After sleeping on Tuesday’s results, I beg to differ on Vincent’s dismissal of the NY-23 results as due to “The odd vacillations of the even-more-odd Dede Scozzafava” leading to “a win by a walking, talking mediocrity,” because I think this has a clear implications for one of the candidates in the GOPBattleRoyale for the 2010 CT Sen nomination.
What happened in NY-23? After losing the Republican nomination to Dede Scozzafava, a moderate Republican (remember those? I was one once upon a time) abhorred by the social conservatives because of her support for gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose, Douglas Hoffman, a previously unknown accountant from outside the district but with the right conservative ran as a candidate for the Conservative Party. The big name “ideological purists” of the GOP (Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Armey, Rick Santorum, Michelle Malkin, National Organization for Marriage, etc) all piled on in support of Hoffman and in then end the GOP ate its own and Scozzafava withdrew from the race.
But instead of being a good party apparatchik and endorsing the guy who killed her, she endorsed the Dem, probably committing political suicide, but on the other hand, it’s worked for Lieberman, so why not try it?
Why does this matter for CT? Because formerly moderate Rob Simmons has been making a loud and noticeable move to the right. He carries a tea bag in his pocket, next to his copy of the constitution.
He’s been “pallin’ around” with the TeaBag crowd. But to his right, he’s actually got a genuine, the FIC must love this guy conservative, Sam Caligiuri.
And after pumping over $1M into the NY-23 race, The Club for Growth cast a warning shot over Simmons’ bow in the WSJ this week.
Beyond Florida, other establishment Republicans may be looking over their shoulders. Chocola,[as in Chris Chocola, president of Club for Growth PAC] a former House Republican from Indiana, noted that he served with Rep. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and former Rep. Rob Simmons (R., Conn.), both running for the Senate.
“They’re both good guys, but they don’t fit the bill as Club for Growth candidates,” he said.
Before his organization decides to jump in, however, he said the group has to see how those races develop, and whether a clear “Club” alternative surfaces.
“The best Kirk and Simmons can expect is that we leave them alone,” Chocola said.
Meanwhile, Dick Armey and Freedomworks are setting their sights on the Nutmeg State. Dick Armey, FreedomWorks founder, will be coming to the Circle Diner in Fairfield for a “strategy session” with Connecticut conservatives. Also expected to attend is Bob MacGuffie, the Fairfield resident who penned the infamous “town hall” memo on how best to cause disruption at the summer town hall sessions held by Congressional reps.
Meanwhile Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the NRSC, who it appeared had anointed Simmons before all the other candidates came out of the woodwork, announced this week that the NRSC will not spend money in contested primaries. Not good news for Simmons, especially since he’s up against the money bomber Schiff and “I can afford to hire practically every political operative in the State of CT” McMahon.
But here’s where Sen. Cornyn sees some reality and the Armey/Palin/Limbaugh types of the world don’t.
Cornyn said Republicans “need to temper our conservative approach with pragmatism” and cautioned that hotly contested primaries could leave the party’s eventual nominees “broke and bloody.”
“I am a conservative and proud to be a conservative, but I recognize that in order to be elected as a Republican in some of these states, someone as conservative as I am might have a hard time being elected in a general election,” Cornyn said. “The goal ultimately is to have the strongest nominee emerge and then win in the general election.”
Just out of curiousity…has anyone asked Linda McMahon if she loses the primary if she’ll support the GOP candidate or if she’ll run as an independent? Just wondering…
35 responses so far ↓
Just out of curiosity (guffaw), has anyone asked Joe Lieberman whether he intends to support Ned Lamont as Governor?
The biggest problem in your analysis is that CT doesn’t have a history of voting for social conservatives.
There’s no reason to believe one will poll well enough to make the ballot in CT.
One thing I think is true. The GOP will have more than one person on the ballot opening a very big door for Dodd.
Sara:
As a conservative I don’t agree with you often but I think you are right on point here.
