Executive Director Of Media Group Plunges Into Tank For Murphy

In an interview following his last primary debate with Linda McMahon, former U.S. Rep Chris Shays whispered a Swan’s song, a stark admission that the debate just concluded very well might be his last: “It may be the last time, and I think that would be a loss for the state.”

According to the most recent poll, Mr. Shays entered the debate trailing Mrs. McMahon by 29 points, a lead put down by Mrs. McMahon’s critics to her money advantage, which is considerable.

During her last campaign for the U.S. Senate, Mrs. McMahon poured $50 million of the sweat of her own brow into her campaign against then Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Mr. Blumenthal prevailed in that race, even though he was hobbled by charges that he had lied several times concerning his military service. It was an easy matter for Mr. Blumenthal to deflect these charges: He hit the mattresses towards the end of his campaign, after it had become apparent that he had stolen valor from Vietnam veterans, claiming falsely several times that he served in Vietnam. The most amusing of Mr. Blumenthal’s pants-on-fire escape from media scrutiny was recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) in a documentary on stolen valor called “Frauds and Impostors.” For curious yellow Blumenthalites, the video still may be found on the ABC news site “Foreign Correspondent.” Hit "Play video" to watch.

It was thought at the time that Mrs. McMahon’s Republican Primary opponent, Rob Simmons, might have exploited the issue more effectively than Mrs. McMahon. Mr. Simmons background in Vietnam, where he served with distinction -- while Mr. Blumenthal was in Washington D.C. in the reserves, never having seen service in Vietnam – his years of honorable service in the U.S. House of Representatives, and his unflinchingly honest character, would have made him, so his supporters claimed, a much more effective foil in a general election contest against an artfully dogging Blumenthal.

This reading of events, while it may be true, falls far short of a competent analysis. After years of attorney general agitprop – rare was the day that reporters and editors did not find in their e-mails a press release written by a Blumenthal flack praising the attorney general in terms that would make a saint blush. Mr. Blumenthal had established, shall we say, a cordial relationship with those in Connecticut who buy ink by the barrel. When Mr. Blumenthal chose to hit the mattresses towards the end of his campaign, after polls showed him with a more than comfortable lead over Mrs. McMahon, there were few if any remonstrances issued by Connecticut’s Commentariate. No one shouted from the rooftops that Mr. Blumenthal was avoiding his very few critics in the media.

Mr. Simmons may not have prevailed over Mr. Blumenthal.

Why?

Mr. Simmons would not have had the resources, money being among the most important, to defeat Mr. Blumenthal, who was and is – dare it be said? – a millionaire. Money may not be everything in a political campaign, but it ain’t nothing.

Mr. Simmons’ primary campaign sputtered and flamed out for want of money. Mr. Shays has no money, and very little support among Republicans to wage a successful primary campaign against Mrs. McMahon. There is sound reason to believe that this defect would extend to a general election campaign against Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate Chris Murphy, who is, monetarily speaking, sitting pretty.

Mr. Murphy, who has pinned to his chest the progressive red badge of courage and as such would seem to be the natural political enemy of large institutions, has received from the employees and PACs of financial institutions $754,885 since 2006, an average of $188,500 in his four federal races, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Here is the key question: Why is Mr. Murphy better able than Mr. Shays to generate funds necessary to win a political campaign?

Answer: Campaign finance reform – i.e. McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan – has altered the campaign resource playing field to such an extent that it is virtually impossible for a non-incumbent without independent means to win a campaign against any incumbent. A truly level playing field requires challengers to expend MORE money than incumbents in order to overcome other advantages enjoyed by the ruling regime.

McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan, a SuperPAC spawning bill, simply bleeds money from parties and shuttles it to “independent” candidates, usually incumbents.

The enfeeblement of parties –They are too weak; not too strong – has made it possible for incumbents to become their own petite INDEPENDENT political parties. That’s why the Republican Party in CT cannot give monetary support to their – wink, wink – preferred MODERATE Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Chris Shays. How could Connecticut’s media have failed to notice that Karl Rove’s endorsement of Shays was not accompanied by a pledge of monetary support in the all-important primary? Unlike the Republican party in Connecticut, Mr. Rove’s SuperPAC is flush with funds.

So is Linda McMahon – but it’s her own money. Mr. Shays is the poor country mouse in the primary. HE HAS NO MONEY TO RUN ADS. Against Democratic Party endorsed candidate Chis Murphy, rich in campaign resources, Mr. Shays would continue to run a shoe string campaign -- and lose, even if he were able to gain the support of the state’s putatively moderate, “non-partisan”media, which is doubtful.

