Connecticut Republicans have lots of opportunities: issues

By Chris Powell

Low participation in the recent primary for the Republican nomination for U.S. senator has renewed observations that there doesn’t seem to be much left of the party in Connecticut. Such observations are often accompanied by pro-forma expressions of support for competitive politics, if usually from people who would be appalled if the state ever put a Republican in a position of power. 

But then hypocrisy remains the tribute vice pays to virtue, and Connecticut could benefit from more competitive politics. Stupidity, waste, and surrender to special interests would be more difficult.

The Republican decline in Connecticut has accelerated the move of the state’s majority party, the Democrats, to the far left, which is not where most state residents want to go. Members of the Republican minority in the General Assembly are usually the only ones in politics to point out the nuttiness of state policy, and lately they have had two big successes.

This month Republican legislators ignited the public’s opposition to big increases in electricity rates that were caused in part by the stuffing of utility bills with the costs of Democratic social welfare policy. Last year Republican legislators mobilized public opinion to defeat a Democratic scheme to forbid sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. The scheme was especially nutty since there was no plan for the necessary and expensive increase in the capacity of the state’s electric grid to handle full conversion to electric cars, and since electric cars are not yet affordable and durable.

So the public can be mobilized — even by Republicans.

State government remains full of nutty policies that the public might oppose if politicians had the courage to dispute them. 

Connecticut political columnist Red Jahncke has shown how the recent and touted bolstering of state government’s state employee pension funds has been mostly nullified by the Lamont administration’s award of huge raises to state employees, which correspondingly increase pension entitlements. Republicans have let this deception pass unremarked, being afraid of alienating the state employee unions.

It’s the same with the collapse of public education under the weight of social promotion, and with state government’s long acceptance of the racial achievement gap in schools. Of course there can be no pressing these issues without risking the outrage of the teacher unions and the race mongers, but as two heroic politicians of a century ago, New York City’s Fiorello LaGuardia and Britain’s Winston Churchill, liked to say, and went on to prove: Kites rise against the wind.

Connecticut Republicans seem afraid to press even some obvious issues where the public would be overwhelmingly on their side, like the state’s allowing biological males to compete in female sports events and its requiring schools to stock feminine hygiene products in male restrooms. Pressing these issues also might get a politician called a name or two, but while transgenderism may seem like a small thing, it’s not. It’s about reality itself. 

If government policy can hold that there are no physical differences between the sexes, or not enough differences to justify separate sports, restrooms, and prisons for males and females, the rest of reality may be defenseless.  

Journalism could help challenge these policies but won’t now that most news organizations have rejected impartiality and fairness in news reporting and have joined the partisan left. 

Just as discouraging is the adage of election campaign strategy: If you’re explaining, you’re losing.

But how are voters to understand issues if no one in politics tries to explain them?

His aide and biographer, Ernest Cuneo, wrote: “LaGuardia’s main concern was policy. He took definite positions and was at great pains to state his reasons for them. These reasoned arguments he forcibly brought to the attention of his district’s voters, paying them the compliment of assuming they had brains in their heads and cared about the issues of the day. This paid dividends; his constituents appreciated him and were proud of him.”

Could it happen again? Connecticut Republicans have little to lose by trying.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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