One of the reasons Democrats now are in the majority in the U.S. Congress is they recruited conservative Democrats to run in seats in the South. These candidates are pro-life, pro-NRA and fiscally conservative. Now, the may not get along very well with their liberal colleagues but they still cast an important vote that makes Pelosi the Speaker and Reid the Senate Majority Leader.
One of the main reasons Democrats lost control in the 90’s is they were not a big tent party but now have become one. Republicans use to do this but they have now swung right and many are not open to being the big tent party of the past.
In my opinion – this does not bode well for the GOP in 2010 and I’m not happy about it. To qualify to be a Republican the only issues you need to support are less government and fiscal discipline, which is something the GOP abandoned during the Bush years.
There’s no reason to believe one will poll well enough to make the ballot in CT.>
GoatBoy – Do you honestly think that makes a difference to the Dick Armey and Sarah Palin’s of this world? Don’t you think that if someone who doesn’t meet their ideological purity standards (like, say OMG! Linda McMahon) were to get the GOP nomination, they wouldn’t hesitate to run a more acceptable third party candidate?
Simmons stuck between a rock and a hard place, IMHO. He’s not conservative enough for the conservatives (and they have a voting record to prove it) and the more he tries to out-conservative Caligiuri (yeah, good luck with that) he’s going to alienate the moderates.
It started in the the late 80’s, JC. I moved to England in ‘89, and was already starting to feel uncomfortable with some of the socially conservative positions taken by certain Republican candidates. I kept my R registration until I moved back in 1999, but by that point, it had become apparent to me that the party was becoming dominated by the social conservatives rather than the fiscal conservatives. Eight years of George W Bush confirmed to me I’d made the correct decision, and watching this ideological purge is sad and kind of scary.
Saramerica,
They’d be wasting their time in CT. That’s the difference. NY-23 was a century old bastion of GOP conservatism. I think the Armeys, Palins and Limbaughs are smart enough to avoid sure losses. There are rumblings around Himes and retaking Shays old seat but a social conservative won’t win it. Nancy Johnson’s old seat would get more heat if it wasn’t redistricted. Neither were social conservatives.
I am curious why 1989 was an important year for you. GOP social conservatism wasn’t new. CT’s Philip Roth satirized Nixon’s anti-abortion stance and quest for the fetal vote in 1971’s “Our Gang”.
Honestly, let the far right dump money into CT. It honestly won’t do them any good. It’s totally nuts to think that a state like Connecticut would get in line with Sarah Palin, Limbaugh, Dick Armey and crowd on anything.
Honestly, these nut jobs have hijacked a party that at one time had decent ideas. Like JC said, smaller government, states rights, balanced budget. Great ideas. Too bad nobody cares about that anymore. Or rather, it’s only invoked in the context of increasing taxes to try to balance the budget, or when you want to regulate Wall Street. Ugh.
Actually, Sara may have a point. Conservatives like to patrol the precincts and apprehend Republicans who leap over the barricades and join the Democrats. They do for Republicans what Sara’s chums in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party do for Democrats. That is what happened in NY, and they nearly pulled it off. But GoatBoy has a point also: The conservative party has roots in NY dating from Bill Buckley’s mayoralty bid against John Lindsay (Question from NYT: Bill, what would you do if you won? Answer: I’d hang a net from the second floor of the New York Times building,” presumably to catch the falling bodies) and none in Connecticut.
Does anyone really believe that Sara was a Republican?
Be honest now.
Don – you can check the voting records. And it’s Sara with an H. BTW. My maiden name is Darer. I first registered in Stamford CT around 1981 and later in New York City. (1985-1989) I’ll make it easy for you. I lived at 226 East 70th St. Actually, I think I stayed registered in New York the whole time I was living abroad because that was my last address in the States. Have fun, and I hope you enjoy eating humble pie.
OK. And who have you voted for in the last two state elections? There were plenty of moderate Republicans there.
