Malloy On The Stump, An Orwellian Perspective

A few weeks after announcing he would not officially begin his campaign until the General Assembly had shut down its short three month session in May, Governor Dannel Malloy officially opened his gubernatorial campaign in Stamford, his old political stomping grounds. Mr. Malloy had been mayor of Stamford for four four-year terms before becoming governor.

In Stamford, Mr. Malloy explained his “early” announcement to reporters who long ago had exploded the absurdity that he was not running for governor. He had in fact been campaigning behind the veil for some time; like his counterpart in the beltway, President Barack Obama, Mr. Malloy is a perpetual campaigner. And like most politicians, he is given to telling what Mark Twain used to call “stretchers.”

The Stamford Advocate reported on the switcheroo:

“Malloy said that, in part, his rationale for waiting to make his re-election effort official was to avoid distractions during his recent successful effort to get the General Assembly to enact legislation to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

"’I didn't want to politicize that issue unduly,’ Malloy said. ‘I talked to Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman several times about when is the right time to start the campaign, and this seemed like the right time.’"

The General Assembly, some reporters know, is Mr. Malloy’s Pomeranian, the Connecticut legislature having been dominated by Democrats ages ago, long before some of the state’s younger reporters were wetting their diapers. Perhaps one of them is keeping a record of Mr. Malloy’s politically opportune fantasies. If so, he or she will understand the full import of George Orwell’s remark that “To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”

In an essay that ought to be required reading in all journalism schools titled “Under Your Nose,” Mr. Orwell wrote:

“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: The only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

Mr. Malloy’s official Stamford announcement gave Mr. Malloy the opportunity to stop road testing his campaign and launch his vehicle.

Mr. Malloy’s 2014 campaign appears to be a replication of President Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign. Connecticut has been battered by a rough economic climate, Mr. Malloy told the Democratic in Stamford. He was careful not to draw the connection between Connecticut’s sluggish economy and Obamanomics. Hey, sluggish economies happen. The national recession ended in 2009. However, about three in five jobs added since the recession’s end pay less than $13.83 per hour. Lower-wage occupations were 21 percent of recession losses and 58 percent of recovery growth, while mid-wage occupations were 60 percent of recession losses and only 22 percent of recovery growth. Connecticut still lags behind the nation in job growth. As of August 2013, the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) reported, “Connecticut had regained 62,200 jobs, or 51.3% of those lost. By comparison, the U.S. economy had recovered 78.2% of the 8.6 million recession jobs that it lost.”

During his first term as president, Mr. Obama commanded the heights: The presidency and both houses of Congress had fallen to Democrats. Instead of focusing the energies of his office on repairing the collapsed housing market – which would have been a painful ordeal for the progressive president – Mr. Obama reached for the stars and pulled Obamacare out of his hat. He also engaged in corporate cronyism on a massive scale and managed to pull off a win against moderate Republican Mitt Romney by capturing the “social issues” battleground from which Republicans had retreated with their tails between their legs.

Mr. Malloy’s campaign strategy may be deduced from the remarks he made in Stamford. The Malloy program no doubt has been laboratory tested by one of the many strategy groups in the business of winning campaigns. Global Strategy, whose Vice President Roy Occhiogrosso continued to speak in news reports in favor of Mr. Malloy long after he had disassociated himself from the Malloy administration, likely will play some behind the curtain role in Mr. Malloy’s re-election effort. But as governor of a northeast progressive state, Mr. Malloy will be able to draw upon a vast reservoir of political magicians, some tied by progressive political umbilical cords to the Obama administration, many of which are not formally associated with political parties.

In Stamford, Mr. Malloy said that Connecticut’s economy was on the mend, largely owing to his programs. Connecticut’s pre-Malloy “$3.6 billion deficit, the greatest deficit in the nation on a per-capita basis," has been liquidated. In fact, the deficit has been resilient to Mr. Malloy’s ministrations.

Connecticut’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA) and the Governor's budget office, the Office of Policy and Management (OPM), have both projected a deficit of about $1 billion in the next 2016 biennial budget. 

Mr. Malloy reduced a major portion of his “inherited deficit” through the imposition of the largest tax increase in state history, a $1.5 billion tax on entrepreneurs and business people who might have used the dollars appropriated by a Democratic Governor and a Democratic dominated General Assembly to invigorate Connecticut’s painfully slow, nearly jobless recovery.

Mr. Malloy’s tax increase was not mentioned during his re-election stump speech in Stamford, which is on a par with offering a history of the Elizabethan period in Britain that does not mention Queen Elizabeth. Neither did Mr. Malloy mention that Republican Governors Jodi Rell and John Rowland did not have at their command a Republican dominated General Assembly. Although it is the legislature that shapes and affirms budgets presented to it by the executive office, Mr. Malloy was content in his Stamford re-election announcement to lay at Mrs. Rell’s feet the debt he inherited. Mrs. Rell is likely to play in Mr. Malloy’s coming campaign the same opéra bouff role played by outgoing President George Bush in Mr. Obama’s first – and second – presidential campaigns.

Mr. Orwell noted in his “Under Your Nose” essay that political fantasies eventually bump into reality, at which point, usually too late, those who have been lulled to sleep awaken with truth-blistered eyes:

“In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean world where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.”

Murphy Gets McCained

In Hungary, of all placed, novice U.S. Senator Chris Murphy got McCained.

U.S. Senator John McCain made a pit stop in Budapest on his way to Munich where he led a large congressional delegation to the Munich Security Conference, a catch basin for “defense ministers, international arms dealers, oil sheiks and angry Ukrainians,” according to Jeffery Goldberg of Bloomberg News.

Mr. Goldberg suspects that Mr. McCain met the press in Hungary “so that the delegation would be asked questions about a woman named Colleen Bell,” a soap opera producer chosen by President Barack Obama to serve as U.S. ambassador to Hungary.

Ms. Bell’s creds are much weaker than those of the late Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was murdered, according to a whimsical notion peddled by the White House, by a crowd of “protesters” dissatisfied with the quality of a brief film made by a relatively unknown auteur.  All ambassadors are the personal representatives of the president. A short time after the embassy in Benghazi was attacked, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the mother of one of the victims of the putative “spontaneous demonstration” that she was on the case. The filmmaker was arrested in due course and, Mrs. Clinton being unavailable, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was dispatched to various new outlets to commiserate with collateral victims of the attack and to point an accusing finger at the quickly imprisoned filmmaker. Ms. Rice has been taken off the U.N. beat and now serves as President Barack Obama's national security adviser, a bump upwards as anyone who knows anything about the tower of Babel in the Hudson will testify. Mrs. Clinton retired shortly after the American consulate in Benghazi was sacked and burned by non-spontaneous al-Qaida connected terrorists. Mrs. Clinton has been urged by leading Democrats to run as president

So, ambassador-wise, one would think Mr. Obama might be a little cautious. But, noooo… Ripe ambassadorships are still sold to the highest bidder, and Ms. Bell’s bids, in the form of campaign contributions, were more than adequate. A month ago, she found herself facing Mr. McCain at a confirmation hearing, which went like this:

McCain: What are our strategic interests in Hungary?

