Opinion: “Moving Left To Stay To The Right”
The Day, Sunday, August 31, 2008
By Dick Ahles
So what are we to make of Republican Congressman Chris Shays, the co-chairman of the McCain campaign in Connecticut, telling voters they should send him back to Congress because, in a way, he's just like Barack Obama?
In a new commercial, Shays says, vote for me and you get "the hopefulness of Obama" along with the "straight talk" of his candidate. The commercial opens with a photo of Obama and contains no mention of Shays' party affiliation.
"The hopefulness of Obama" would seem to be a strange talking point for the McCain co-chairman, but Shays has his reasons, survival being the main one.
Shays has been in Congress for 10 terms and was the only Republican House member in all of New England to survive the 2006 election. If he's going to make it for an 11th, he's got to do at least as well as he did in 2006 when he defeated former Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell by just over 5,000 votes. The 3,400 new Republicans registered in his 4th District this election year would be somewhat heartening, had not more than 11,400 new Democrats been registered at the same time.
This leaves Shays with two choices. He can attract Democrats and independents or find another line of work. Attracting Democrats may be difficult because the congressman has been as hawkish on Iraq as the most extreme neocon, visiting the country so often - nearly two dozen times. He might try for the Iraqi parliament if things don't work out here in November. On second thought, his dismissal of the Abu Ghraib atrocities as the work of a sex ring probably wouldn't play well in Baghdad either.
Serving with Shays as co-chairman of the Connecticut McCain campaign is fellow warmonger Joe Lieberman and it would be hard to find a more devoted political couple. Lieberman had Shays' support through the entire nasty campaign two years ago when Lieberman's plumping for the Iraq war cost him his party's re-election endorsement. Lieberman eventually beat the party-endorsed candidate Ned Lamont and a Republican whose name I can't remember and neither can you.
Shays' endorsement of Lieberman in 2006 came even before the senator was defeated in the primary and is best remembered for the Republican congressman saying, "Lieberman's election is more important than my election." He even called Lieberman "a national treasure." He really did.
Shays' opponent this November will be Jim Himes, who now builds affordable housing after a career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Himes may be an unknown, but he's a prosperous unknown, having raised $2 million so far. This kind of money keeps him even with Shays in a district that requires candidates to advertise in the expensive New York TV market
The incumbent's quest for an 11th term is of special interest to the Republican Party, which was embarrassed in 2006 when Shays turned out to be the only Republican House member left standing in Connecticut, where the party lost its 3-to-2 House majority, as well as in the rest of New England. In addition to losing Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons in Connecticut, the party lost its two Republican House members from New Hampshire, leaving the post election count for the region 21 Democrats and one Shays.
Coincidentally, when the House voted in June to give $160 billion more to the Bush administration, with no strings attached, to pursue the war in Iraq, the New England House delegation vote was 21 against the war funds and Shays in favor.
This vote would appear to be at odds with the congressman's claim that, if re-elected, he would be Obama's kind of Republican: "I would think I am precisely the Republican he would want to have."
Well, not precisely.
