Free Republic

Lowell P. Weicker Jr., who swaggered through three terms as Connecticut’s last Republican senator, challenging Richard Nixon over Watergate and the GOP’s rightward shift under Ronald Reagan, then willed the state’s income tax into existence in a second act as a third-party governor, died Wednesday. He was 92. His death at Middlesex Hospital was announced by his family. Weicker left elective office in January 1995 as Connecticut’s 85th governor, capstone to a career dominated by two decades in Washington, where he emerged as a fierce defender of abortion rights, the separation of church and state, and funding for social services,...

Lowell Weicker served three terms in the U.S. Senate from Connecticut as a Republican, before being defeated by then-Democrat Joe Lieberman—with an assist from influential conservatives—in 1988. Two years later, in a rare feat, he won Connecticut’s gubernatorial election as a third-party candidate. In a Friday interview, Weicker—now 82—slammed the modern GOP, scorched his old foe Lieberman, and urged an upheaval in how America funds public schools. …I think that if the Republican Party stays as it is now, I would still run as an independent, as I did when I ran for governor. The problem would be that if...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Former Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker said Monday that Sen. Joe Lieberman deserves a stiff challenge in his bid for re-election next year - but it won't come from Weicker. Despite some speculation to the contrary, Weicker said he would not run against Lieberman, a Democrat who ousted him from the Senate in 1988. That, however, didn't stop him from attacking the incumbent. Speaking at a Rotary Club luncheon, Weicker sharply criticized Lieberman and President Bush over the Iraq war. "I have seen this country propagandized into war," said Weicker, a Republican-turned-independent. "It's now a second wave...

The conspiracy theorists have been having a field day with the report in the Feb. 25 edition of The Hartford Courant that offered up details into how Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner apparently helped to introduce independent gubernatorial candidate Russ Potts to former independent Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker and indirectly to senior campaign consultant Thomas D'Amore. Will the news that Potts and Warner have both refuted the Courant report have the expected cooling effect on the punditry? "I initiated the call to Gov. Weicker. That's how it happened," Potts told The Augusta Free Press on Thursday. "The governor's recollection of...

LOOK WHO'S FOR DEAN It had to happen. Nine years after he last held office, 23 years after his own brief and—not surprisingly—unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Lowell P. Weicker Jr. injected himself back into national politics last week. The 72-year-old Weicker—the former Republican senator from Connecticut (1970-88) who was easily the lawmaker most hostile to conservatives in his own party (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 17%). He became governor of the Nutmeg State (1990-94) over candidates of both major parties and then got a state income tax through the legislature. The man whom many consider the most...