Bell:  Well, we have our strategic interests, in terms of what are our key priorities in Hungary, I think our key priorities are to improve upon, as I mentioned, the security relationship and also the law enforcement and to promote business opportunities, increase trade. ”

McCain: (Cynicism ripping like a wave over his outsized jaw) Great answer.

In Budapest, a reporter asked Mr. McCain about the producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“We’re very fortunate to have with us today the chairman of the committee that holds the hearings that these nominees come before,” Mr. McCain said, “and that is Senator Murphy, and he is very knowledgeable about these issues.”

But let Mr. Bloomberg tell it:

“Three things then happened. First, most everyone at the press conference laughed. Second, one of the people who didn’t laugh, the aforementioned Senator Chris Murphy, a freshman Democrat from Connecticut, approached the podium as if it were covered in rat poison. Third, McCain winked -- not at all subtly -- at the three American journalists sitting in the front row.”

Flourishing the usual ambassadorial pabulum, the knowledgeable Mr. Murphy told the reporters, “I think Hungary and the bilateral relationship is going to be very well served by Colleen Bell’s arrival. Ms. Bell has had an extensive history of involvement with a number of very important causes in the United States. She has visited Budapest and Hungary, and I think she is going to be a very strong ambassador, and we look forward to coming back and working with her in the very near future.”

It was a bit of a set-up, a senior member of the Senate flicking a towel at a junior member of the club in the locker room. Mr. Bloomberg was impressed:  “Watching John McCain set-up a fellow senator like a bowling pin is a rare Washington pleasure. Even when he does it in Budapest.”

But there is a serious point. At some point, the third strike ought to be called a strike out, and Mr. Obama recent choice of ambassadors has been inept.  If an ambassador is the personal representative of the president – and he is – shouldn’t the president be a trifle more discriminating? Hungary, to be sure, is no Libya. In the post-Soviet period, it may take a while for the Russian bear to maul into submission one of its former satellite countries. Ukraine is now being ripped, as Mr. Murphy well knows. In the post--Benghazi era, perhaps brains and experience rather than campaign contributions should purchase ambassadorships.

Republicans On The Run

The state Democratic Party, much wealthier than the state Republican Party, is now spending some of its dollars on imported gunslingers such as James Hallinan, a political hessian hired by party central to throw mud at Republican candidates for governor, a certain sign that the election season is upon us.  Democrats in Connecticut hold all the state’s constitutional offices, have veto proof majorities in the General Assembly, and presently have in their campaign coffers 14 times more cash than Republicans.

Some of the mudslinging has backfired. Even a few liberal commentators have winced at the slops that regularly cross their news desks but, as Cardinal John Henry Newman once said, “Throw enough mud and some will stick – stick but not stain.”

Governor Dannel Malloy’s low rating in the polls, some commentators have noted, may give Republicans an opportunity to win back the governorship, last held by Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy’s polar opposite. Mr. Malloy is a pro-union, left of center politician; Mrs. Rell, a creature of the legislature, was a moderate Republican of a kind that once held office in most of New England, the land that conservatism forgot. Barry Goldwater, the Will Rogers of the modern conservative movement, used to say, “If you cut off New England and California, you’ve got a pretty good country.”

For reasons not yet explored by any of New England’s major research institutions, the moderate Republican in New England has become something of a vanishing species. In Connecticut, the species is as extinct as the Dodo bird. All the members of Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation are left of center progressives, some more brash than others. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy shouts his progressivism from the rooftops, but then he is likely to moderate his tone when he next faces voters in three years. U.S. Representative Jim Himes is more discreet; he travels among progressives with his ideology tucked into the breast pocket of his expensive looking suit. Hip U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro is fearless, as anyone would be in a district that has not elected a Republican to the U.S. House in more than 30 years; ditto U.S. Representative John Larson of the gerrymandered 1st District, last held by a Republican nearly 60 years ago.

Whatever may be ailing the Republican Party in Connecticut, its losses cannot be attributed to conservative incumbents. There are none, though there is little doubt that Democrats running for office in 2014 will be banging the drums loudly against fictitious conservative threats and Tea Party “extremists,” northern Republicans clinging desperately to their guns, their wallets and their bibles – that sort of thing. The 2014 Democratic campaign script, however fantastic its claims, has already been written, much of it in Washington D.C. and Chicago, where President Barack Obama’s former campaign script writers hold court. Chicago is the murder capital of the United States, and the Democratic Party War Room in Washington D.C. is party central for propaganda that will be picked up by state parties.

Political reality in Connecticut is quite different than in other parts of the country. Here in the land of steady progressive habits, the Democratic Party has almost completely routed Republicans, especially in large, one-party cities such as New Haven, which this year had the distinction of electing as mayor a Democratic Party fixture whose husband, now diseased, was the top tax scofflaw in the city over which his wife, Toni Harp, now presides.

Speeding her plow in a Democratic primary were the usual notables: Governor Dannel Malloy, author of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years a crusading Attorney General who, in his former position, used to scowl fiercely at folk who avoided paying their fair share of taxes, and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, the National Rifle Association’s bête noir.

In one party states, politicians working the media get to choose not only their friends but their enemies as well – and never mind that the “enemy” is largely a Potemkin Village fiction. The Tea Party in Connecticut presents a greater threat to RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) than to progressive Democrats. And for this reason, they can be safely attacked by incumbent Democrats who never met a constitutional bulwark they could not leap over. Economic conservatives among Republican campaigners become poorer than Democrats in direct proportion to their defense of rational budgets, spending cuts and appeals to the self-interests of entrepreneurial wealth producers. This is an arc that has been visible over skies in Connecticut for more than 50 years.

Is it not a wonder that only a handful of reporters, editors and commentators in the state have noticed the debt pots at each end of the progressive rainbow? When, at the end of the downward plunge, Connecticut inevitably becomes the Venezuela of New England – Crumbling Venezuela was once considered the Paris of Latin America, but not even Paris is Paris anymore – those rooted in the rubble may well ask the tribunes of the people, “Why did you not warn us of the impending disaster?”

