{"id":8235,"date":"2006-08-18T10:12:21","date_gmt":"2006-08-18T14:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8235.html"},"modified":"2006-08-18T10:12:21","modified_gmt":"2006-08-18T14:12:21","slug":"the-white-houses-take-on-connecticut-is-exceedingly-rare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-white-houses-take-on-connecticut-is-exceedingly-rare\/","title":{"rendered":"The White House’s take on Connecticut is exceedingly rare"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Monday’s White House press briefing, Tony Snow mentioned<\/a> that the president would effectively remain neutral in only one Senate race in the country this year: Connecticut’s. Snow said, “The president supports the democratic process in the state of Connecticut, and wishes them a successful election in November.”<\/p>\n

A day later, a reporter noted<\/a> how unusual it is for any president to stay completely neutral in a Senate campaign. Snow hedged, saying, “Actually, there have been races in the past where candidates didn’t meet the expectations of the local parties and Presidents have stayed out, Democrats and Republicans, in the past.” The reporter responded, “I’d like to see a list.”<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Snow’s office produced one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“In 1970, President Nixon took a neutral position in the US Senate race between [Vietnam war critic] Sen. Charles E. Goodell (R-N.Y.) and challengers Rep. Richard Ottinger (D-N.Y.) and James L. Buckley .” In 1980, GOP officials did not support a Republican in Michigan, the list said.<\/p>\n

Then in 1982, President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush did not campaign against 20 House Democrats who voted for Reagan’s tax cuts, the list said. (Not really the same as not endorsing the official GOP candidate.)<\/p>\n

In 1990, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown denounced Rep. Gus Savage (D-Ill.), accused of making sexual advances toward a Peace Corps volunteer, and pledged not to give his reelection campaign any funds. (That’s not the president, but okay.) In 1991, Bush I “refused to endorse Louisiana gubernatorial candidate David Duke ,” Snow’s office said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, Connecticut GOP Senate hopeful Alan Schlesinger is in with some pretty exclusive company. Taking the list literally, there are only two modern examples of a president refusing to back a congressional candidate of his own party, “one involving an alleged sex offender and the other a Klansman. Not unusual at all<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In related news, the Bush White House may be quietly backing Lieberman, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee has chosen to be slightly less subtle<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

[Yesterday] morning, a source at the National Republican Senatorial Committee confirmed in a phone interview that the party will not help Schlesinger or any other potential Republican candidate in Connecticut, and it now favors a Lieberman victory in November.<\/p>\n

“We did a poll and there is no way any Republican we put out there can win, so we are just going to leave that one alone,” said the NRSC source.<\/p>\n

Instead, the NRSC is pulling for Lieberman over Ned Lamont, who rode an anti-war message to a victory in the Aug 8 primary.<\/p>\n

“Most Republicans would agree that he’d clearly be a better choice than Lamont,” said the source.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An NRSC spokesman later clarified that the Republican committee would not “actively and openly” support Lieberman, but would simply opt out of supporting Schlesinger.<\/p>\n

It occurs to me that someone, perhaps the DSCC, should go out of its way to remind Republicans in Connecticut that Lieberman, just a few weeks ago, enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Human Rights Campaign. Just a thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Monday’s White House press briefing, Tony Snow mentioned that the president would effectively remain neutral in only one Senate race in the country this year: Connecticut’s. Snow said, “The president supports the democratic process in the state of Connecticut, and wishes them a successful election in November.” A day later, a reporter noted how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}