Anyone interested in the future of the Republican Party in Connecticut should check out Peter Wolfgang's Facebook wall.
Wolfgang, head of the Family Institute of Connecticut, kicks things off with a lengthy opinion piece on Doug Hageman, the longtime GOP activist who has launched a bid to unseat party Chairman Chris Healy. (Healy's term is up in June; he has yet announce whether he's interested in leading the party again.)
Wolfgang says he has "no elephant in the race" but also concludes that social conservatives such as him would have a more prominent place within the party if Hageman were in charge.
Hageman isn't exactly a social conservative himself: Wolfgang calls him as "a self-described Rockefeller Republican, a pro-choicer who says he does not care if a man marries his goldfish.'' But Wolfgang is pragmatic and says Hageman understands the role social conservatives could play within the Connecticut Republican party.
Wolfgang's commentary sparked a passionate discussion as dozens of Republicans weighed in, among them Jack Fowler, publisher of the National Review.
"[I]f you think that a conservative resurgence is going to happen in any way THROUGH the GOP and its current gang of apparatchiks, the kind who just DIDN'T GET IT in November, who continued to NOT GET IT during the special electi...ons (held mere days after a liberal Dem governor announces a $1.5 billion income tax hike), who seem content to lose elections, who last year set as their goal a one-seat gain in the Senate (they got it, but it happened to be Joe Markley who got it for them), you are sorely mistaken,'' writes Fowler, who lives in Milford.
"There are solutions,'' Fowler adds. "Sadly, they are not to the liking of the GOP clique that come up with horrid candidates who, even if they do somehow manage to win, are typically at best Democrats-Light. We need a legislature made up of Markelys and Suzios, and that is a thought that makes the CT GOP powers, with certain exceptions, wretch."