Dannel Daedalus Gets Antsy

It’s now official, though it may take some time for Governor Dannel Malloy’s message to trickle down to the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation: “I understand this frustration,” Malloy said. “I’m frustrated. I think the federal government has messed up big time. This couldn’t have been a worse rollout, except in the states that embraced what we’re trying to do. In Connecticut, we're signing up people left and right.”

Mr. Malloy’s “rebuke of the White House over Obamacare” may be found in a short piece in CTMirror, “Malloy rebukes White House over Obamacare.”

Mr. Malloy’s rebuke, it should be noticed, does not touch the essence of the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare. The act itself, he thinks, is praiseworthy, but its execution leaves much to be desired – unlike Mr. Malloy’s own flawless roll-out of the Connecticut Obamacare exchange.

Right from the get-go, Mr. Malloy stepped boldly, even eagerly, on the Obamacare plank. Unforeseen – actually, they were foreseen – technical problems arose, called “glitches” by the White House, and the roll-out flopped so dramatically that even President Barack Obama’s Stakhanovite supporters, as well as the president himself,  were forced to admit the Obamacare launch was an abject failure. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, for instance, was not amused.

“The bad” was on Mr. Obama, said Mr. Obama --  just before he tossed his problem to Mr. Malloy.

“They shifted their problem to me, and I don’t appreciate it,” said Mr. Malloy, according to CTMirror.

The problem shift occurred when Mr. Obama, under pressure from former President Bill Clinton to keep his often stated promise that the little folk could keep their insurance policies if they liked them, kept his promise, causing supporters in blue states such as Mr. Malloy’s considerable agita.

Obamacare was all along designed to shift people out of their preferred insurance plans into Obamacare. The forcible push towards Obamacare was to follow on an insistence that insurance companies deep-six plans considered “substandard” by the new insurance mavens in the Obama administration. Under pressure to abandon plans that, for instance, did not require men to purchase maternity coverage, the insurance companies bowed to White House pressure and canceled their so called “substandard” plans. In point of fact, the substandard plans were designed to appeal to a diverse marketplace: In the real marketplace outside the walls of the Washington D.C. Beltway, needs determine the nature of sellable products; inside the Beltway, political considerations determine public needs.

When Mr. Obama, purely for political reasons, caved under pressure from Mr. Clinton and numberless incumbent Democratic Congressmen whose seats would have been threatened by broken promises, the diverse plans abandoned by the insurance companies could not, purely as a practical matter, be restored. Humpty Dumpty had already fallen from the wall. The insurance companies also had ventured far out on the Obamacare plank, along with Mr. Malloy. What drew them there was an artful measure in the Obamacare law that would force young people by means of monetary penalties to purchase insurance policies they did not need or want.

By restoring his promise – for a year only – Mr. Obama created a big problem.

The astute Obama-watcher will notice that this big problem – How is it possible to finance Obamacare if the president allows substandard policies, if only for a year, to remain, washing away the breakwater that prevents the monetizing of Obamacare? – is not a technical glitch. It is essential to the success of Obamacare.

One supposes that Mr. Malloy and the Malloyalists, the brightest brains ever assembled in Connecticut to assist Mr. Malloy in re-inventing what used to be called “the insurance capital of the world,” understand all this better than more pedestrian geniuses.  But it simply is not in the political interests of Democratic Party power brokers in Connecticut publicly to notice big problems. And so, all the political chatter is of technological glitches foisted by imbecilic federal agents upon a Democratic regime in Connecticut that now feels it must put some distance between itself and a technologically incompetent president whose vision – the radical readjustment of a sixth of the U.S. economy – remains, never-the-less, doable.

This unearthly hubris is a larger problem still; it torched the wings of Daedalus and may yet incinerate the ambitions of progressive utopianists in Connecticut. It will not dissipate until the architects of disaster are removed from office.

Blumenthal And Murphy Contemplate War: What Would Clausewitz Do?

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has not said whether or not he thinks it was wise diplomacy when President Barack Obama drew his red line in the sand on the question of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian strongman Bashir al Assad against his opponents. But the answer to the question can be deduced from Mr. Murphy’s position on a promised U.S. military intervention. Mr. Assad having stepped across Mr. Obama’s red line, Mr. Obama seems poised to respond militarily in some thus far mysterious fashion.

Mr. Murphy, the junior U.S. Senator from Connecticut, has been tagged by his state’s media  as “one of the most vocal opponents of a proposed air strike.” His Democratic comrade in the Senate, Richard Blumenthal, is less pacific. Mr. Blumenthal is urging prompt military action in Syria “to send a message to Assad.”

That message, one may be sure, will not be received warmly by either Mr. Assad or President of Russia Vladimir Putin. Russia has supported both Bashir al Assad and his murderous father Hafez al-Assad who, thirty years ago last month, launched one of the bloodiest chapters of modern Arab history: the Hama Massacre. Syria has been an Assad family operation since Hafez al-Assad was elected president 1971.

Mr. Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not been unmoved by the chemical attack on civilians: “I saw the pictures of the little kids killed by chemical weapons, and I understand why people want action.” he said. However, he pointed out, the United States has not enjoyed much diplomatic success in the Middle East: “But after 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s clear the U.S. isn’t very good at pulling strings in Middle East conflicts.” An air strike will not dislodge Bashir al Assad, Mr. Murphy has said, and the United States can rid the country of chemical weapons only if it sends in ground troops, not a likely eventuality. The commitment of ground troops would only stiffen military resistance and further damage the status of the United States among the Syrian people. And then too, Mr. Murphy said, there is the danger of the “quagmire,” as in “the Vietnam quagmire.”

If Mr. Murphy had the ear of Mr. Obama a year ago, he might have advised the president against drawing “red lines.”

John Dickerson of Slate, not a conservative publication, noted that although Mr. Obama was “supposed to be the wise and careful communicator,” he had “done nothing but corner himself… there's no doubt that Obama's rhetoric has increased the penalty for inaction. It's one thing to fall short of the standard for the U.S. role in the world, as some commentators define it. It's a bigger failing to fall short of your own assertions.”

Mr. Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is more sanguine.

The United States, he said on a CNN broadcast, should launch an air strike “targeted to high-value military assets and limited in its duration and scope.”

There may be unanticipated repercussions to such a strike – Mr. Putin, Edward Snowden’s kindly host, is making bellicose noises – but, Mr. Blumenthal said, he is “more concerned about repercussions for failing to respond to this violation of morality and international law.”

