Rasmussen reports that Rob Simmons is running almost neck and neck with Linda McMahon against Dick Blumenthal, despite the fact that Rob suspended his campaign and Linda has spent $20 million on hers:
Blumenthal.. 53% support to Linda McMahon’s 40%...Blumenthal picks up 52% of the vote in a matchup with Simmons who earns 38%. Blumenthal held a similar 50% to 39% lead over Simmons in May in the final survey before the latter dropped out of the race.
The Quinnipiac poll found the same thing: Blumenthal - McMahon 54-37, Blumenthal - Simmons 55-35.
Over the course of her congressional campaign, Republican Linda McMahon boasted that she was willing to sink $50 million into her bid for the U.S. Senate. The tribunes of the people immediately drew their swords. McMahon, it was said in scores of editorials and commentary pieces, was attempting to buy a seat in the congress.
The outrage directed by the Main Stream Media at McMahon, whose opponent is also a millionaire – present Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the MSM’s anointed candidate for Sen. Chris Dodd’s seat -- has not been poured upon the heads of Democratic contestants in the state’s congressional delegation, even though CTMirror has provided unimpeachable proof that Democratic incumbents, not their impoverished Republican challengers, are the real millionaires.
Republican challengers hoping that the anti-millionaire animus directed at McMahon will now be focused laser-like on their rich and greedy Democratic opponents had better not hold their breath waiting for such as Rick Green and Colin McEnroe of the Courant -- not to cite other too numerous to mention cracker-jack liberals in Connecticut’s one-way media -- to direct their outrage at their favored Democrats.
Better just to swallow the pain of injustice and get along without these disingenuous, hypocritical, partisan liberal sons of thunder in their corner.
Republican Rob Merkle, of Norwalk, who is challenging two other candidates in an August primary to run for U.S. Congress, said a video making fun of his arrest 10 years ago on marijuana charges is over the line and distracts voters from real issues.
Here's the video:
There's more from the Post:
Merkle said the video borders on libel, and he said this kind of political trickery is part of the reason so many people are turned off by politics. He said opponents have also gone after him over his 19-year-old daughter, whom he had out of wedlock. He said he paid child support for the daughter, who is now in college.
"It's a personal issue. Nobody has any business digging into my family," he said.
Torres was incredulous at that reaction.
"Everything is fair game," Torres said. "People want to know the character of a person..."
He also confirmed he has smoked marijuana, but the last time he did it was in college at age 23. He said he thinks the age at which Merkle was arrested is a valid campaign issue. Once someone is in their 30s, the time for youthful indiscretions is over, Torres said.
Torres has also been arrested twice, but both cases were thrown out. He noted his mistakes are well-known and that he's answered questions about them. Like Merkle, Torres said he's learned from his mistakes.
GOP candidate Rick Torres of Bridgeport said his opponent Republican Rob Merkle should be prohibited from running for Congress.
Torres said Merkle's voting record, or lack thereof, means he doesn't deserve to hold elected office. He maintains that Merkle has only voted twice in his life.
Unfortunately, neither of these is likely to be the Republican candidate in the 4th - but one can only hope, can't one?
While Lieutenant Governor Michael Fedele was savoring his court victory over Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was sawing off the limb he was sitting on.
The court struck down the “trigger provision” of Connecticut’s campaign finance system, a devise that awards extra public funds to candidates running against opponents not participating in the system who spend more than the system’s limits
Meanwhile, in a Connecticut court, Judge Julia Aurigemma has decided that Fedele’s view of a Connecticut statute which, in the not so humble opinion of this writer and an apprehensive U.S. Supreme Court, violates the Constitution is the correct one. In writing the Connecticut statute that violates the U.S. Constitution, the judge ruled, the legislature DID envision the possibility of two clever politicians bundling their contributions so that they may steer their skiff around a restriction limiting the amount of money they can accept as a legitimate campaign offering.
To put the matter briefly: All this litigatory nonsense is nonsense because McCain-Feingold and its myriad spawn is unconstitutional, and it is only a matter of time before an enlightened Supreme Court chucks the whole business as a impudent violation of the First Amendment.
“Time for visions and revision
That time will soon erase.”
The New York court said: No, you can’t deprive a candidate for office of his free speech rights. Money, most especially money used by private citizens to finance their own campaigns, as countless editorialists remind us daily, talks; therefore, it falls under the umbrella protections of the First Amendment. The court ruled that campaign contributions by lobbyists were acceptable; it also found that the so call “top off” provision of most campaign regulatory schemes was unconstitutional. Both rulings will reset the campaign contribution playing field in a way unacceptable to the levelers among us who hope to eliminate all advantages in pretty nearly every department of life.
To translate this into Connecticut terms, the New York Court ruled that Fedele cannot offset ALL the private money Foley pumps into his campaign with taxpayer generated “contributions.” The quotes imprisoning “contributions” are necessary because there ain’t no such animal as a tax “contribution.” All taxes are appropriated by force under threat of imprisonment, even that portion that some plucked citizens “agree” shall go to generic politicians.
