RIP, Connecticut GOP

November 6, 2008

Connecticut Republicans’ dismal performance Tuesday surely has supporters of limited government and lower taxes in the Nutmeg State depressed.

On Thursday, utter despair probably took hold when Senate Republican “leader” John McKinney offered this gem to The Hartford Courant: “We are proud to be at 12. There was obviously -- pick your term -- a landslide, a tsunami, a tidal wave that not only reached the country, but here in Connecticut, as well, for President-elect Barack Obama. ... I think the fact that we’re standing here at 12 is pretty remarkable.”

If McKinney’s proud, imagine how thrilled his counterpart Lawrence Cafero must be -- the GOP caucus in the House doesn’t comprise a third of its chamber, but a quarter!

The national media have touted the defeat of Fairfield County’s U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays as the final death knell for New England’s Republicans at the federal level. Observant Nutmeggers know that at the state level, the GOP has been a corpse for years.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment when things went wrong, but 1991 is a good guess. That’s the year several GOP turncoats in the legislature -- cajoled by ex-Republican Lowell Weicker -- acquiesced to a broad-based income tax. Prior to 1991, nearly all Republicans and many Democrats considered it madness to adopt a levy that would destroy the state’s attractiveness to high-income citizens throughout the Northeast.

The party got some of its mojo back in 1994, when its candidate for governor won office in part due to his pledge to ax the tax. (Amazingly, the GOP won control of the Senate that year as well.) But despite strong public support for repeal -- two years into John Rowland’s first term, 74 percent of Nutmeggers still wanted the tax to go -- Republicans didn’t deliver.

Rather than lead the citizenry in a spirited campaign against ever-higher taxes and runaway government spending, the GOP establishment lost its will to fight. As the years passed, it convinced itself that the ‘60s radicals who had seized control of the Democratic Party from its blue-collar bosses were accurate reflections of the state’s residents. The assessment wasn’t true then, and isn’t today, but moving left was just so … easy.

See, we Republicans are just as “anti-sprawl” as Democrats. We want to shovel more money at government schools, too! And subsidies to empty, government-run trains and buses? Sounds great!

As these quotes -- all taken from recent newspaper accounts -- demonstrate, little distinction remains between Connecticut’s political parties:

* “Candidates for the 18th District state Senate seat … agreed on nearly every issue during a debate Thursday, avoiding any heated discussion.”

* “The two candidates running in Tuesday’s special election to fill the seat in the 113th legislative district found they think alike on many issues.”

* “In a taped forum … Democratic 18th District State Sen. Andrew Maynard of Stonington and his Republican challenger, former Griswold First Selectwoman Anne Hatfield, found many issues they could agree on.”

* “Rob Kane and Kenny Curran belong to different political parties, but their answers to 29 questions at a candidates forum … revealed few disagreements on issues like tax reform and improving education.”

What has GOP me-tooism produced? Republicans are superminorities in both legislative chambers, and their one elected official at the statewide level enjoys “support” that is a kilometer wide and a millimeter deep. (Governor M. Jodi Rell has overseen a shrinking number of GOP lawmakers, and evidently, her endorsement of this year’s ballot question on a possible constitutional convention wasn’t worth much.)

Now, the good news. Strategies, tactics, issues, positions, and arguments the Connecticut GOP abandoned long ago still exist. And when properly employed, they still work. Despite the “tsunami” McKinney tells himself struck the nation this week, in many places, Republicans did surprisingly well. The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that a “patchwork of localized efforts by various Republican activists and groups produced a 17-seat GOP pick-up in the state House of Representatives.”

Connecticut isn’t Idaho, Texas, or South Carolina. Social issues aren’t ever likely to dominate the GOP’s agenda here. Neither are libertarian causes such as ending drug prohibition or legalizing prostitution. But a principled defense of entrepreneurship, government transparency/accountability, and school choice -- not the standard empty rhetoric, but real leadership -- can bring the party back from the abyss.

Bereft of ideas and mired in irrelevancy, Connecticut’s GOP has never been in sorrier shape. It’s also never been riper for a takeover by smart, hardworking, and principled activists, donors, and candidates.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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