There is something deadly unserious in Mr. Obama’s proposed military response. The purpose of diplomacy is to change minds. The purpose of military measures is to change conditions, which is why Carl von Clausewitz said that war “is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.” War, therefore, is a continuation of diplomacy by other means or, as Clausewitz said, “the continuation of policy by other means.” But the strength of policy depends upon a purity and clarity of intentions. No clear policy can be deduced from Mr. Obama’s proposed response. The “red line” he has proposed demarcates no rational foreign policy. This is a president who seems incapable of distinguishing clearly between friends and enemies, a distinction that lies at the center of any coherent foreign policy.

Both Connecticut’s U.S. Senators should insist that any military actions taken by Mr. Obama should advance the national interests of the United States. Americans are weary, and more than weary, with presidents who have rented out the American military to international interests that do not always conform to national interests. The American people did not elect Mr. Obama to enforce international law as perceived by the United Nations, an international play pen of states many of which are hostile to the United States.

There are reasons for going to war, and those presidents who engage in war should make their intentions plain to the American people before they embark on a venture in which kindheartedness should, according to the clearheaded Clausewitz, play no prominent role:

“Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”

Political Prospects in 2014

Skirmishing for the 2014 elections has already begun. Two Republican candidates have already given firm indications that they plan to run against the Democratic nominee for governor, most likely present Governor Dannel Malloy, although Mr. Malloy has not yet made a formal announcement. Victory in an election depends in large part on the prevailing circumstances of the moment, and we simply do not know what the prevailing circumstances will be in 2014.

But some things will have changed. President Barack Obama, very much underestimated by Republican prognosticators before the 2012 elections, will not be on the mid-term election ticket. Republicans may recall the now amusing predictions of Karl Rove and others just before the votes were tallied. Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney was supposed to have edged out the sitting president, according to the calculations of Republican number crunches such as Dick Morris. 

Obama’s absence may be a plus or minus for Democrats whose seats are vulnerable depending – we’ve heard this before – on the state of the economy. Some economists say the economy is resurging; others think improving economic conditions are a false spring. The testimony of competing economists may remind the general public of the testimony of, say, state and defense psychologists at criminal trials. The defense and the prosecution both have their own psychologists and what is said by one putative expert is unsaid by the other.

The baleful effects of Obamacare have not yet kicked in, and the president has gone to some pains to see to it that the downside of Obamacare will not be apparent until after the election. The president’s “lead from behind” foreign policy has left the United States behind in the estimation some of its European friends. The economic downturn in Europe means, if it means anything at all, that Maggie Thatcher was right about socialism when she said, “The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” Europe is running out of options and, here in the United States, the Democrats’ social prescriptions are beginning to lose some zest. The Republican “war on women” was a useful campaign slogan back in 2012, but slogans are by nature political fads, and nothing in politics is more certain than the rapid passing of a fad.

All this is national, but it impinges somewhat on northeast state races because state Democrats have committed themselves to the operative script written by Obama’s Chicago playwrights in Washington DC. Some U.S. Senators and House members may have over committed themselves. At some point, as they are walking the plank and see below them the sharks circling in the waters, they may as easily un-commit themselves.

To a large extent, however, state politics is a local operation. Even so, one finds striking strategic and policy similarities between Connecticut’s progressive Democrats and national Democrats. The bite that modern progressivism has taken out of the Democratic Party hide, especially here in Connecticut, is significant.

At its core, progressivism is a statist doctrine. The blue-blooded progressive believes both the economy and society should be directed by governors and presidents. To the committed progressive, the doctrine of subsidiary – the notion that political solutions should issue from the smallest political unit affected by policy – is bosh. One detects a progressive imperative at work in Governor Dannel Malloy’s eagerness to interfere in every political transaction. This is a governor constitutionally incapable of minding his own business. And, of course, progressivism is irresistible catnip to Democratic politicians operating in a single party state such as Connecticut.

The progressive doctrine is an attractive one both for office holders and those involved in the media. Asked the question “What do you plan to DO once you are elected to office?” the progressive will answer without hesitation, “Anything and everything.”

He or she will wipe every tear, answer every sigh, and be prodigal with extravagant promises. To the same question, the conservative will answer, “As much as good sense will allow, and nothing that will disturb effective solutions that come from the people themselves.” This is not a satisfying answer for those who have been led to believe that politicians should help those who CAN help themselves without political angels hovering about them whispering heavenly commands in their ears.

The conservative answer leaves people, as much as possible, with their liberties and virtues intact. The trouble with moderns who expect to be coddled in the lap of the nanny state is that they are bored by virtue – as understood by the founders, a principle of action that leads to self-sufficiency -- and willing to surrender their liberty at the drop of a political promise. The conservative message is not one that sells well in the heat of a political campaign.

If one adds to all this the considerable advantages of incumbency and a media that appears to be rooting from the stands in favor of the Democratic one party state, Connecticut Republicans will in 2014 find they have a very rough row to hoe.

Social Issues And The Democrats

On “social issues,” as defined by Democrats in the Northeast, here is no “there” there within the Republican Party’s ancient regime.

Northeast Republicans have only one election card on their table – the economy, stupid. There ain’t no more. Slothful Northeast Republican Parties have permitted Democrats to define all the social issues; for them, such subjects as abortion on demand, gay marriage and the abolition of the death penalty are strictly verboten. Among gentlemen Republican moderates in Connecticut, discretion on social issues has been the better part of valor for more than two decades, which may help to explain why there are no more social issue averse Republicans in New England.

The last Republican moderate in Connecticut who surrendered to Democrats on social issues was State Senator Andrew Roraback. Recently appointed to the judiciary by Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy, Mr. Roraback lost his bid for the U.S. House of Representatives to present U.S. Rep Elizabeth Esty.

Mr. Roraback’s loss was preceded by other Republican Party losses. Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation used to be studded with a host of moderate Republicans, among them U.S. Representatives Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays. They have all been replaced by left of center Democrats. Mr. Malloy and the Malloyalists are all progressive Democrats. The moderate Democrat also has become an endangered species, at least here in the Northeast. In other parts of the nation, moderate Democrats, taking a cue from unions, are abandoning Obamacare in droves. Not in Connecticut. Obamacare is to progressives in Connecticut what the Alamo was to patriotic Texans.  

Concerning the much more lively and combative progressive Democrats, the National Journal puts it this way: “’Especially on social issues, the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved in the more liberal direction,’ said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘There's a new generation of Democrats who see lots of gain and very little pain in stronger gun safety legislation and gay marriage.’”

That is simply another way of saying that the forward motion within the Democratic Party, since the advent of President Barack Obama and his Chicago political machine, has been to the left; progressives are liberals raised to the 3^rd power and beyond.

