I am proud to report that on Thursday our Groton Democratic Town Committee passed a resolution calling on our state legislators to require a special election in the case of a Senatorial vacancy. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten from some of those legislators there is no chance that our veto proof majority will pass such a statute because:
1. A couple of state legislators who plan to run for governor don’t want their own wings clipped, in the unlikely event they get elected; and because;
2. It wouldn’t “look good” for the Democrats to engage in such a raw exercise of political power, because it might look like an exercise of political power. Apparently it would be tacky to take advantage of political power. They’ll leave that to the governor.
Thus we see that our state legislature is pretty much the same as our national legislature: victims of the battered legislator’s syndrome. We see it in this morning’s Courant, where the Democrats whine about the fact that Jodi Rell is calling them soft on crime for not passing a “three strikes” law which has proven unworkable everywhere it has been tried. We see it in our national legislature, where Harry Reid is in the pre-cave stage on the FISA debate.
The Kennedys were reputed to live by a “Don’t get mad, get even”, code of conduct. That’s something that the Democrats here in Connecticut should consider whenever Rell engages in this type of political hit job. They have the power to hit her back where it hurts, but they have to be willing to do so. Instead they whine, and worry about whether they will “look good”, which they never do, since no one looks that good when they’re on their knees.
Republicans, on the other hand, don’t seem to care about whether they “look good”. In the U.S. Senate they are engaged in an exercise in raw political gamesmanship, threatening to filibuster any amendment to the FISA bill so that George Bush can excoriate the Democrats during the State of the Union address. Harry Reid appears to be maybe, finally, timidly learning that the proper response is to fight back, but unfortunately his method of “fighting” retains too much of the whine to do much good. He doesn’t understand that most of the country has long since accepted the fact that George Bush is a congenital liar, so no one would really be shocked, more likely they’d be pleasantly surprised, if Reid simply said that George Bush is lying about the FISA bill and he’s demanding telecom immunity only to make sure he can cover up his own criminal behavior. Not only would that constitute a bit of push back, but it’s the truth.
I’d say there’s a 90% chance that Reid will find some way to cave and give Bush what he wants. Here in Connecticut, the legislature will continue to get whipsawed by a third rate governor. Lucky for them, on the “three strikes” issue, they’ll likely find that it’s an issue about which voters will show more maturity than the politicians or the press.
UPDATE: A commenter asks if I have the language for the resolution. I actually drafted the resolution, but all the inflammatory stuff I put in about Lieberman was removed, as well as a lot of other whereases, so it’s now definitely the work of a committee. It reads as follows:
Whereas, Connecticut law currently provides that if a
U.S. Senate seat becomes vacant the Governor selects a
replacement who serves until the next federal election
and
Whereas, no person, not even the Governor should have
the power to select the person who will represent over
two million citizens of the State of Connecticut in
the United States Senate;
Now, therefore, we, the Groton Democratic Town
Committee, urge our legislators in the Connecticut
House of Representatives and the Connecticut Senate to
use their veto proof majority to amend Connecticut law
to provide that U.S. Senate vacancies shall be filled
by special election.
UPDATE TWO: In view of the comments below, I should add that the Town Committee also cut language (the “other whereases” to which I referred) about the possibility of Dodd leaving the Senate from the resolution. In my own view, he would be an ideal VP choice if Obama got the nomination, and he could certainly ably fill a top Cabinet position. While I admire and respect Andy Maynard, I respectfully disagree that now is not the time to do this. Not only is it the right thing to do, but there will never come a time when it is done except when the sitting governor is a member of the party in the minority in the legislature. It will always draw charges that it is politically motivated. Almost everything Rell does is politically motivated (witness the ‘soft on crime’ stuff referenced in the post), and it hasn’t seemed to hurt her at all.
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