By Chris Powell
Each major political party has its fruitcakes at the national level, though the Republican ones, like U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, get far more attention than the Democratic ones since news organizations overwhelmingly favor the Democrats.
Last week two Democratic equivalents of Greene and Cawthorn, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, were arrested for blocking traffic during an abortion-rights protest near the Supreme Court in Washington. As they were led away by police to be booked, they put their hands behind their backs, pretending, for photographers, to be handcuffed. No one had been handcuffed but the dishonesty of the stunt was not widely reported.
Of course the problem of Donald Trump lurks around Republicans and may not end until the next presidential election. But what of the intervening two years and the congressional and state elections in November? Should the Republican fruitcakes, Trump, and recent controversial Supreme Court decisions disqualify all Republican candidates, now and even forevermore?
That is the suggestion from some quarters, as with the letter published the other day in the New Haven Register from former New Haven Republican Chairman Victor Fasano, who declared that he had quit the party in disgust and become a Democrat.
Disdain for the national Republican Party’s increasingly conservative inclination was blamed for the defeat of Connecticut’s last Republican member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, in 2008. Shays was a moderate, even rather liberal, and after 20 years in the House was well regarded in his district, southern Fairfield County, even when he lost. The decisive rap against him was that he was a vote for control of the House by his awful national party.
Such concerns are always fair and likely to be raised in the current campaign in Connecticut, where two Republican candidates for Congress are thought to have an outside chance. One is the candidate for U.S. senator endorsed by the Republican state convention, former state Rep. Themis Klarides. If she defeats Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, then — horrors! — Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell might return as Senate majority leader.
No matter that Klarides has voted for abortion rights and gun control. It will be said, as already is being said about Republicans elsewhere, that if Klarides helps the Republicans take Congress, they will outlaw abortion, same-sex marriage, and even contraception.
Such complaints are calculated hysteria. Anti-abortion Republicans in Congress long have been appropriating for contraception. As for abortion and same-sex marriage, legislation to forbid them nationally almost surely would fail in the Senate as long as the Senate maintained the filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to advance legislation. (Democrats pressing to repeal the rule before the election might miss it afterward.) Even without the filibuster rule such legislation probably would not command even a simple majority. And if it somehow did pass, President Biden or his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, would veto it and it would fail to get the necessary two-thirds override vote.
But consider the greater craziness likely to be triggered if Blumenthal is re-elected and Democrats increase their narrow majorities in Congress.
A more Democratic Senate probably will scrap the filibuster rule and a more Democratic Congress will pass legislation nationalizing a right to late-term abortion, which the president will sign. The Democrats already have passed such legislation in the House and have put it to a vote in the Senate. It is extreme and Blumenthal is its most enthusiastic supporter.
A more Democratic Congress probably will outlaw all guns except shotguns. Such legislation is already pending in a House committee.
A more Democratic Congress probably will make permanent the open borders being maintained by the Biden administration. The next step will be voting rights for non-citizens.
A more Democratic Congress probably will require transgender participation in women’s sports. A more Democratic Senate probably will put on the Supreme Court more justices who pretend not to know what a woman is only to discover, once seated, that men can be women too.
To prevent the looming craziness, Congress needs more moderates, whatever their party.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Chris Powell column 