Mr. Murphy is Jim Himes on steroids.

Ironically, Shays-Meehan has become Shays’ petard. And the pitiful primary “battle” shows him being raised up by it.

Mr. Shay’s signature campaign finance reform bill prevents money from reaching political parties. And after a Supreme Court ruling on First Amendment rights that opened the sluice gates to SuperPACs, state parties have become poor – like Mr. Shays – and campaign financiers who have no attachments to state parties are free to determine which candidates shall win or lose by extending or withholding funds.

Because the Supreme Court decision is soundly based in constitutional law, it will not likely be reversed. The fix to this problem therefore lies in the reform of national and state campaign finance laws. An effective reform would prevent the influx of money to SuperPACS by allowing the unimpeded flow of money, perhaps anonymously, into national and state parties.

This solution, of course, will depend on the acquiescence of SuperPAC dependent incumbents such as … well, Mr. Murphy, who used to inveigh against SuperPACs before he entered into a Faustian bargain with them.

Shays’ Signature Bill

The Shays-Meehan House bill, the equivalent of McCain-Feingold in the Senate, is that single piece of legislation for which former U.S. Congressman Chris Shays is likely to be remembered, just as former Senator Chris Dodd’s congressional legacy will be forever bound up with his massive regulatory scheme, the Dodd-Frank bill. Mr. Shays at the tail end of January announced his candidacy for U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat. The consequences of the Dodd-Frank legislation – more importantly, the unintended consequences of the bill – are still in the pipeline. But some of the less anticipated consequences of Shays-Meehan have already been amply displayed.

Initially, Shays-Meehan was designed to ban national parties from raising and spending “soft money.” The soft-money ban, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court more than a year ago, limits individual contributions to political parties even if the money is to be spent on activities unrelated to federal elections. The bill also prohibited “federal officeholders and candidates from soliciting or raising soft money for political parties at federal, state, and local levels, and from soliciting or raising soft money in connection with Federal elections,” according to a summary of the bill prepared at the time by the offices of Mr. Shays and Mr. Meehan.

The bill additionally prohibited state parties from using soft money to pay for TV ads that “mention federal candidates and get-out-the-vote activities that mention Federal candidates.” Not wishing to hobble political parties altogether, Shays-Meehan permitted state parties and local party committees “to use contributions, up to $10,000 per donor per year, for generic GOTV activities and for GOTV activities for state and local candidates. Each state party or local committee must raise its own contributions and a portion of each expenditure must include hard money.”

Unintended consequences were not long in coming. The soft money ban and other provisions of the bill were to take effect November 6, 2002. Earlier in April of the same year, the Progressive Donor Network gathered in Washington to exploit a loophole in the law. A lengthy article on the convention was published in the Washington Times under the title "Democrats to exploit finance-law loophole".

Exploit they did. The loophole in the law was large enough to accommodate many of the usual suspects who, before the advent of the law, were presumably corrupting political parties with large donations. After the convention, they would similarly corrupt individual politicians, rather than political parties, by raising and spending unlimited sums of money to advocate for or against political candidates.The game was on. The amount of time that normally elapses between the creation of a bill to solve problem A and the subversion of the solution has diminished considerably in the modern age. Money in the political stream dammed up here always seeks a way there.

Later in the fifth inning, the Supreme Court knocked a part of McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan into a cocked hat when it ruled in 2007 that a portion of the bill violated First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly, still widely observed in the United States.

The Shays-Meehan bill, which initially sought to remove the deadly hand of corruption from national and state parties by decoupling large corporate and union donations from federal, state and local party organizations, following the Supreme Court decision left much of the financing in the hands of outliers that could raise and spend unlimited amounts of money advocating for individual candidates, nearly all of whom have set themselves up as petite political parties. This arrangement generously benefits incumbent politicians, lobbyists and ideologues but is hostile to party building. And indeed, incumbent politicians who are able to generate campaign funds from other questionable sources in return for favors done do not even see the defects of Shays-Meehan, because the unintended consequences of the bill help them and hobble their political competitors.

Most incumbent politicians begin their campaigns with vast sums of money their opponents cannot hope to match – the spoils of incumbency. And the Shays-Meehan bill does nothing to “even the playing field,” an expression favored by, just to pick one incumbent’s name out of a hat, current U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal. It is generally supposed that Mr. Blumenthal will be moved from his seat only when he resigns, as had his predecessor, U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, before Mr. Dodd got his feet caught in a series of mini scandals that up-ended him in Hollywood where, pulling in a $2.5 million a year salary as a lobbyist, he will soon be a multi-millionaire, if not quite as wealthy as Mr. Blumenthal, Connecticut’s new senator for life.