When a newspaper wished to bestow a compliment on Republican candidate for governor John McKinney it wrote of his father, Stewart McKinney, that the late 4^th District U.S. House Representative “was the type of Republican that has all but vanished from the political landscape: A New Englander who smartly blended fiscal conservatism with social progressivism, working on pro-environment legislation and supporting abortion rights.”

The 4^th District is now owned by Democrat Jim Himes. The 5^th District was owned by progressive Democrat Chris Murphy before he moved on to the U.S. Senate. The entire Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation is progressive, and one of the reasons New Englanders who in the past neatly blended fiscal conservatism with social conservatism are now so rare a species in the Northeast is that all of them have been replaced by Democrats who are left of center on economic issues and purebred progressives on social issues.

Not only are there no social moderates, Republican or Democrat, in Connecticut’s one party state, there are no fiscal conservatives either. “Fiscal conservatism” is a blind used by Democrats in Connecticut who quickly abandon all pretense of a prudent economic policy once they achieve office.

If in the post Obama era you vote for a fiscally conservative, socially progressive Democrat , you will end up, after he has mingled in the course of a few months with brother progressives in the legislature, with a fiscally and socially progressive enthusiast of the purest water. The whole notion of a fiscal conservative who is also a social progressive is in much of the Northeast a rib tickling mythical construct – like a unicorn or a griffin.

The problem with the Connecticut Republican Party is NOT that it does not know how to stoop on social issues to conquer on fiscal issues. The problem is that the stooping no longer conquers – because Republicans have permitted the far left to define “social issues.” That is why the moderate Republican in New England is nearly an extinct species; he has ceded half the political battleground to the opposition and lost the war.

Republicans must learn how to broaden the “social issues” category to include the social ramifications of such obvious disasters as Obamacare, the one party state, crony capitalism, the disintegration of families, a penology that crowds courts and prisons with social delinquents while giving get-out-of-jail-early credits to murderous inmates, arrogant legislators who think it unnecessary to schedule hearings on bills that shape the future of the state, a tax, regulatory and spending policy that drives businesses out of Connecticut… and on and on. All these are SOCIAL ISSUES, women’s issues, minority issues, and left unattended, they will bring Connecticut to its knees, which is exactly the suppliant posture that politically suits the kind of progressive who regards the salvation state as the first and only resource for afflicted citizens.

Obama’s Connecticut Praetorian Guard

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” -- George Orwell

George Orwell, like Jonathan Swift before him, is one of those large writers who simply straddle ideological categories. He was fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view – to have been born in what the ancient Chinese call “interesting times,” the bloody and totalitarian 20th century.

The revolutionist speaking truth to power often appears among us with a rope braided by the reigning powers draped about his neck. He steps towards gallows with a wan smile on his face.

Such was the case with Gregory Hicks, the friend and compatriot of slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens who, testifying before Congress, said he was stunned and embarrassed when he first heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice attribute the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi to a crowd of protestors agitated by a video that defamed Mohammed. One expects that Mr. Hick’s many years of honorable service will soon crash on the rocks of modern politics.
 

The Obama administration had hoped to put the Benghazi affair to bed early, and then direct witnesses to the murder of the Libyan ambassador showed up at the Congressional doorstep. The unwelcomed visitations were followed by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal involving unaccountable delays of Tea Party applications for tax exempt status, which in turn was followed by yet another scandal involving phone taps placed by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) on Associated Press reporters. The IRS has since apologized for having politicized what should have been a routine review of applications.

Of the three scandals, only the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for punitive treatment and the overbroad tapping of AP phone lines have been unreservedly condemned by Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation. The condemnations by Connecticut Congresspersons of the IRS conform to a script adopted by the Obama administration, which unreservedly denounced what appeared to be an IRS enemies' list drawn up by as yet unknown persons who perhaps had been overstimulated by Mr. Obama’s frequently expressed condemnations of Tea Party Patriots.           

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years Connecticut’s crusading attorney general, was outraged at the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for federal tax scrutiny and “deeply troubled” concerning reports that the DOJ had collected phone records from the Associated Press. U.S. Senator Chis Murphy’s reliance on the DOJ received a blow and he hopes “the leadership there is working steadfastly” to accomplish its mission. U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty ventured further out than either of the state’s senators; the IRS allegations, she thought, “should concern all Americans. It’s completely unacceptable for the IRS to target groups or individuals based on their political views. A full Congressional investigation is warranted, and anyone who acted inappropriately or abused power must be held fully accountable.” U.S. Representative John Larson, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that oversees the IRS, thought the IRS action were “absolutely inexcusable." U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro entertained the hope “that those who participated in inappropriate activities are held fully accountable,” and U.S. Representative Joe Courtney was moved to tweet, “The actions taken by the IRS should alarm all Americans. A full investigation is warranted.”

The person in charge of the IRS unit that so disappointed Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, it should be mentioned, was given a promotion of sorts; she has been put in charge of the many hundreds of workers in the IRS who, as part of the implementation of Obamacare, will be rifling through health care records in an attempt to weed out frauds. Provided the frauds are not conservative, few insuperable obstacles may be put in their way – if the IRS processes are unreformed.
 

ABC News was among the first mainstream news outlets to report that “the Internal Revenue Service official in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations — an operation now under fire for targeting Tea Party groups and other right-wing entities — is now in charge of IRS accounting for President Obama’s health-care overhaul initiative, or Obamacare. Sarah Hall Ingram oversaw tax-exempt organizations for the IRS from 2009 to 2012. The misdeeds allegedly occurred at the IRS from 2010 to 2012.”

It is not known at this point how many of the distressed members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation oppose Mr. Obama’s stunningly inept appointment or what form their opposition to the appointment of Ms. Ingrahm might take. While Peter Weber of The Week has speculated that Ms. Ingram’s head may roll, it is a safe bet that it will not land in Mr. Blumenthal’s lap. Both Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy, since their fairly recent elevations to the U.S. Senate, have been stout supporters of all things Obama, and the entire Connecticut Congressional delegation is part of the vast Beltway Praetorian Guard charged with protecting the president’s idiocies.

 

Obama Administration Hit With A Triple Whammy

While President Barack Obama was doubling down on his discredited narrative concerning the attack by terrorists on the Benghazi consulate, in the course of which Mr. Obama’s personal minister – that is what an ambassador is; the personal minister of the president – was murdered, it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted Tea Party groups for what may turn out to be punitive audits.

National Public Radio briefly reported that when the president was asked a question concerning “reports that the IRS targeted organizations that identified themselves as ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot groups and gave their applications for tax-exempt status extra reviews, Obama said:

"’This is pretty straightforward. ... If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported ... and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous and there's no place for it.’ Those responsible, he said, will ‘be held fully accountable.’”