I means when you did vote, whatever the dates were. I’ve voted in every state election since 62, and never for a conservative — because there weren’t any. I honestly don’t see your problem.
State Rep Fred Camillo, personable though he might be, does not = moderate Republican. He is fundamentally opposed to me the social issues.
The fact that you don’t see my problem, Don, exemplifies I left the GOP. Because the social issues are very important to me. With a diabetic daughter, stem cell research is of the utmost importance in terms of my voting decisions. She asked me why President Bush thought an embryo with the potential for life was more important than she was. Good question. I wanted to know that, too.
I don’t want to do anything support a party that is increasingly kowtowing to the Palin, Bachmanns and the Limbaughs. If the GOP ever decides to get back to its roots, maybe I’d consider voting for a good moderate Republican candidate again. That’s if they aren’t all extinct by then.
There is a danger of extrapolating yesterday into a broader “trend.” It was one event, and frankly the only thing I really took from it was that the “orthodox conservative” movement is dead in the water. It was the one stand they really pushed to take, NJ had a sweeping corruption scandal and John Corzine simply was not prepared, and it wasn’t like the Republican in VA was their darling exactly. Exit polls showed it was largely about local issues (people declined to say that Federal politics played much a part, got that from WNYC yesterday). Not too mention I’m fairly certain this was like every other off year election, low turnout. Low turnout usually bodes well for Republicans.
My problem is that they are taking a very short lived issue (the bailouts mostly) and just running with the limited amount of animosity towards those issues as their whole platform on the national level. All the while shunning some of the best of the party for being slightly out of line with their core policy goals.
It just seem like the true-believers, after getting everything they wanted for 8 glorious years, cannot fathom that they are the cause of the mess we are in and now the electorate is called them out on it (and in poll after poll continue to do so). They seem to grasp at anything that may look like they are back in control, without actually doing anything. Those “conservatives” should have come to understand election can be a Homeric epic, and I’m all for that fallacy for them. The sooner they are marginalised in New England the second we can have two or three strong candidates.
(To note I am a Republican)
~Cheers
Sarah,
This is a blog devoted to state politics. Gov. Jodi Rell is not opposed to stem cell research; she’s a Republican.
As I understand it, the opposition is religious in nature. The Catholic Church opposes both abortion and the harvesting of stem cells from embryos when the embryo is destroyed in the process. By the way, stem cells can be created from non-embryonic tissue.
In late 2007, researchers developed a process that avoided the ethical controversy by inducing an adult somatic cell to become like an embryonic stem cell; the process involve the insertion of certain genes into a somatic cell – usually a fibroblast – with the help of viral vectors. The resulting pluripotent stem cell has similar properties to embryonic stem cells, which can be permitted to develop into tissues used for transplantation and other therapeutic uses.
In any case, religion has not been a bar to Catholic politicians in the state’s congressional delegation, all of whom now are Democrats. Shays, Simmons and Nancy Johnson, Republicans no longer in the delegation, did not oppose stem cell research.
So again, I don’t see the problem.
Of course it’s a free country, and you are free to associate with whichever political party suits your fancy.
My only point is this: If you had associated with the state Republican Party in the last, say 50 years, you would have been in company that voted for stem cell research, and you would not have been confronted with the indignity of seeing Rush Limbaugh’s name on the Republican line in voting booths. John Rowland, the ex-felon, never said Limbaugh’s name without mispronouncing it, and his successor avoided all personal association with the much despised Bush who, conservative would be the first to agree, was a spendthrift.
But then you knew all that, didn’t you?
>>Does anyone really believe that Sara was a Republican?
Yup – I don’t think she lies worth a darn.
I’ve yet to buy the lady a coffee; but I’ve had her cell on my cell’s speed-dial for over a year now, chatted with her as recently as Monday because I knew she’d get me up to speed on a local-to-her issue and not embellish to her party’s favor.
She did and she didn’t. (She did get me up to speed, and didn’t embellish)
We’re even friends on facebook – politics is weird huh?
Pelto and I don’t argue in private either; go figure.