And Shays-Meehan, which some critics have called “a congressional incumbent protection act,” will do nothing to hasten Mr. Blumenthal’s departure.

The Brave New World Of Political Campaigns

The pre-nominating convention battle, now in full swing among Republicans, is a painful winnowing process. Already a number of Republican presidential hopefuls – Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, businessman and entrepreneur Herman Cane, Texas Governor Rick Perry – have succumbed to the political grim reaper.

Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich, Senator Rick Santorum and U.S. Representative Ron Paul have been left to tell their tales. They continue to battle, mostly against themselves, with occasion forays against President Barrack Obama who, one supposes, is enjoying the show – and taking notes -- while political operatives outside the closed circle of his campaign advisers are editing Republican clashes for YouTube. Mr. Paul has a tight-fisted articulate crowd of libertarian admirers following him wherever he goes; Mr. Santorum has done remarkably well among conservative Republicans; Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich have pasts, which continue to haunt them.

The knock on Mr. Paul is that, while his message is convincingly anti-Obama, he cannot win a general election. Mr. Romney has been attacked by both Democrats and BigPAC, money raising groups operating outside the failed campaign financing laws promulgated by McCain-Feingold in the Senate and Shays-Meehan in the House, as a conscienceless corporate raider intent on putting American workers out of work. The same ploy was used successfully here in Connecticut by friends of Dannel Malloy in his gubernatorial campaign against Republican Party nominee for governor Tom Foley. Mr. Santorum has been attacked as a benighted social conservative. Mr. Gingrich, perhaps the most adept debater in the group, has been attacked by movement conservatives as an ambitious faux conservative, by Democrats as a loopy idea man, and as unelectable by scorched-earth conservative Ann Coulter. In his climb up the greasy ladder of political success, Mr. Gingrich has left in his wake at least one wife who spilled the beans to a reporter hiding under the Gingrich marital bed. Mr. Gingrich, those unfriendly to the former House Speaker have intimated, has Achilles’ heels on both his cloven feet.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama delivered his “State of the Union” address, an exercise in redundancy since most everyone in the nation understands that the state of the union, after three years of re-inventive stroking by Mr. Obama, is perilous. The national debt has inched past $15 trillion. The gross debt of the United States as a percentage of its gross national product – the value of everything produced by the nation – is 100 percent; a comparable figure for Greece, the economic basket case of Europe, is 130 percent; in Italy, on its side in the Mediterranean and run up against the rocks of reality, somewhat like the stricken Costa Concordia cruise ship, the rate is119 percent; Asia, led by China, which holds the largest proportion of U.S. Debt, is 41 percent.

Before the State of the Union address, Republican political watchers suspected that Mr. Obama – whose job approval ratings have dipped after his third year in office to 44 percent from a high of 57 percent during his first year in office – would use the occasion as an opportunity to let loose upon the union his campaign script. They were not disappointed. Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address was only a few hours old when fact checkers with the Associated Press, hardly a conventicle of Republican anti-Obamaites, tore it to shreds.

Republicans continue to tear themselves to shreds. At some point, the winner of the Republican Party nominating convention will meet Mr. Obama on the field of battle, by which time super PACs operating outside the party system and beyond the reach of McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan will have assembled enough YouTube clips of Republican Party family quarrels to wallpaper the walls of Hell. Republican super PACs will be doing the same to Democrats.

Everything will be fair game because the money laundering – and, even more importantly, the inventive, semi-fictional narratives captured by partisan non-partisan outliers – will not betray the fingerprints of either party.

Behold the fruits of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which has moved both money and responsibility away from political parties towards the brave new world of bare-knuckle anything-goes campaigning.

Shays Promises Slugfest

In a brief interview with Hartford Courant writer Rick Green, former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays has given an indication that he will pull no punches in his likely Republican Party primary with Linda McMahon.


Mr. Shays told Mr. Green that Mrs. McMahon’s record as a former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) will be an issue in his campaign.

"Her record and her conduct,” Mr. Shays said, “are an important part of the process. Everything that she's done is going to be an important part of the campaign. I'm not going to take punches. I'm not a Quaker."