Mr. Obama was asked about the audits during a press conference that featured British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president’s initial response, the promise of a severe dressing down of the IRS, passed muster with the increasing band of journalists who thought Mr. Obama’s handing of the Benghazi assault was seriously deficient. Even Fox News, unrelenting on Benghazi, slathered the president with commendations. Brit Hume of Fox News generously allowed the president’s initial response was the right one.

An explanation offered by IRS tax-exempt chief Lois Lerner quickly came under fire. Ms. Lerner attributed the possible “outrageous” conduct to “line people” in Cincinnati, Ohio who had “used names like Tea Party or Patriots” as criteria for selecting tax-exempt applications for further scrutiny.

Chairman of Americans for Limited Government Howard Rich noted in a piece written for Forbes Magazine that Ms. Lerner pointedly did not mention that “the IRS’ Cincinnati office is the central location for all tax-exempt application evaluations – meaning the discrimination that took place there “wasn’t an isolated, dumb incident by some random field office,” as The Washington Post concisely noted. In other words this was no error: It was official policy – which directly contradicts testimony previously provided by the agency’s leadership to Congressional investigators.”

A Reuters report noted, “When tax agents started singling out non-profit groups for extra scrutiny in 2010, they looked at first only for key words such as 'Tea Party,' but later they focused on criticisms by groups of ‘how the country is being run’ …  At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making ‘America a better place to live.”  Other IRS search terms included: “Government spending”, “Government debt, or taxes.” On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,’ according to an advance copy of a report done by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which notes that agency leadership was made aware of the discrimination nearly two years ago, who said nothing – and clearly had no plans to alert the public to what had happened.

On ABC This Week, columnist George Will remarked that the country had just celebrated – if that is the proper word – the 40^th anniversary of the Watergate summer and read from then President Richard Nixon impeachment records: “He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

Finally, shortly after the possible “outrageous” conduct of the IRS towards the much maligned Tea Party groups knocked the Obama administration on its noggin, a third shoe fell. The Justice Department, led by Fast and Furious Eric Holder, had wiretapped the phone lines of more than a hundred Associated Press reporters in an attempt to uncover the source of a leak of top secret information. Mr. Holder, who had recused himself from investigating the event, explained in a press conference that the taps were justified because of the nature of the leak.

This is not theway to gain friends and influence reporters among the national media. To judge from subsequent media availabilities in which presidential spokesman Jay Carney was relentlessly grilled, some worm had turned in the breast of reporters, and the Obama administration, which tends to treat words as incantations that magically alter objective reality, was playing hardball defense.

Republicans Shown The Door Again

A newspaper reports that Republican leaders John McKinney and Larry Cafero, both of whom have professed interest in running for governor, are once again being shut out of budget negotiations by Governor Dannel Malloy.

This is getting to be a habit.

During Mr. Malloy’s first budget -- By the way, has Mr. Malloy’s budget EVER been in balance? – the governor unceremoniously showed the door to Republicans.

Mr. Malloy brought Republicans back to the table on two occasions: during a special session, when Mr. Malloy needed some help balancing his chronically out of balance budget, and during negotiations on a gun restriction bill following the mass murders in Sandy Hook.
 

On both occasions, Mr. Malloy and accommodating Republicans were praised by left of center commentators in the media for their show of bipartisanship. Here in Connecticut, it was said, bipartisanship was much in the air, and it was hinted that the U.S. Congress, deep in the mire of partisan deadlock, certainly could take a lesson from a state in which both parties came together to settle a budget deficit and pass the most restrictive gun regulations in the nation.

Republican players both times were happy to play. Now, as the General Assembly begins to tinker with Mr. Malloy’s second budget, Republicans once again find themselves sent to Coventry.

The exile of Republicans to Coventry, where they will be expected to bide their time in prayer and holy silence, does not bode well for the state. It means that Mr. Malloy and his confederates – most importantly state unions, who made out like proverbial bandits the last time Republicans were frozen out of budget negotiations – will be unobstructed in shaping their second biennial budget.

The shape of Mr. Malloy’s second budget may be deduced from his first. On that occasion, it should be recalled, Democratic leaders in the General Assembly pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s budget prior to his negotiations with SEBAC, an organization of unions authorized to negotiate contracts with the state. One commentator wrote that leaders in the Democratic dominated General Assembly conferred upon the governor plenipotentiary powers to negotiate contracts that would impact the budget nine years out.

The negotiations were messy but profitable in the end for unions. The “savings” in Mr. Malloy’s first budget were amorphous, the tax increases painful. Progressive Democrats were tolerably satisfied with Mr. Malloy’s first budget. The tax increases, job investment money removed from the private sector and delivered to government coffers, gave crony capitalist progressives enough funds to “invest” in enterprises that in the future would pay out dividends, in the form of votes and political contributions, to Democrats.  Frozen out of the process, Republicans were free to assail a budget that had no Republican fingerprints on it.

A fairly comprehensive review of Mr. Malloy’s second budget by CTMirror is riven with doubts and fears. One always snaps to when one happens upon a budget review entitled “Promises, Gimmicks and a Historic Shortfall.”

After imposing on the state the largest tax increase in its history, Mr. Malloy made a firm vow to forego further tax increases.

“With a gap of $1.2 billion projected for the fiscal year that starts in July,” CTMirror advises, “Malloy not only is seeking more sacrifices, but he's also turning to taxes and some of the gimmicks he swore off of two years ago.”

The gimmicks include an extension of expiring tax increases on businesses and power plants, a reduction of tax credits for working poor families, funding cuts to colleges and universities at a time when higher education continues to increase tuition and fees, deep cuts both to hospitals and health coverage for thousands of low-income adults, a raid on the transportation fund and, that old standby, borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to pay ongoing bills -- all this from an administration that boosted taxes considerably while it publically scorned prior administrations for resorting to discreditable methods in balancing budgets.

It does not help at all that the national economy continues to founder under the ministrations of Barack Obama, the most progressive president in modern history. Had Mr. Obama concentrated during his first term in office on rebuilding the shattered mortgage market, the American economy would have surged forward. But instead, Mr. Obama grasped for a national health care brass ring first proposed in the 1912 national election by the father of the modern progressive movement, Teddy Roosevelt. Obamacare, payment for which has now come due, is but a baby step on the road to nationalized health care. Should anyone care to preview the final product, a Veteran Administration hospital is on view in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.  