(Partly because I’m not going in the ring with one of those 200 IQ characters anymore than I’d bring a knife to a gunfight.)
But today was shocking.
I had occasion to meet with a CT Commissioner this afternoon; as I entered his office he said; “Nice to see you ACR”
I wasn’t expecting that at all.
Don, I’m not going to argue with you. Yes this is a state blog but you questioned if I was really a Republican ever. I was registered as a Republican from 1981 through 1999. Whether or not the state party is full of moderates, the national GOP is a currently abhorrent to me and therefore I will do nothing to add to its strength either on a local or national level.
End of story.
>>and never for a conservative
Depends on who gets to define “Conservative” doesn’t it?
Goldwater was *the* definitive Conservative for a generation, yet by today’s new standard he would be considered by some (who have no business claiming to be Republicans in the first place) to be a RINO.
That’s a phrase we could do without.
Wikipedia lists 9 GOP factions: worth noting because the GOP is not monolithic and the social conservative and libertarian labels are not the only defining difference.
There will allways be attempts for one faction to define the party but in reality the factions are best left to nursing their own regional differences.
Fiscal conservatives
Libertarian conservatives
National Security-oriented
Neoconservatives
Paleoconservatives
Traditionalist conservatives
Religious Right/Theoconservatives
Social conservatives
States’ rights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Republican_Party_(United_States)
There is a danger of extrapolating yesterday into a broader “trend.” It was one event, and frankly the only thing I really took from it was that the “orthodox conservative” movement is dead in the water. It was the one stand they really pushed to take, NJ had a sweeping corruption scandal and John Corzine simply was not prepared, and it wasn’t like the Republican in VA was their darling exactly. Exit polls showed it was largely about local issues (people declined to say that Federal politics played much a part, got that from WNYC yesterday). Not too mention I’m fairly certain this was like every other off year election, low turnout. Low turnout usually bodes well for Republicans.
John Corzine wasn’t prepared? Say what? He had previously won two statewide races in New Jersey: one as Senator and one as Governor. He outspend Christie 4 to 1, mainly by using his own money. He had Bill Clinton and Barack Obama campaign for him. Joel Benenson was managing strategy for Corzine’s campaign. So no, I don’t really think you can say lack of preparedness is why Corzine lost.
On the other hand, Christie was not an idea candidate: the guy is not telegenic, he is, like or not, very overweight (and you don’t see that often with political candidates, although there are some exceptions like Nadler and most Presidents between the civil war and WWI). Conservatives in the primary had mainly supported Steve Lonegan.
As for McDonnell in Virginia, every commentator on election night said he ran as a conservative and had strong conservative backing. I don’t know anything about the guy, but do you have any evidence that he wasn’t supported by the conservatives?
There were certainly local issues involved: there always are. So while we can argue about whether or not this was a referendum on Obama, I think your two points (Corzine unprepared, McDonnell not their darling) aren’t correct.
One thing that is painfully obvious, however, is that the White House really blundered in where it put its resources. Barack Obama and the Democratic Party spent a lot of effort in New Jersey. Yet no one campaigned against Bloomberg in NYC. Bloomberg spent $100 million to his opponent’s $6 million, and won by a very small margin. Had a little of the reources dumped in NJ been able to come across the Hudson for the NYC effort, the Democrats could have won the mayor’s seat. I hadn’t been following that race, but always just assumed it was going to be a Bloomberg blowout. I was certainly surprised when I saw the results there.
“So no, I don’t really think you can say lack of preparedness is why Corzine lost.”
The only reason I said unprepared was that (from an outsider’s perspective) he didn’t sweep the municipalities himself with the corruption investigations and completely mismatched the tone of the election. He was very unpopular going in, and from everything I heard he didn’t attack on the basic issues of property taxes and corruption (I didn’t follow this race closely though mind you, I live in CT not NJ). I think the people of NJ did say something loudly, but the tone was towards Trenton and not Washington.