So then, Fedele is constitutionally incapable of evening out the money spent by Foley through the Rube Goldberg mechanism the state legislature has created to “level” the campaign contribution playing field. The quotes imprisoning the word “level” are necessary here because – even if some constitutional devise could be found to “equalize” contributions between incumbents and challengers, the incumbent will never-the-less enjoy offsetting advantages, too numerous to mention here, that tilt the election playing field – life is so unfair – so as to accomplish his nefarious purposes.
At this point, no one can say for certain where all this judicial and legislative nonsense will end. It probably would have been much saner, and more effective, to scrap McCain-Feingold and steer all campaign contributions anonymously through party mechanisms. The contributions would in this way arrive at the door of an incumbent or a challenger masked, so that neither the incumbent nor the challenger could identify its source as originating from a PAC or a Robber Barron or a union or a patriot intent on steering his money to someone who genuflects before the Constitution.
But, you say, the routing method would assure that no challenger outside the two major parties would receive funds. Not true. The campaigner independent of the major political parties would simply have to start a party – this would be made effortless in the scheme here proposed -- and the tap would be open to him. But, you say, it’s hard to start a party.
But, I say, life is hard. At this point in our leap into a politically bleak future, my guess would be that independents, more numerous in Connecticut than either party, would be willing to donate to third parties – provided the distribution mechanism was not controlled by the usual political culprits disguised as politically disinterested citizens.
How to disguise the contributions?
Americans are an unusually inventive species: Where there’s a will, there will be a way.
1. “Donning bulletproof vests, dodging rockets and mortars, and avoiding IEDs became regular parts of the routine.”
But Mr. Folly had previously downplayed the danger, said he often traveled around Baghdad without an escort and “never once ran into a situation that I considered hostile.”
2. The Foley campaign website notes Mr. Foley’s his team of 10 helped restart many businesses, rewrote commercial law and “helped restructure the banking system.”
But Mr. Foley did not oversee financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies.
The article also presents Foley's defense after he said "I don't give a shit about international law" when told it was against international law to sell an occupied country's assets.
He was not an international law expert and he didn't privatize businesses - he just created a plan to do so.
And Foley is suing to stop his opponent Mike Fedele from getting public financing.
He even has had to deny that he beat his wife, (she had charged that he was abusive, then recanted) but could not deny that he was involved in a highly contentious custody battle that "raged in state courts for a dozen more years, including a year when he was co-chairman of a commission studying changes to the state's divorce and custody laws."
For even more background on Foley in Iraq read these posts:
Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate Richard Blumenthal is in deep cover and shows no sign, any time soon, that he may pop out of his hidey hole to confront Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Linda McMahon and Peter Schiff, a Republican primary opponent. In addition, Blumenthal’s senatorial campaign site is light on many pertinent campaign issues.
For instance: In a major decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the second amendment pertains to individuals rather than state militias. Does Blumenthal agree with that decision?
Some economists hold that the roll played by the Federal Reserve in boosting or lowering interest rates has distorted the market system and sent confusing signals to major lenders and investors. According to views propounded by economists who cleave to the Austrian school of economics, these distortion have created temporary booms and busts in the market place, producing “malinvestments,” the fundamental cause of our boom-bust cycles. Does Blumenthal agree with this view? Would Blumenthal agree to a debate on economic issues with his two Republican opponents prior to a primary vote, so that his economic views can be properly ventilated in advance of the primaries?
President Barack Obama has just cashiered General Stanley McKristol for incautious remarks made by the general and his staff in a left leaning publication, appointing General David Petraeus to fill the leadership void in Afghanistan. There has been great deal of resistance all along in Democratic Party ranks to both the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan. When Obama agreed to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, he was sharply criticized by the peace wing of the Democratic Party. Some in the Republican Party believe that current troop levels are too low to sustain in Afghanistan the strategy adopted by Petraeus and employed successfully in Iraq. What is Blumenthal’s view on the matter of troop levels and announcements of time-lines for the withdrawal of troops in both theaters?
A rational discussion of such issues would more easily allow Connecticut voters to choose who may best represent the interests of the people of United States on these matters in the U.S. Senate. But in order to have a proper discussion, Blumenthal would have to make himself available for questioning in venues familiar to him as attorney general, where he faced the media and responded to important questions . Even now, as attorney general, Blumenthal permits himself to respond to issues affecting that office through his subalterns. He has not done the same as a prospective U.S. senator. If references to his activity as attorney general are boiled out of Blumenthal’s official senatorial campaign site, the remaining pap makes a very thin soup. And at this point in his campaign, even newspapers that have been exceedingly obliging to Attorney General Blumenthal are beginning to murmur darkly about Blumenthal’s motives in secreting himself from those who might be expected to vote for him as U.S. senator.
