, way back before the outbreak of the Civil War, “that mankind are always divided into two parties, one of which may be called the stationary party, the other the movement party, or the party of progress .” Americans, a highly experimental people, are temperamentally disposed to align themselves with the party of progress. It was something of a coup for presidential candidate Obama to structure his first bid for the presidency around the pillars of hope and change, too often mistaken for progress.

It’s a little bit like watching a fly fallen into mug of beer wildly flapping its wings. Once the rhetorical mood hits Governor Dannel Malloy, he DOES go on . One has only to compare the talking points in the 20 minute speech given by Mr. Malloy with those given by 1 st District U.S. Representative John Larson to understand that the script from which both borrowed was co-produced at Central Casting. In his pre-speech remarks, Mr. Malloy vowed that he would not spend his time during his strut on the national stage talking about himself , unlike his Republican Party nemesis, Governor Chris Christie of New York. Reporters and commentators who have covered the much traveled, fleet-footed Mr. Malloy since he was first sworn in as governor well understand how the presence of a camera awakens the showman in him. Unlike preceding Republican Governor Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy does not shrink from partisan displays, and be bathes in media adulation more often than other Connecticut politicia...

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy was in a frightful and frightening mood when he visited the Hampton Democratic Committee's picnic, an affair held at the home of Toni and Jim Trotzer in Hampton, New Hampshire. Speaking on behalf of President Barack Obama and reading pretty much from his campaign playbook, Mr. Malloy held up to the people of Hampton several hobgoblins. Should Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan be elected to the White House, Mr. Malloy told the assembled Democrats, the two would “take apart America as we know it,” according to the New Hampshire publication seacoastonline . And later, after he had arrived home, the mood still being upon him, Mr. Malloy said Romney-Ryan wanted to “force senior citizens into poverty.”

Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, the near certain choice of the upcoming Republican Party convention for president, has chosen Paul Ryan – the architect of the new Republican Party – as his vice presidential choice. Here is Ryan unpacking the failings of Obamacare to Obama:

The New Haven Register reports that 3 rd District U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, up for re-election this year, has begun her campaign against hunger in Connecticut: “Rosa DeLauro took aim Monday at the recently passed $3.6 trillion House Republican budget that would impose sweeping cuts in domestic programs, including food stamps, but block new taxes on millionaires. “’The budget that was passed last week... would decimate food stamps and the rest of our federal anti-hunger programs,’ DeLauro said at a press conference in the CFB warehouse, ‘while preserving oil company subsidies and tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans...’” Mrs. DeLauro is a millionaire and one of the richest legislators in the Congress, where she has plied her trade since 1991. Mrs. DeLauro, who purports to be a Roman Catholic, is perhaps best known for her fulsome support of abortion and her resistance to any measure designed to regulate it . The New Haven Register report is accompanied b...

Paul Ryan very well may be the economic Paul Revere of the 21st Century

In a commentary over at Connecticut Local Politics , a popular liberal blog site, Ghengis Conn remarks, “Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-3rd District) is trying to find middle ground on what has been the stickiest and most controversial issue in American politics for a generation: abortion. Her approach, which she is undertaking with pro-life Democrat Tim Ryan of Ohio, is to reduce the need for abortions.” “Got a problem with that?” DeLauroites are now asking. DeLauro is a liberal Catholic who, like virtually every other Catholic US congressperson in Connecticut, disagrees with her church and her Pope on the matter of abortion. So, there’s a tiny red flag flapping wildly in the stormy debate. Then too, in discussing “needs,” we should bear in mind George Will’s priceless definition of a need: To the modern sensibility, a need is “a want that is more than 24 hours old.” Some non-ideologues in the great pro-life, pro-choice debate have supposed that if a woman’s life were in danger during her preg...