“I don’t know anything about the guy, but do you have any evidence that he wasn’t supported by the conservatives?”
Sorry, let me clarify. The national actors of the conservative movement drew the line for NY-23, which makes sense that election had national implications. So the fact that you, myself, and just about everyone else in the greater electorate was going “yeah, that guy…” to me at least shows that the main force was not behind him. Was his victory big for the GOP? Yes, the VA GOP. What the national conservative movement did not do was make a poster child out of him though, but maybe they will in the future.
I agree completely with your final paragraph though.
~Cheers
Fiscal conservatives, Libertarian conservatives, National Security-oriented, Neoconservatives, Paleoconservatives, Traditionalist conservatives, Religious Right/Theoconservatives, Social conservatives, States’ rights
Exactly, hardly a small tent is it?
Yet we hear, even in the northeast, what ultra-right, ultra-white conservatives we Republicans are.
Absurd.
The fact is – a LOT of us here can “left-flank” (according to today’s newer definitions (which are mostly a load of BS)) on social issues at any rate, most liberals with little trouble at all.
De-criminalize all drugs?
You bet.
Gay issues?
Marry your goldfish, leave me alone.
The odd thing is, *we* see it as being *more* conservative in that the goal should be less government at any cost.
Yet “new conservatives” would have the nerve to call the above “RINO” which of course should cause an untimely fall down an open elevator shaft.
NY-23 was a century old bastion of GOP conservatism
That lie originated with Pelosi and her courtiers in the press just kept repeating it. These are the recent demographics for that area.
John Gilbert 1960-63 Democrat Redistricted to the 22nd.
Charles Buckley 1963-65 Democrat Redistricted from the 24th.
Jonathan B. Bingham Democrat 1965-73 Redistricted to the 22nd.
Peter A. Peyser Republican 1973-77 Redistricted from the 25th.
Bruce F. Caputo Republican 1977-79
Peter A. Peyser Democrat 1979-83
Samuel S. Stratton Democrat 1983-89 Redistricted from the 28th.
Michael McNulty Democrat 1989-93 Redistricted from the 21st.
Sherwood Boehlert Republican 1993-2003 Redistricted from the 25th. Redistricted to the 24th.
John M. McHugh Republican 2003-2009 Redistricted from the 24th.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_23rd_congressional_district
Conservatives have, for the past 20 years or so according to Gallup, made up about 40% of the American voting public. Moderates are trending slightly lower from the mid 40’s down to the mid 30’s now. Liberals have gone up slightly, from the mid teens to the low 20’s but are still a minority, albeit a significant one within the Democratic party.
With those kind of voter breakdowns the Republican party should hold an electoral advantage yet that hasn’t been the case lately. There are, as I see it, two problems. The first is that while these voter breakdowns favor Conservatives this hasn’t translated to party identification. Republicans and Democrats were about tied in 2000, or pre-George W. Bush. However, since then Democrats have opened a wide advantage in 2009, upwards of 15% according to Gallup. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the blame for that can be attributed to the Bush presidency but the exact reasons for the disaffection are probably more varied and complex among Conservatives than any other group.
The second problem I see is a disproportionate Southern influence in the Republican party as a base of support. What had traditionally been a Northeast power base is now gone (as is the Southern California base of Nixon and Reagan) and has now been replaced. This may explain the advent of social conservatism, the religious right, and so on. While that may play well down South it has proven to be a disaster in other areas of the country.
Charles, you ought to realize that actual geographic boundaries vary with redistricting after each new census, so what was “NY-23″ at one point in time bears little resemblance to what it is now. In other words, while someone like Democrat Mike McNulty represented the 23rd in the late 1980’s the actual physical boundaries back then did not go much north of Albany. Simply going to look up NY-23 at Wikipedia is insufficient. You have to look at the historical maps.