In the meantime, Lamont, taking a page from Blumenthal’s book, has refused an invitation by the New London Day to debate Dan Malloy on issues important to Connecticut, prompting Malloy to issue the following statement:
"The Day said today that they are disappointed in Ned's decision. I think it's worse than that. This debate is a tradition. It's a chance for voters to see and hear each candidate only days before heading to the polls. It's when primary voters are most tuned in and most ready to hear from candidates about their values, their experience, and their vision. And Ned Lamont is denying them that chance. What a shame.
"If this is an indication that Ned is going to refuse to meet me in any televised debate between now and the primary, I think it's an unprecedented situation. No statewide debate in the closing weeks of a campaign this important? What a shame."
Lamont has said he’d rather campaign against Malloy than debate him. No one need wonder why. Like Blumenthal, Lamont is far ahead in the polls over his challenger. When the hare is so far in advance of the tortoise in the race, he cannot be expected to pause for debates, and this is the great failing of primaries. For primaries to work properly, an honest confrontation on important views is a necessity. By avoiding the necessity, the incumbent or the leader in a primary frustrates, knowingly and purposely, the whole point of a primary, a craven acknowledgement that debates are far less important than political status.
In “Lamont’s Latest Ad: Risky Or Smart?” she lifts the covers on some Democratic gubernatorial supporters, which include some old Democratic political hands: Jonathan Pelto, now in the consulting business; Bill Curry, slowly working his way out of the closet as a Ned Lamont groupie; and Roy Occhiogrosso, attached to the Dan Malloy campaign as a consultant.
The boys are cutting the cards on a new Ned Lamont ad in which Ned claims the independent mantle and even – the man’s courage knows no bounds – appropriates for himself in the ad a signature adage that once belonged to ex-senator, governor and self described “turd in the Republican Party punch bowl” Lowell Weicker.
One of the pledges Ned is making to the people of Connecticut is – “I’m going to be no man but yours.”
Not to be overly subtle, the ad is titled “Independent.” It worked for Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Good ad? Bad ad? What?
Good, says Curry: “It’s a smart ad. He’s doing the insider, outsider thing with Malloy.”
Drawing upon his own political experience – what else? -- Curry termed Weicker slogan one of the best in Connecticut history. “Do not overestimate party loyalty,” said Curry, “who lost the Democratic Party’s endorsement for governor in 1994, then won the nomination in a primary, with a similar independence theme,” Stuart notes.
It was, in fact, a politically opportune slogan for Weicker, since Democrats, then and now, far outnumbered Republicans in a state awash in Blue minded journalists. Chris Powell, one of the most “independent” newsmen in the business, then and now, was among the first to recognized that a post Watergate Weicker, while senator, had long been using his own party as a foil to curry (no pun intended) votes and favors from majority Democrats. When the Weicker-Democratic romance went a little too far, domesticated and abused Republicans revolted and put an end to their quarrelsome marriage. Democrats such as Chris Dodd – now about to exit the U.S. Senate before he turns into congressional dust – mourned the loss, but state Republicans were quite cheery about it.
The political calculus in Lamont’s case is a bit different. Unlike Weicker, Lamont is not a minority Republican but a Democratic insurgent, more independent of party politics than his primary opponent Dan Malloy. However, in order effectively to address a budget hole that has made even Weicker gag, Lamont will have to be more than independent: He will have to put himself in opposition to the spending machine that has created the largest per capita debt in the nation. And that will entail, at a minimum, a life and death struggle with unions, in Connecticut a third rail of politics that even “no man but yours” Weicker shrank from touching.
Powell, by the way, is convinced that none of the Democratic gubernatorial contenders are interested in cutting spending; certainly, party leaders in the legislature, notorious among them Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, once a union steward, are singularly uninterested in calling unions to heel. If Powell is right -- and he has been wrong far less often than Curry -- all the chatter among Democrats concerning responsible deficit reductions and permanent curbs on spending is not worth a bucket full of spit.
But the independent feint may profitably be used campaign fodder to beguile increasingly indigent taxpayers, many of whom, even establishment Democrats might agree, are in open rebellion against party power brokers.
The most amusing line on the new Lamont ad comes from Occhiogrosso, who makes no attempt to conceal his affection for Malloy: “Ned Lamont still apparently doesn’t know who he is. Now he’s trying to be Lowell Weicker. He’s fundamentally wrong in his belief the state should be run like a business. And no 60-second ad is going to change that.”
But of course!
Gubernatorial hopefuls such as Tom Foley, presently leading the Republican primary field, may think that the business of government is business, to quote President Cal Coolidge. But most Democrats in the state – quite unaware that Will Rogers was grinding his teeth when he said “The business of government is to keep government out of business, unless business needs government aid” – have long operated on the principle that the business of Democratic government is politics.
