A Common Sense Guide For The Politically Perplexed, Part 3

Lamont to the right of DeLauro — CTPost

Connecticut’s Democrat Party Hegemony

On the Sunday following the conclusion of the off year elections in Connecticut, Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant raised the following question: How did Dems do so well in state?

The short answer to the question is: The Democrat Party hegemony won because hegemonies most often win. The more interesting and illuminating questions are: How did Connecticut become a one party state? When did the erosion of competitive politics begin? And is there a turning point at which formerly Republican strongholds in the state – Greenwich and West Hartford come to mind – will revitalize Republican Party ranks?

The extent of the Democrat Party hegemony was most accurately depicted by Dr. Eric Ostermeier in a short piece, Connecticut Democrats Set New US House Electoral Record, that appeared in in Smart Politics five days after polls closed in Connecticut. 

“Since 2008,” Ostermeier wrote, “Democrats [in Connecticut] have now won 40 consecutive U.S. House elections, not only adding to their party record but also setting a new record in the Nutmeg State for the longest partisan winning streak for the office since the founding of the modern two-party system in 1828.”

Journal Inquirer columnist Chris Powell struck a sour note following Connecticut elections in his column, Can competition in politics ever return to Connecticut?

However sour, the note rings true alarm bells: “Governor Lamont and the renewed Democratic majority in the General Assembly have won a great mandate that will feed desires for more government programs that only employ more Democrats, erode the private sector, and make more people dependent on government.”

Whether it will be possible for Lamont to strap himself to a “moderate” main mast and, like Odysseus, stuff his ears with wax to silence the bewitching song of progressive sirens in his state remains a doubtful but still open question.

Not even former Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, was able to curb the progressive Democrat appetite for improvident spending. At the present time, Connecticut’s often scratched spending itch has increased its state budget from $7.5 billion when Weicker first assumed office in 1991 to $24.2 billion today – not that anyone is counting. And the state’s indebtedness is among the largest and most debilitating in the country at $79.5 billion. Even Weicker knew that improvident spending fuels inflationary fires – not that millionaires in the state clustered in Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” need worry overmuch about state taxes and spending.

Rather than cry over spilled milk, let us attempt here to address one of above important questions.

How did Connecticut become a one party state?

The slow and agonizing destruction of Connecticut’s Republican Party through gradual attrition began long before 2008. At the risk of disappointing half-baked “moderate” Republicans – i.e. GOP’ers who have long claimed to be “fiscal conservatives” but “liberals” on social matters – this writer has more than once pointed out that such an artificial division between economics and culture is a fraudulent dichotomy, useful chiefly for campaign purposes. Politics is downstream from culture, and the way to change politics, postmodern Marxists such as Antonio Gramsci (read the link, will’ya?) have rightly pointed out, is first to -- change the culture.

Connecticut is now “the abortion state,” “the casino state,” “the pot state,” “the deficit state,” the “repeal the second amendment” state, the “who needs energy?” state, the “rule by executive fiat” state, the “I’m aboard, tow up the lifeline” state, the “crumbling large cities” state, full of empathetic, wall-eyed Democrat politicians who genuinely feel that the best way to help the struggling poor in Connecticut’s state-dependent cities is, first and foremost, to help themselves to large gobs of middle class taxes so that, when the recession promised by progressive Democrats finally washes up on Connecticut shores, state government, its lips firmly fixed on a withered middle class tax teat, will survive the battering in good order.

Weicker, the progenitor of Connecticut’s continually expanding state taxes, who once referred to himself as “the turd in the Republican Party punch bowl,” noted little of this in his ghost written biography, “Maverick,” an oversight perhaps.

An answer to yet another pressing question – To what extent is Connecticut’s non-contrarian media responsible for the state’s dominant, progressive, status quo hegemony? – must await further status quo non-developments.

Democracy in Connecticut

In the meanwhile, we may all rejoice that Democrat democracy, somewhat different from Republican democracy, has in our state survived the presumed depredations of former President Donald Trump, largely because Connecticut Democrats have artfully used Trump as a foil in their campaigns, even though the former president has been politically unplugged and out of office for the past two years. And the insistence of Connecticut Democrats that a Republican governor may overthrow a statute that affirms Roe v Wade is preposterous, given that The Supreme Court’s most recent decision affirmed and strengthened the right of states to regulate abortions.  

In a one party state, right reason, when it does not conform to a party line, is easily – even gratefully – overthrown by an agitprop state apparat and an army of enablers.