Actually, this is a pretty good discussion on the many houses within the conservative movement; one is tempted to use the word “diversity” in this connection. What ACR did not say is this: A thing seen from the inside is often very different than the same thing see from the outside, and most people in the middle receive their information about conservatives from those who are hostile to it. For those who are hostile to it, the horns and tail with which conservatives in the US are adorned are necessary for gathering all the little chicks under their wing. One thing is absolutely certain: For the last half century in Connecticut politics, the state has been ruled by liberals and moderates, which is to say: The deciders, both inside and outside of government, have been center left, and the engine that moves the center – the media, unions, organized political groups – have been left of center. Perform this experiment: Name three conservatives on the staff of the only state wide newspaper in Connecticut going back, say, 30 years. Name one conservative group in the state able to turn out as many votes as unions or CCAG or (you may include here the whole alphabet soul of left of center groups that dot the state like mushrooms.) For liberals, left of center politicians, latte sipping putatively “objective”commentators and former Rockefeller Republicans who prefer NPR to the toxic Limbaugh, Connecticut is and has been the Garden of Eden. That’s a short way of saying that whatever economic or social problems beset Connecticut, it ain’t the fault of conservatives who, broadly speaking, have never in this state had their turn at political bat. This may change, and the possiblilty of change outside the usual liberal orbit has got some folk nnervous.
So why aren’t we hearing more of your voices in the national party? Where were all those voices when the GOP controlled Congress was passing legislation to bypass the judiciary to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case?
To me, the real irony is that much of the discontent out there is primarily rooted in economic populism. The disgruntled independents seem to want a balanced budget and to whack the banks, no tax increases or government activism, but more and cheaper health care. We keep going on like this and conservatives will replace liberals in 2010, then discontent with draconian spending, no economic accountability and hyper “conservative” social issues will swing the country back to even more aggressive liberals in 2012, and so on and so on.
The problem for mainline “liberals” and “conservatives” is that a very few issues dominate and destroy their own
Thanks for dissecting my post, Sara. I think GoatBoy’s observation is the most on-point. There are many different types of Republican. It is a mainstream media meme here in the Northeast to caricature all Republicans as hayseeds from Mississippi who married their first cousin and don’t know who Charles Darwin was. In fact, the party has had such recent leaders as Christie Whitman, Tommy Thompson, the Maine Senators, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Shays, Tom Davis — the list goes on and on. Just an FYI, they all knew who Charles Darwin was.
My point here is that the media tries to portray all Republicans as dimwits, and the charge has some resonance in the short term because they managed to make that stick with W. But you look at a McDonnell (who the WashPost tried to turn into a Neanderthal) or a Christie (solid lawyer), and you see bright, personable, educated people. There are many pro-choice Republicans. There are many Republicans who are in favor of gay rights (though usually not same-sex marriage, only because Republicans tend to be both more religious and also Constitutionalists, and neither the US nor any State Constitution mention any “right” to marriage.) There are many Republicans who are environmentalists. The list goes on and on.
So in a primary, in a generally GOP district, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a conservative win over a complete farce like Scozzafava (let’s face it, a majority of DEMOCRATS now call the Stimulus a failure, and she still favors it), and that would have happened of there was a primary. But here, the party bosses picked her, and she simply failed to connect with the Party IN HER OWN DISTRICT. If she had, all the Dick Armey visits in the world would not have had an effect.
Now to our state. Simmons and McMahon have the inside on this race. I actually like Caligiuri very much, but he doesn’t have the name rec to take them on. I still think Foley has no shot, and Schiff is having fun. With Rob and Linda, you get two moderates. If Sam stays in the race, he will get say 10 to 20% from traditionalists and his district, but it won’t be enough to win. The only way a down-the-line social conservative wins in CT is if (a) the moderate candidates all admit to once having been in the Taliban, (b) that at least four people make it into the primary, making only 25 to 35% necessary for victory, and (c) there is an Category 3 or higher hurricane on Election Day. Barring this, either Rob or Linda will most likely win, and the bogey man of the evil right-winger who came to town to eat the Republican Party can head back down to the press room of the New York Times from whence it came.
