Radiofree West Hartford - CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS SEND THEIR MESSAGE by Tim Siggia

CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS SEND THEIR MESSAGE

By Tim Siggia

August 12, 2006

With their repudiation of 18-year incumbent senator Joe Lieberman over the issue of the war in Iraq, Connecticut Democrats are now crowing that they have sent a message to the rest of America, and, of course, their allies in the "mainstream" media have taken up the cry. Instead of Sleepy Joe, Connecticut's Democratic voters have given the nod to Ned Lamont of Greenwich, a man of no political experience who ran essentially as a one-issue candidate -- but that one issue was the one that resonated with Bush-hating Connecticut. What the Connecticut Dems are saying here, however, is not quite accurate. They have not sent a message, they have sent a bunch of them -- and many of them may be messages that weren't exactly those intended. Let's see just what the Democrats of Connecticut have really said.

Message #1: Connecticut Democrats are now officially divorced from the American mainstream. The Democrats of Liberal Connecticut have now taken the final step and placed themselves on the political fringe. What they are now saying is that Howard Dean, Al Franken, George Soros and MoveOn.org now rule in Connecticut. Joe Lieberman, the last lone voice of moderation in the Democratic Party here, has now been banished to third-party status. Lieberman will now continue to campaign as a petitioning candidate under the banner of the Connecticut For Lieberman Party, and is expected to draw the votes of not only the few moderate Democrats left in this state, but also a sizeable number of Republicans., who will vote for him not only for his pro-war stance, but also because they have little confidence in their own candidate, Alan Schlesinger of Derby. Schlesinger was relatively unknown until it was recently revealed that he had obtained a "Wampum Rewards Card" at Connecticut's Foxwoods Casino under the false name of Alan Gold, a mild enough scandal, yet one giving him sufficient baggage to be a liability to his party.

Message #2: Connecticut Democrats are intolerant of dissent within their own ranks. Joe Lieberman now stands as a living example of what happens to Democrats who fail to toe the party line in every single respect. Sleepy Joe, however uninspiring a speaker he might be, has been a stalwart liberal on nearly every issue. He has been a defender of abortion rights, gay rights, and affirmative action. He voted against the Partial Birth Abortion Bill and the Flag Protection Amendment. He has voted with his party nearly all the time, dissenting only on occasional issues such as Social Security reform, the School Voucher Program, and, of course, the war in Iraq. Only a little more than six years ago, he was the party's choice to be Vice President of the United States. But those three issues on which he did dare to dissent and be his own man proved three issues too many. So it is that the same Democratic Party that loves to lecture conservative Republicans on the virtues of tolerance now says, in effect, "Do as we say, not as we do."

Message #3: Connecticut Democrats do not support the President of the United States. This charge, of course, goes far beyond Connecticut. When Senator Harry Reid of Nevada inherited the mantle of party leadership in the Senate after South Dakota voters rejected Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle for another term, he promised that Senate Democrats would take the role of the "loyal opposition". And, acting on intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein of Iraq was amassing weapons of mass destruction, most Democrats voted to authorize the pre-emptive war against Iraq. Since then, the Democrats have shown their promises in this regard to be empty, and have worked, with the help of the "mainstream" media, to undermine the war effort in every respect possible. In Connecticut, however, the issue is more than merely one of political disagreement, it is one of personal hatred for the commander-in-chief, who, as Democrats and even some Republicans here hate to be reminded, happens to be a native son of Connecticut. (Bush was born in New Haven.) Even Republicans here tend to distance themselves from Bush. Republican senatorial candidate Alan Schlesinger, for example, likes to call himself a "mainstream Republican", meaning that he does not support the national party's agenda, preferring the more liberal one of Democrats and name-only Republicans, of which he is one. The truth is that whether they be Democrats or RINO Republicans, what they all have in common is that their hatred of George W. Bush is so intense, so seething, that they would rather see America defeated than see him get credit for a victory.

Message #4: Connecticut Democrats do not support the troops. "Oh yes we do!" I can hear them protesting now. But the inevitable question here is, how do you support our men and women in uniform when you don't support their mission? The selection of pacifist Ned Lamont over incumbent Joe Lieberman makes the position of Connecticut's Democrats more than crystal clear. They would pull the troops out of Iraq with their job their yet unfinished. They would tell our service people that everything they have done to date has been in vain, that America is defeated; moreover, that America is defeated by choice. They would tell them moreover that the progress they have made for the Iraqi people was all for nothing and means nothing. The mantra of the Democrats on this issue is that Iraq is mired in a "civil war" in which America has no business being involved. This is a perfect example of the principle of Josef Goebbels, that a lie told often and forcefully enough eventually becomes the truth in the minds of those who hear it. The insurgent Saddam loyalists -- those who had it good under the deposed dictator and would see him returned to power -- are trying to stifle and destroy the recently-won freedom of their countrymen. That freedom was won by the arms of the United States and Great Britain, and to call the situation there "civil war" is to not only deny credit where it is due, but to give credit to a small and totally undeserving faction.

What the Connecticut Democrats have said about themselves here, they would extend to their entire state. With the general elections coming up in November, and Joe Lieberman apparently destined to be a candidate yet, Connecticut still has a chance to prove its Democratic Party wrong. This has been a primary upon which national attention has been focused, and more than a few pundits have opined that in Connecticut the Democrats have, in all likelihood, won the battle and lost the war. For now, the shrill voices of the Far Left have carried the day in Connecticut. With three months left to go before the November elections, however, there is still a measure of time left for cooler heads to prevail.