Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

According to Gerald and Natalie Sirkin, two Connecticut commentators who have appeared on this site before, Europe is becoming less significant and, so to speak, less European. THE DEATH OF NATIONS by Gerald and Natalie Sirkin "That's how great nations die -- not by war or conquest, bit bit by bit, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal over the last ten years -- Mark Steyn Nations are dying around us. Literally. One illness they have is bad demographics. To hold a population steady, a country needs a fertility rate (meaning average number of children born per woman) of 2.1, assuming no immigration. The United States has a fertility rate of roughly 2.1 . Compare that to France 1.89, the Netherlands 1.72, Canada , 1.48, Germany 1.35, Japan 1.32, Italy 1.23, Russia 1.14, Spain 1.1 . With those fertility rates, populations are aging and shrinking. Russia, from a population of 148 million in t...

In a Journal Inquirer editorial, Keith Burris, the paper’s editorial page editor, labored to explain why a crowd composed of veterans attending Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s appearance in East Hartford was so pitifully thin. “Is the Lamont campaign staff trying to fill halls?” Burris wrote. Burris speculated that the Democrat Party in East Hartford may have been negligent. Couldn’t they have swelled the crowd by compelling students to attend as a part of their civic classes – not a bad idea, actually. Kerry was praised in the editorial for his efforts to end the war in Vietnam – not a bad idea either – nor did he shrink from mentioning the Vietnam war: “He said, in fact, that this war (in Iraq) is even worse, because Vietnam should have taught us to avoid a war like this one. He implied that this war was built upon even more lies than Vietnam. And he said the biggest lesson of Vietnam is that the government owes the public, and the men it asks to fight, the truth.” Indeed, the truth...

This is what comes of moderate thinking: It has become impossible to decipher the principles that animate Hartford Courant endorsements . Colin McEnroe , leaker to the Blogs and also a writer for the Courant, noted on his own blog, with some dismay, that the Courant the next day intended to endorse Sen. Joe Lieberman. McEnroe also noted that the paper, surprisingly, intended to endorse New Haven Mayor John DeStefano for governor. The dawning sun on Sunday showed that McEnroe was right on both counts. Cynics are certain to observe that the Courant’s DeStefano editorial plug is a throw-away endorsement, since DeStefano trails Governor Jodi Rell in the polls by what seems to be an unsurpassable lead, while the Lieberman endorsement is more significant. Lieberman and Ned Lamont have been nick and tuck since the opening gun in their jihad was fired by ex-governor and senator Lowell Weicker. The question inevitably arises: What principle or principles dictate the Courant’s selections, or are...

When the British writer G. K. Chesterton on his American tour found himself besieged by a gang of reporters in a hotel in New England, he immediately proclaimed himself an amiable anarchist of the Henry David Thoueau variety – “That government governs best that governs not at all.” And then he was asked what form of government he thought the best. “A republic,” he boomed. “This hotel would make a fine republic.” Sometimes it takes a foreign eye to confirm for us what is best in us. The BBC crew, now in Connecticut reporting on the state election that pits Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in a hard fought U.S. Senate race, has performed a like service for us. Bearing in mind Oscar Wilde’s quip that the United States and Britain are two nations separated by a common language, the questions and the commentary on the BBC site, "Up All Night," are excellent. It’s easier to adjust to the subtleties on the spot, which is why Rhod Sharp, part of the BBC crew, leapt the pond to be he...

The paradigm for war protesters who believe that Bush’s war in Iraq has become a “quagmire” and a “civil war” is, of course, Vietnam. Somewhat down in the polls, anti-war candidate for the U.S. Senate Ned Lamont has decided to play his “Vietnam card.” And if Iraq is Viet Nam, there must be in the script that runs like a golden tread through the Lamont campaign a dark-jowled Tricky Dick Nixon stomping the stage with his hobnailed boots. After all, Lamont’s senatorial ideal is ex-governor and former U.S. senator Lowell Weicker, who earned his senatorial spurs by declaiming against anti-Vietnam war candidate Joe Duffey, the Democrat nominee for senator in 1970. Democrat Sen. Tom Dodd, Sen. Chris Dodd’s father, was the petitioning candidate in that race. Weicker, a wealthy Republican candidate from Greenwich, later changed his mind about Vietnam. Weicker and his former chief aide, Tom D’Amore, are advising the Lamont campaign. The guy in the hobnailed boots, the Nixon stand-in, is present ...

The most conspicuous follower of President George Bush’s war policy in Iraq is, as any MyLeftNutmegger will be happy to tell you, Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman; yet Lieberman is gaining support, according to recent polls. U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, also a proponent of the war, has lost points and now is even with his challenger, Dianne Farrell. Responding to the Hartford Courant-UConn poll, Farrell’s campaign manager Adam Wood said, “The momentum for change is growing, particularly in the 4th Congressional District, and the poll reflects that. ... People are aware of Chris Shays' support for the president's policy on Iraq and are becoming more frustrated day by day." If support for the war in Iraq has depressed Shays’ numbers, why have Lieberman’s numbers gone up? My best guess is that one Democrat is more attractive than the other.

The Hartford Courant’s across the board endorsements of Democrat liberals this year begs the question: Are newspaper endorsements effective? First of all, it should be noted that in choosing to endorse all Democrats and no Republicans for U.S. congressional positions, the paper invites speculation that it is throwing babies out with the wash water. The Republicans against whom Courant editorial board members voted this year are all moderates, not the fire breathing conservatives that swarm past the Mason Dixon line. The Courant -- which tends to react to conservatives pretty much in the way the devil reacts to holy water – has somewhat plausibly supported moderate Republicans in the past, arguing that the vital center in American politics, the intersection where liberalism and conservativism meet and conspire to compromise, is worth preserving. By any rational accounting, Rep. Chris Shays, is a moderate Republican: He is the author and enabler in the House of the Shays-Meehan campaign ...