In a high tax, over regulated, foundering economy, tax receipts simply dry up. Investments in the private economy also dry up as investors, hampered by excessive regulation and punishing taxes, hoard their dollars waiting for relief from a redistributionist minded government.

The late Maggie Thatcher, Prime Minister of Britain, use to say that “the problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” The government of Connecticut – yet a far cry from the socialist utopia envisioned by Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate for president in 1912– is running out of the money its governor hopes to be able to “invest” in crony capitalist enterprises that mollify the state’s clamorous left of center interests.

It’s a problem.

Sandy Hook Is Waiting

Following a reasonable complaint from Republican leaders in the General Assembly that they lack sufficient data to write legislation that will assure people in Connecticut – and most especially the people of Sandy Hook – that massacres of the kind that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School will not be repeated, Governor Dannel Malloy, who does not take kindly to critical objections, responded with a media release.

“Like many others,” Mr. Malloy wrote, “I was disappointed and angered to learn that certain information about the Newtown shooting had been leaked, specifically with concern for the victims' families who may have been hearing this news for the first time.”

Does Mr. Malloy truly think that the leaked information provided in a Daily News report by Mike Lupica will irreparably compromise the criminal investigation under way by the Chief State’s Attorney and other law enforcement officials?

Mr. Malloy does not seem especially anxious for an answer to this question. But the question is an important one because, depending on the answer to it, reasonable people, news reporters among them, might be able to determine for themselves whether or not the shroud of secrecy surrounding the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School should be lifted so as to allow legislators to write rational and effective bills.

The Chief State’s Attorney has not indicated as a result of the data he has so far assembled that any prosecutions are pending. Adam Lanza, a quite efficient killer, managed to murder 20 school children, 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his own mother. There has been some speculation, so far not supported by hard data, that Mr. Lanza’s mother might have been partly responsible for the mayhem by failing to render inaccessible four of the weapons Mr. Lanza carried with him to the school. Indeed, most of the information people in Connecticut and elsewhere have been regurgitating from media reports remains unverified. A final criminal report, we are told, will be completed sometime in June.

The Chief State’s Attorney likely will not prosecute Adam Lanza, because he is dead. His mother likewise is unavailable for questioning. Questions cannot be wrested from any of the brave and heroic school personnel who, unarmed, died in heroic attempts to frustrate Mr. Lanza’s murderous assault. Indeed, should some curious news reporter ask Mr. Malloy, a former prosecutor, who the Chief State’s Attorney intends to prosecute for this heinous crime, what names could he mention?

Until the New Orleans leak, the iron curtain of secrecy surrounding the massacre in Sandy Hook was impenetrable, and in the absence of verified information, speculation and rumor have been rampant. However, it may not seem to most reporters that the data tightly under wraps and released by Mr. Lupica would compromise the ongoing investigation by the Chief State’s Attorney and others closely connected with federal personnel, nor has the Chief State’s Attorney suggested as much.

Following criticism from leading data-starved legislators in the General Assembly, Mr. Malloy wrote in his media release:

“Today, my office contacted the Chief State’s Attorney. I requested, and they have agreed, to release additional information relevant to the investigation and to provide a status on where the investigation currently stands. This information will be provided by Friday, March 29.

“As to what information can reasonably be shared at this time – that is a question that must be left to the State’s Attorney and other law enforcement. As a former prosecutor, I’m sensitive to the need for an independent investigation and believe that we must allow their work to continue without any undue interference.

“Having said all that, I will also say that I am bewildered by the demands of Mr. Cafero and others for a special briefing they claim is necessary in order for them to take a firm position on potential legislative responses to this horrific tragedy.

“To Mr. Cafero and those others I must ask: what more could you possibly need to know?

It might be considered unbusiness-like for Mr. Cafero to respond, “We need to know more than Mike Lupica if we are expected to write rational legislation that will, as Mr. Malloy and members of Connecticut’s U.S Congressional delegation have insisted, prevent future Sandy Hook-like school invasions.” At the very least Mr. Cafero should busy himself making a list of relevant questions the answers to which might aid the General Assembly in writing pertinent legislation.

All available information should be released to legislative bodies considering relevant bills. It borders upon insanity to expect reasonable legislation from legislators not in possession of the data they need to write the legislation. If it is determined that the information – including Hippa information – will compromise the investigation, that data may be received by relevant committees in camera. If current Hippa regulations prevent the sharing of medical data with legislators who need the data to write bills, change the regulations. Legislators – and the governor -- should have been insisting on briefings and updated briefings all along. It is the lack of hard and accurate data that has slowed the legislative process. No more dawdling! The people of Sandy Hook deserve better than this.

By the way, would it not be proper for U.S. Senator Chris Murphy and other Democrats on Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation to direct some of the rhetorical fire aimed at the demonized NRA towards Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Senate leader Harry Reid could not muster enough votes in a body controlled by Democrats to pass an assault rifle ban: Connecticut has one. This commentator reads media reports sedulously, and he cannot recall any of the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, all Democrats, being invited to express their dismay concerning the withdrawal of the assault weapons ban bill by Senate leader Harry Reid. These are the very people, Mr. Malloy among them, who stood shoulder to shoulder with groups in Newtown that were demanding an assault weapons ban from President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress.

What flower pots are they hiding behind now?

The Spending Problem

A number of conclusions may be drawn from the presidential campaign. Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, lost, and Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, won. That datum you can take to the bank.

Republican Party internecine quarrels arise over the “why”questions. Why did Mitt Romney lose? Why did Mr. Obama win? What are Republicans doing right, and what are they doing wrong?

Within the Republican Party, there are two schools of thought. The schools are as old and venerable as the modern Republican Party, which sprang, pretty much full-blown, from the brain of the late Bill Buckley.

One school holds that Republicans are not moderate enough to appeal to moderate Republicans and Democrats. This premise founders on the following datum: In Connecticut, centrist Democrats have been routed by progressives, a progressive being a liberal raised to the 10^thpower. There is no longer a live and effective middle to Connecticut’s state Democratic Party. Most of the Democrats enjoying power positions in their party have abandoned the liberal ship for the progressive dinghy.

Some few commentators who continue to speak reverently of“the vital center” are simply remembering with great affection a political order that has vanished in Connecticut and, perhaps more broadly, in New England.

An opposing school holds that Republicans are not conservative enough. Moderate Republicans in the Northeast, they point out, are a vanishing species. In Connecticut alone, moderate Republicans have fallen to Democratic opponents in numbers too astonishing to ignore. U.S. Representatives Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chis Shays all were defeated in office by purportedly moderate Democrats who now style themselves progressives. Indeed, Chris Shays was the last moderate Republican U.S. House member in New England.

