Responding to CT Post's Hugh Bailey: Shays Does Not Deserve to be Re-Elected

by: thomashooker

Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 15:28:09 PM EDT

Dear Mr. Bailey,

I read with surprise and dismay your recent oped suggesting that Republican Congressman Chris Shays should be re-elected.  You asked rhetorically, "What's so bad with Chris Shays?", responding "He's pretty good on global warming. He supports alternative energy. He says he wants universal health care. What's so bad about all that?"  You go on to conclude that, "Shays looks good on a whole list of issues," and assert, without explaining the rationale, that the suggestion "that Republican moderates are a group worth having around isn't without merit."  You also suggest that the main rationale for getting rid of Mr. Shays, returning the Democrats to power, makes "getting Shays" a moot point.

Have our standards for public officials and their accountability to the voters sunk so low that any incumbent Republican should be re-elected as long as Democrats are in control and he can no longer do much damage?  I would like to point out a critical reason that Mr. Shays should be removed from Congress that was not a factor in the last election:  He lied to us.  Chris Shays told voters repeatedly that he favored setting a timeline for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, and that most could be withdrawn in 2007 (Washington Post, August 25, 2006).  He stated in debates with Democratic candidate Diane Farrell that he was "more anti-war than she is" because he favored a timeline, but she favored benchmarks.  Yet once re-elected, Mr. Shays turned around and voted five separate times against setting precisely such a benchmark for withdrawal that he told the voters he favored.  He justified his flip-flop by telling voters that he supported a timeline, but only if it were introduced by President Bush, the commander-in-chief.  Mr. Shays certainly didn't tell voters about that little catch during the campaign.  And now, while still maintaining that he supports a timeline for withdrawal, he is supporting John McCain for president, who has stated emphatically that such a timeline would create "chaos", and was tantamount to "retreat" and surrender" and that he would never support one.  Should we voters really be expected to reward Mr. Shays with re-election for lying through his teeth to us about supporting timelines when hundreds of young Americans continue to be killed and wounded every month?  
 

Do we reward Mr. Shays with re-election for his grotesque hypocrisy in claiming conscientious objector status for himself during the bloody Vietnam War, and telling Peace Corps Online that he would have refused induction into the military had he not been granted CO status, but turning around and voting enthusiastically to send more than a million young Americans to fight and and thousands to die in Iraq?  

Should we reward a man with re-election who advocated, and continues to advocate, the privatization of Social Security through diversion of receipts into private accounts, a program so unpopular that more than 70% of eleven thousand of voters on Mr. Shays' own online poll voted against in 2005?  

Should we really reward Mr. Shays with re-election for advocating to the hilt the Bush administration's disastrous economic policies (for two years as vice chairman of the House Budget Committee) that have nearly doubled the federal debt, brought about one of the worst housing crises in the past century, enfeebled our financial system, resulted in a drop in average family earnings, brought inflation to the highest level in decades, that will result in job growth during the past eight years that is barely a quarter of that achieved in the previous eight years, and taken the dollar to record levels of weakness?  Do we reward Mr. Shays with re-election for doing absolutely nothing while our state's commuter rail system was literally falling apart year after year?  Do we reward Mr. Shays with re-election when the state of Connecticut remains next to last of the fifty states in the federal revenues we receive compared with the taxes we pay to Washington when for over a decade, and, as one of the most senior congressmen in the Republican majority, Mr. Shays failed to do anything to narrow that deficit?  

Should we re-elect Mr. Shays and trust him to support universal health care legislation, when he had never once before in his previous twenty two years in Congress supported it, when he declined the past two years to support the exactly the same legislation he is co-sponsoring this year?  When he previously supported George Bush's right-wing "health savings accounts" scheme, which was nothing but tax breaks for the healthiest and wealthiest among us?  Should we really be expected to trust Mr. Shays to support universal health care when he lied to us so blatantly about his support for setting a timeline for withdrawing our troops from Iraq?

Do we reward Mr. Shays for being so out of touch with the values of our region and our state?  Does Mr. Shays represent our values when he refers to the former disgraced Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as his "hero"?  Did he reflect our values when he voted in January 2005 to gut the powers of the House Ethics Committee for no purpose other than to prevent yet another ethics investigation against the disgraced former majority leader Tom DeLay, whom Shays labeled "a great majority leader"?  Does he deserve re-election when he supports George Bush's illegal wiretapping of American citizens?  Did Mr. Shays reflect the values of this state when he endorsed George Bush for president, not once, but twice, a president so unpopular here that more than four out of five Nutmeggers disapprove of Mr. Bush's job performance (Quinnipiac poll, July 2, 2008)?  Does Mr. Shays reflect this state's values when he endorses for president John McCain, whom the state's voters are set to reject in record numbers this November?  Did Mr. Shays reflect the values of this region when he not only voted for the Republicans' FY06 budget in early 2005, a budget that was bitterly condemned by Connecticut Post's own editorial board, but he also cast the deciding vote for its passage?  Did that bill, which without Shays' vote would not have passed, that contained the biggest cut in the federal student loan program in its history, which eliminated the federal program to track down and attach the wages of deadbeat parents who weren't paying child support, that cut support for home heating fuel for the elderly and the poor right as fuel prices were beginning to skyrocket, reflect the values of our region and our state?

Should we reward Mr. Shays' gross incompetence with re-election?  Mr. Shays told us emphatically and repeatedly that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that he had reconstituted his nuclear weapon program, that he was a growing threat to the United States, claims that were all false.  Moreover, Mr. Shays admitted at a Westport town hall meeting in April this year that he didn't even bother to read the classified version national intelligence estimate made available to all members of congress in 2002 that contained numerous statements disproving the administration's claims, or admitting that there was no evidence to support its claims.  Because Mr. Shays was wrong, more than forty sons and daughters of Connecticut are dead, hundreds more have been wounded, and our nation has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars,  Mr. Shays tells us that "everyone believed Saddam had WMD's".  But that is just not true.  Mr. Obama wasn't convinced, and the voters of this country and this state will soon reward his wisdom and perspicacity with the presidency of the United States.  Mr. Shays' opponent in 2002, Stephanie Sanchez, steadfastly maintained that President Bush "has not made the case" for invasion.  She was right.  Why should we reward Mr. Shays for being wrong when his poor judgment has cost us so dearly?  Should the voters of our region leave in place a man so demonstrably incompetent in foreign affairs, who will certainly be called upon again to vote on important matters of national security and critical foreign relations in the future?

And should we reward with re-election a man who was not only wrong about Iraq, but so wrong for so long?  Let's recall that Mr. Shays in April of last year, when asked at a town hall meeting in Greenwich, had he know back in 2002 what we knows now- that Iraq had no WMD's, no nuclear weapons program, was in fact an enemy of al Qaeda and bin Laden, rather than an ally- whether he would still have voted to invade, responded that, yes, he would still have voted for invasion; he simply would have offered other reasons for doing so (reasons that he refused to elucidate).  During the 2004 debate at UConn-Stamford with Diane Farrell, confronted with the findings of the Duelfer Commission report that Iraq had no WMD's, stated that we should have gone into Iraq before 9/11, not after.  Do you really expect Connecticut voters to reward that sort of long-term, willful incompetence?

No, Mr. Bailey, there must be consequences for lying to voters, for utter incompetence, for hypocrisy, for supporting politicians and policies that are so at odds with our needs and values.  It is not enough to say that we should consider re-electing Mr. Shays because, with the Democrats in power, he can't do much more harm.  The Constitution State deserves better; America deserves better.  And Mr. Shays must be held to account.

Sincerely,