A Common Sense Guide For The Politically Perplexed, Part 2

Nothing is written in stone yet, the Associated Press cautioned the morning after Vote Day, but:

“For weeks, Republicans predicted a ‘red wave’ would carry them to power in Congress, as voters repudiated majority Democrats for failing to tame skyrocketing inflation and address worries about rising crime.

“The reality appeared far different early Wednesday.

“Rather than a wholesale rejection of President Joe Biden and his party, the results were far more mixed as returns from Tuesday’s midterms trickled in.”

This is good news for Democrats, although Republicans appear to have captured the US House of Representatives, a troublesome acquisition at a time when partisan U.S. Congressional activity has been used to bruise Republicans before elections.

 In Connecticut, the results were not quite as “mixed.” Democrats secured their majority position in the General Assembly, retained all their seats in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation, and there were no changes in the Democrat dominated Constitutional Offices.

CTMirror reported: “The race was called in favor of Lamont by both ABC News and Fox News, leading the governor to take to the stage in Hartford shortly after 11:30 p.m. to declare victory. The Associated Press called it for Lamont just before 1 a.m.”

Governor Ned Lamont, full of his usual eupeptic uplift, was quoted: “Now we all come together. We work together as one, because that’s what Connecticut always does. That’s the Connecticut difference right?”

Wrong.

The Democrat hegemony in Connecticut, ever since the elevation to the governor’s office of Dannel – please don’t call him “Dan” – Malloy, has consistently rebuffed Republicans in the General Assembly.

For one brief shining moment a few years back, parity in one chamber of the General Assembly forced the Democrat leadership in both chambers to “work together as one” with Republicans, and a budget cap that required the hegemony to dump a portion of future budget surpluses into a Rainy Day Fund produced a large budget surplus.

Democrats have now reasserted a nearly veto-proof majority in both chambers.  The enforcers of the Democrat hegemony are President Pro Tem of the Senate Martin Looney and Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, both progressives, neither of whom are inclined to share power or influence with moderate Republicans because – they don’t have to. Looney and Ritter need not march to the tune of Republican drummers.

The election returns, in the absence of a contrarian media, point to a continuance of the Democrat Party hegemony. The hegemony must simply pretend to include Republicans in their deliberations, but on all important points Connecticut’s progressive Anschluss will continue unobstructed. The election returns mean – if election returns mean anything at all – that progressive legislators in Connecticut have a mandate to march forward.

And they will, even if they must step over the prostrate bodies of Lamont and a handful of Democrats who privately, one supposes from Lamont’s post-election remark, long for the days of a vibrant two party system pulling at the oars and pushing Connecticut forward toward personal liberty and prosperity.

The election was a solid win for Lamont, who defeated his Republican rival, Bob Stefanowski, by double digit numbers. As expected, Democrats routed Republicans in the state’s large cities and in the wealthy inflation proof and guilt ridden suburbs of Fairfield County; nothing new there.

A preponderance of the media in Connecticut believes Lamont is a Democrat centrist at a time when the moderate center of the state “cannot hold,” to quote William Butler Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

In a post-election remark, Lamont struck a note of gentle resistance to the leftward drift of his own party: “I said probably 200 times, ‘I don’t want more taxes, but I don’t mind more taxpayers.’ And I hope everybody got my message on that. And when I say more taxpayers, that means growth and opportunity. Everything I do is gonna be looking through that lens of growth and opportunity.”

But the Democrat Party in Connecticut, driven by a progressive afflatus, believes mostly in the growth of state government and has in the past looked askance at all attempts to control spending. Connecticut’s budget has tripled since the non-income tax days of Democrat Governors Ella Grasso and Bill O’Neil. Former Governor Lowell Weicker’s income tax produced swollen budgets and progressively diminishing surpluses, which soon went up in smoke.

Some years after he had retired from politics, Weicker was heard to moan, “Where did it all go?”

In the very near future, Lamont had better do more than caution gently, “I don’t want more taxes, but I don’t mind more taxpayers.”

He’d better sharpen his veto pen.