No Thatcher In Sight Among State Republicans

The trouble with Connecticut Republicans has always been the same: There is no Maggie Thatcher among them.

The pre-Thatcherite Tory Party in Britain resembles to a “T”the “go long to get along” Republican Party in Connecticut.

The late Mrs. Thatcher wrote in her memories, “Almost every postwar Tory victory had been won on slogans such as ‘Britain Strong and Free’or “Set the People Free.” But in the fine print of policy, especially in government, the Tory Party merely pitched camp in the long march to the left. It never seriously tried to reverse it… The welfare state? We boasted of spending more money than Labor, not of restoring people to independence and self-reliance.”

So too in Connecticut the Republican Party, more often than not, has been content to serve as the handmaiden to Democratic Party orthodoxy.

Mrs. Thatcher, who could run rings around the opposition in debate, relished all the epithets thrown at her by Labor. But she was especially fond of the term “reactionary.”

Said the lady, who was “not for turning” in a 1979 speech,“Well, there’s a lot to react against.”

Britain’s social-democratic consensus threw in the towel after her third electoral victory. She defeated that consensus on many key issues of the day: labor union reform, the privatization of 26 major state owned industries, to mention only two of her important victories. Under the moral weight of her administration – with a little help from a reinvigorated United States, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the foremost writer of his day, and a Polish Pope – the Soviet Union collapsed in ashes.

Mrs. Thatcher is not hated by the left in Europe today because she failed; the failed politician rarely inspires such vigorous contumely as was hurled at Mrs. Thatcher’s corpse. No, only success brings out the worst in what John O’Sullivan, a former editor of National Review, recently called “the Caliban left.”

Ten years after losing office, Mrs. Thatcher found herself surrounded by a bunch of mini-Calibans shouting “Thatcher, Thatcher, Thatcher, fascist, fascist, fascist, out, out, out,” at which she turned to her former speech writer, Robin Harris, and exulted, “Oh Robin, doesn’t it make you feel nostalgic.”

It is unlikely that any Connecticut Republican should similarly feel the affectionate tug of nostalgia, because in Connecticut there have been no obvious victories over the liberal-progressive status quo. Even worse, there has been no sustained and principled opposition to a progressive putsch within the state Democratic Party that has displaced antique moderate Democrats with bullish leftists.

The weary and spent pre-Thatcherite Tory Party in Britain winked at the welfare state, possibly because it had not the moral imagination to overcome a set narrative that pictured governmental aid as the solution to every social problem in Great Britain. It fell to Mrs. Thatcher to point out that the solutions exacerbated the problems: One does not become self-reliant by relying wholly upon the kindness of strangers.

Before she could change her country, Mrs. Thatcher had to change and invigorate her party, and the pre-Thatcherite moderate Tory Party was very comfortable in its own skin. Its leaders simply could not understand why the Tory Party should change. Were the grey heads in the party not successful? Had they not been returned time and again to office? Cooperation with the reigning regime certainly had benefited them, had it not? Why could not others trod their effortless path to victory? The greatest bar to victory in politics is the success of compromised office holders who by venturing nothing gain nothing for others.

Any political party that considers only the short run will lose in the long run. Old victories do not presage new victories.

The moderate Republican Party in Connecticut has been losing ground to Democrats and Independents for more than 20 years. Surely these loses carry a message.

One can only imagine how Mrs. Thatcher would have characterized an opposition party that was responsible for the largest tax increase in state history, presided over the exodus of young entrepreneurial talent to other less rapacious states and couldn’t for the life of it balance a budget. Whatever would she have said about an opposition party that, seeking to make life easier for low paid workers, continually raised the minimum wage, thereby killing potential jobs for low paid workers, mostly forgotten young urban African Americans thirsting for self-reliance? She certainly would not have been content with an opposition party that practices crony capitalism on a grotesque scale. Nor would she have been content with a phony conservatism at ease with pragmatic measures that left in place a progressive opposition party and an emasculated Republican Party loyal only to the status quo?

A little spine and a few OPERATIVE principles – social principles as well, for the end of all politics is social betterment – might carry Republicans out of their doldrums towards a fruitful campaign, if only there were a Thatcher among them.

Blumenthal, Bysiewicz And The First Amendment

The person who has written most sensibly about Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and a recent Connecticut Supreme Court decision that did not allow Bysiewicz to run for attorney general in a Democratic primary, largely because Bysiewicz ran afoul of a statute requiring a candidate for the office to have completed a certain number of years in the active practice of law, is Chris Powell, the Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer.

Powell pointed out that the statute itself contravenes a constitutional provision that sets only an age requirement for the office. The constitutional provision cannot by definition be unconstitutional. Therefore, the contravening statute must be unconstitutional.

This political hand grenade was tossed to the Supreme Court by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and the court, Powell reasoned, had got it wrong.

By setting other requirements not demanded by the state constitutional, the court, practically speaking, may have invalidated the constitutional provision, which was intended to open a wide door of liberty to attorney general candidates. Bysiewicz remarked wryly after the court’s decision that, under the auspices of Connecticut’s Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan could not have been appointed to the highest court in the land. Kagan, who came out of academia, had no practical experience at the bar.

Left undebated as the Bysiewicz decision wended its way through the court was the question: Why is practical legal experience at the bar more important than administrative experience in the attorney general’s office?

It might have been interesting to ask Blumenthal after the court decision had come down whether he thought Connecticut’s Supreme Court had got this one right. But the moment passed, and the hand grenade blue up Bysiewicz’s restless ambition, for the moment.

Now, once again, Bysiewicz finds herself in the pickle jar – this time on a matter of First Amendment rights.

Linda McMahon, Blumenthal’s Republican opponent vying for U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s seat, is the former CEO of World Wide Wrestling (WWE). Under protest from Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy and others, a spokesman for Bysiewicz, Av Harris, has issued a press release on behalf of Bysiewicz denying that the secretary of state issued a formal ban on the wearing of WWE gear at polling places.

According to a Hartford Courant report, while Bysiewicz has not issued a “formal ban” on the gear, “the issue has been discussed informally with local registrars. Harris said it will be left to the discretion of local poll workers whether to ask voters to remove their wrestling gear when they are inside the polling place.”

Through informal discussions, the First Amendment grenade has been placed in the hands of poll workers, according to Bysiewicz’s spokesman:

"If the poll workers feel like the wearing of WWE paraphernalia is in any way interfering with the voting [process], they can ask the individual to cover it up or leave and come back with something else on. We're aware that this is may be an issue and were prepared to evaluate every case on an individual basis.”

At this point, one would like the attorney general – who has sent out to the media a number of press releases on First Amendment issues recently, two of which would restrain advertisers from running material on social service sites the attorney general considers repugnant – to man up and retrieve the grenade from the poor poll workers.

Do voters have a First Amendment right to wear wrestling gear to the polls?

Some First Amendment scholars, very possibly a U.S. Supreme Court justice who has no practical experience at the bar, may believe they might. Some in Connecticut’s media may believe they do. Cynics who may think the secretary of state is in this instance carrying water for the Democratic Party and in particular for Blumenthal, who stands to benefit from intimidated McMahon voters, would be instantly disabused of their corrosive cynicism should the ambitious, lean and hungry attorney general put a quick stop to the abuse of the First Amendment by issuing one of his frequent advisories instantly reproduced by all the First Amendment lovers in the media.

Someone surely will put the question to Blumenthal, hopefully before voters compelled to strip by poll watchers enter voting areas to exercise their franchise and their First Amendment rights in November.