Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Republicans, we all know, do not know how to campaign -- which is why they lose elections. In the modern period, political jousting is either murderous or feckless. Twitterdom is full of deadly thrusts unleavened by humor, the opposite of wit. Let’s suppose Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bob “the re-builder” Stefanowski were Abe Lincoln, sans beard but with a similar sense of humor. Someone at a political rally once accused Lincoln of being two-faced – he was  being rather subtle on the issue of slavery– at which point Lincoln stopped his speech and shouted back, “If I had two faces, do you think I’d be wearing this one?” The audience shivered with appreciative laughter, and laughter in politics is better than votes because it engages the stomach muscles and the thorax. Voting is a public duty most people choose to ignore, particularly in our day of snake oil salesmen. But laughter cleanses the soul and shocks the memory. Remembering a good joke is so much more pleasant...

Some notable politician who is not Catholic really ought to come to the defense of Catholics – because they are now under assault from anti-Catholic Catholic politicians. Just as there is no anti-communist so fierce as an ex-communist, so there is no anti-Catholic quite so energetically opposed to Catholic orthodoxy as a Catholic politician on the make and in need of votes from others who may share his distaste for all things Catholic. The uninterrupted assault on Catholics, the Reverend Robert Barron points out in National Review , is bone wearingly old. Arthur Schlesinger, the reliably liberal historian and social critic, used to say that a poisonous anti-Catholicism was the oldest prejudice in the United States, an early bloom that washed upon our shore with the arrival of the Mayflower. In the Boston of Sam Adams’ day, anti-Papists used to place an effigy of the pope in a chair that was paraded through the streets – Boston’s version of the English Guy Fawkes celebrati...