Mr. Green writes that Mr. Shays “also promised to stick to his moderate Republican roots. ‘I'm not going to try to win the primary and lose the general election.’"

A possible battle between Mr. Shays and Mrs. McMahon is certain – provided Mr. Shays sticks to his script – to have a “déjà vu all over again” flavor to it, Mr. Shays serving as a double for former Rep. Rob Simmons, who lost to Mrs. McMahon in a Republican Primary and was rather peevish about his loss.

Both Mr. Simmons and Mr. Shays were “moderate” Republicans, each of whom lost to fairly moderate Democratic contenders. Mr. Shays had the distinction of being the last moderate Republican congressman in New England, the breed having died out with him.

Mr. Shays is not quite ready for a re-run. The former congressman left Connecticut for parts South after his loss and may have a little boning up to do on national issues before he takes a hammer to Mrs. McMahon’s likely run for office.

In the meantime, Mr. Shay’s Democratic opponents also will outfit themselves with brass knuckles. On the Democratic side, present U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy and former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz will be struggling for an opportunity to meet the winner of the Republican Primary on the field of battle, and neither Democratic candidate is a Quaker.

Mr. Murphy, who defeated long term U.S. Rep Nancy Johnson, also regarded as a moderate Republican, is on his way to becoming a perpetual politician. His very first job in politics was as an intern to U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul; he managed Charlotte Koskoff’s near upset campaign against Mrs. Johnson, and also worked for a couple of years in the late 90’s for then State Senate Majority Leader George Jepsen, now Connecticut’s Attorney General. Mr. Murphy’s work record is unblemished by any connection with the real world economy. Mrs. Bysiewicz recent political background needs no introduction, beyond noting that comparisons have been made between her and Lady Macbeth. Neither of the two Democrats are inept in exploiting the logs in the eyes of their Republican opponents, and both would be delighted to see blood on the Republican Party primary floor.

Mr. Shays’ record in office is not without blemish. One may expect Democratic operatives to make much ado about Mr. Shays’ former felonious campaign manager, Michael Sohn, who absconded with more than $250,000 in money filched from Mr. Shays’ 2008 campaign against present Rep. Jim Himes, widely regarded as more moderate than, say, the tempestuous John Larson, a U.S. 1st District Rep who will be replaced by a Republican moments after Hell freezes over.

It is not precisely accurate to say that Mr. Sohn took money from Mr. Shays. The ten most generous donors in the 2008 campaign were individuals and PACs associated with large financial firms, and the money was stolen from them. Mr. Sohn may have been, at least in sprit, a larval Democrat in supposing that the ill-gotten gains of the super-rich were in some sense his due.

There is a delicate irony associated with Mr. Shays’ troubles that is not likely to be noticed by thuggish roustabouts in both the Republican and Democratic Parties who are interested in bruising Mrs. McMahon because of her unsavory association with wrestlers or Mr. Shays because of his fatal inattention to the felonious Mr. Sohn.

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), a group whose mission it is to promote and defend citizens' First Amendment political rights of speech, assembly, and petition, noting that Shays had for well over a decade “fought tirelessly to enact greater restrictions on campaign speech, finally succeeding with the passage of the Shays-Meehan (or "McCain-Feingold") bill in 2002,” observed, following Mr. Sohn’s arrest, “…it is ironic that the Shays campaign may now face added penalties from the Federal Election Commission. It seems a bit absurd, but that's how it works when campaigns are victims of embezzlement - the embezzler is usually someone with the ability to alter campaign finance reports in order to cover his tracks, so as a result the campaign files false reports with the FEC.”

Noting that corruption inheres in corrupt individuals, CCP wondered whether Mr. Shays ever would be forced to face “the cruelest moment of all - will Mr. Sohn's actions force Mr. Shays to realize that he spent much of his political career attempting to restrict the speech of his fellow private citizens, without accomplishing much of anything having to do with public corruption?”

It is a point not likely to be pressed by Mr. Shays’ possible Democratic opponents, some of whom look upon campaign finance reform as the holy grail of politics. But there are vigorous Constitutional proponents around every corner in the Republican Party barracks for whom Mr. Shays’ ardent support of McCain-Feingold – the campaign finance bill that was supposed to eliminate corruption – remains a red flag waved before a bull’s nose. And these folks, talking a page from Barry Goldwater’s adage that moderation in the pursuit of liberty may be a vice, are not Quakers.

The Confederacy of Dunces Revisited

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.

But courts tend to disassemble unconstitutional structures brick by brink. “Time, there will be time,” says the poet:

“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.