There is absolutely nothing in Sara’s posts, past or present, that would suggest that at any time she was a republican, other than her saying so.
Sara, when you were supposedly a republican, what didn’t you like about democrats?
You sound like that state rep from Stonington. She was a “maverick” republican, who didn’t believe in any republican ideals. When she switched parties, she said she was going to be a “maverick” Democrat. But since then, she’s one of the most liberal members of their caucus.
Sara thinks that by saying she used to be a republican, her criticism of the GOP has more weight. No one is buying it.
Trying to run a primary while a general election is going on is just bad political strategy, period. Scozzafava would likely have defeated political neophyte Bill Owens on her own, but the in-fighting and then the championing of someone from outside the district unfamiliar with local issues was just a recipe for disaster in NY-23. As it stands Republicans lost a seat they needn’t have in some blind quest for ideological purity. Those that blame the process miss the forest for the trees. If Republicans are to regain congress they’re going to have to be a whole lot smarter then they showed in Ny-23.
>>apparent to me that the party was becoming dominated by the social conservatives rather than the fiscal conservatives.
Not really.
The left has moved the line far more than the right has.
What may strike you as “social conservatism” could well be some backlash from moderates like myself.
The constant drone coming from the moveon.org KOS faction that appears to many us, certainly me – to simply loathe America and is hell-bent to tear down every traditional bastion and symbol for no other reason that they’re traditional.
They’re the first to scream of abuse of the 1st and will do so at the drop of hat; yet they were no where to be found during any Mosque discussions in Wallingford, and in fact it’s been the cars with “Chris Murphy” bumper stickers in Litchfield that carried the most vocal anti-Synagogue faction.
(“We don’t mind Jews….but this people are *those* Jews” said one as we walked into a meeting.)
Many New England towns have a town green where all sorts of secular events occur almost all year long. Yet when a group wishes to place a Nativity Scene on the same green where we issued a permit allowing the KKK to stand and pass out leaflets, someone from the left frequently complains.
The left needs to recognize that tolerance is a two way street.
I think both sides (nationally) have been undergoing a frightening shift toward either extreme, but there are also Democrats and Republicans who are impossible to tell from one another. As far as I’m concerned, anyone in a party is “in name only.”
In Connecticut, the Republican Party has a much bigger tent than the Democrats and I’m proud to be one of Connecticut’s newest “RINOs”. I hope both parties become more tolerant of differing views within their ranks and embrace the center as the place where we’ll find decent results.
Sam Caliguri is hardly the Palin-esque conservative some people would like to believe. Compared to the national party, every Republican candidate for Senate is a moderate. We’d do ourselves a favor by ignoring ridiculous left vs. right labels and spend more time worrying about who is trustworthy and qualified.
Jim, the two party system effectively locks out several other historical flavors from emerging: (they will under duress and now exist as RINOs and DINOs).
FDR/Kennedy-era Democrats: economic liberals, social conservatives, pro-social public works, smaller military, non-involvement unless provoked. (The unified Catholic Vote of 1924 to 1968).
Libertarians: smaller military, states rights, minimal business or social legislation. Social Darwinists.
ACR, in a truly free society religious expression would be allowed in the public arena. The tyranny of the aetheist or secular minority of one is just another form of tyranny and closed-mindedness as shallow as the one it is trying to. replace.
GOP Chairman Steele seems of two minds about how “big tent” the party is between one day and the next. http://bit.ly/41BAEg
>>in a truly free society religious expression would be allowed in the public arena. The tyranny of the aetheist or secular minority of one is just another form of tyranny and closed-mindedness as shallow as the one it is trying to. replace.
I agree and can not understand why some wish to fight their own neighbors over petty nonsense when to *some* public access for their Menorah or Nativity Scene seems to bring them so much happiness.
If there’s no cost to taxpayers, and it makes a bunch of your neighbors happy why not either help them, or sit down and shut up?
You must log in to post a comment.