The fallen Republican bodies seem to cinch the argument of those on the right who say that moderatism – if one may invent a word – is responsible for Republican losses in the Northeast. A robust conservatism elsewhere in the country continues to produce congressional and gubernatorial winners. In Connecticut, the entire U.S. Congressional delegation is Democratic and progressive. Both houses of the General Assembly are dominated by Democrats. And in 2011, Dannel Malloy, for many years mayor of Stamford, became the first Democratic governor in the state since former Governor William O’Neill hung up his spurs more than 20 years earlier.

Running on a “shared sacrifice” slogan, according to which everyone in the state should bear their fair share of misery, Mr. Malloy was able, by cutting Republicans out of budget negotiations, to push through the Democratic dominated General Assembly the largest tax increase in state history. Some Republicans quipped at the time that Mr. Malloy, always an aggressive political competitor, may have felt himself in competition with former Governor Lowell Weicker, a self-styled “maverick” Republican who had imposed upon Connecticut the state’s secondlargest tax increase. The Weicker income tax had been resisted vigorously by previous Democratic governors William O’Neill and Ella Grasso.

Mr. Malloy’s promised savings were largely amorphous, which hardly seems a fair shared sacrifice. Even after he had imposed the largest tax increase in the state’s history, Mr. Malloy has had great difficulty balancing his budgets.

Recently Mr. Malloy has been criticized by Republican state legislators – two of whom, Larry Cafero, a member of the state House for 14 years, and John McKinney, a member of the state Senate for as many years -- as having adopted discreditable budget balancing methods, a charge deployed effectively by Mr. Malloy during his first campaign against his two Republican predecessors, Governors Jodi Rell and John Rowland. Like President Barack Obama, Mr. Malloy inherited his red ink.

Both Mrs. Rell, often criticized by Connecticut’s left of center media as an indolent governor, and Mr. Rowland, were styled as Republican “firewalls” who thwarted improvident spending. In truth, neither was effective in preventing the Democratic dominated General Assembly from readjusting Republican budgets to accommodate more spending. Taxation and consequent spending have increased under a Democratic regime that regards firewalls as momentary obstacles to be overcome.

Indeed, spending is a problem Republicans, both nationally and in Connecticut, seem powerless to confront. The rhetorical ammo that might be effectively discharged in a campaign against improvident spending is simply absent. The central pillar of the Romney campaign was not improvident spending but rather over taxation and consequent economic anemia.

The last president who put a sizable dent in spending, budget reduction and taxes was Calvin Coolidge, styled by Amity Shlaes, the author of“Coolidge,” as “the Great Refrainer.” Even the sainted Ronald Reagan spent money like a class-warfare intoxicated Democrat; the federal budget rose by over a third during his administration. Connecticut’s Yankee Institute will host Ms. Shlaes, who believes Mr. Coolidge may serve a model for a reinvigorated Republican Party, at the Stamford Sheraton on March 28. Information is available here.

The Trouble With Lameduckery

The president’s office is time sensitive because of term limits. No president since Franklin Roosevelt has served more than two terms or eight years in office.

Mr. Roosevelt was the only president elected to a third term; his supporters pointed to the war in Europe as a reason for breaking with precedent. Mr. Roosevelt won a fourth term in 1944 during World War II but suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in office the following year and died. After more than a dozen years in office, the bloom had fled the rose.

The 22^ndamendment owed its inspiration to a precedent established by President George Washington’s farewell address and Thomas Jefferson’s aversion to monarchy. In 1807, Jefferson wrote in reply to a query from Vermont’s legislature, “if some termination to the services of the chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life."

New York Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano reintroduced a bill in Congress early in January of this year repealing the 22nd Amendment, but the bill is not likely to pass, however infatuated more than 50 percent of the American public and 90 percent of the news media have become with wunderkind President Barack Obama.

The presence of a presidential term limit presents both opportunities and problems for the chief executive.

Mr. Obama was looking on the bright side of his lameduckery when he whispered to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election.

During talks in Seoul, Mr. Obama “urged Moscow to give him‘space’ until after the November ballot, and Medvedev said he would relay the message to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin,” according to a March 2012 Reuters report.

Two months after Mr. Obama begged Mr. Medvedev for more space, Vladimir Putin was elected, for a second time, President of Russia. The present Russian government, apparently unconcerned with Mr. Jefferson’s quibbles, is a product of centuries of monarchical government, followed by a promising but betrayed revolution, followed by 30 years of Stalinism, monarchy’s modern counterpart. Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have managed to satisfy an apparent hunger in Russia for democratic forms by swapping jobs every so often, a modern tyrant’s answer to the 22^nd amendment.

Had Mr. Putin been running for president of the United States, he would not have been eligible to serve, because the 22^ndamendment is a bulwark against proto-Stalinist chief executives; it nips in the bud the megalomania of the larval tyrant by giving the president of the United States only two terms of “space” in which he may ruin the country and bring republican government to its knees.

Here is the hitch with lameduckery: At some point during a second term in office, it becomes obvious to presidential supporters that the duck is lame. At that point, politics pivots. During the second term of virtually every president who labors under the austere restrictions of the 22^ndamendment, the president is found gathered together with his ardent supporters during his first term -- including party leaders in the Congress -- and everyone in the room realizes that there is but one lame duck in the room; the rest of them will be running for re-election long after the president has strut his hour upon the stage. They begin to think, dangerously, of surviving in a political universe that does not include the nominal leader of their party. This is a prelude to funeral rights, the beginning of the end of what the French call “la trahison des clercs,” the betrayal of the intellectuals, in many authoritarian regimes the footstools of megalomaniacal tin pot political saviors.

Modern monarchical and authoritarian regimes, both fascist and communist, solve the problem by having non-subservient intellectuals -- usually violently or artfully repressed in authoritarian regimes -- shot or imprisoned or socially castrated.

Authoritarian regimes fail for a good reason: The larger and more omnicompetent a central authority strives to be, the more incompetent it becomes; a government that strives to do everything will do nothing well. There are no small errors in fascist or quasi-fascist regimes. Even in Cuba, the balled fist is loosening: One half of the Castro tyranny, Raul, a boilerplate communist, recently announced that he was considering term limits.

In governments operating under republican constitutions, the pivot, that point during which a party understands that the captain of the ideological ship will soon be departing, occurs usually midway into a second presidential term.

Assuming Mr. Serrano is unsuccessful in scuttling the 22^ndamendment, political commentators will begin mapping the ideological cracks in the Obama administration around the second year of the Mr. Obama's second term. A collapse in the economy will of course push the date closer to the beginning of his second term.