The New Hampshire primary and the continuing saga of Jeanne Shaheen
Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire isn’t running for re-election this year. The Republican and the Democrat nominees in the fight to take her place were decided yesterday in New Hampshire’s rather tardy primary. They are ex-senator John Sununu (not to be confused with his father John Sununu or his brother Chris Sununu, each of whom have been Republican governors of the state) and current House member Chris Pappas.
So Shaheen (who also is an ex-governor of the state) is going to be retiring and replaced by one or the other. But she’s not to be outdone in the family dynasty sweepstakes: her daughter Stefany Shaheen won the Democratic primary for House District 1 in New Hampshire, which is the district Pappas currently represents.
Shaheen the Elder was in the news, however, and the subject was her profound ignorance and/or duplicity:
? WOW! Fox News just absolutely stunned Sen. Jeane Shaheen (D).
SHAHEEN: I haven't heard anyone in my party wanting to give illegals taxpayer-funded healthcare!
FOX: I'm glad you said that. I have some tape…
"Show of hands: provide coverage for illegal aliens?"
EVERY… pic.twitter.com/vAch22LsJp
— War Correspondent (@warDaniel47) September 8, 2026
I’ve written about Shaheen before; see this 2021 post in which I explain why she gets my goat:
Those of you who aren’t from New England may be unaware of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire. It’s an ignorance for which you are hereby wholly forgiven, because she usually presents as the most bland and boring of moderates and hardly ever makes the news.
But she is not moderate, and never has been in her entire Senate tenure, although her profile has been exceedingly low. Beneath that kindly and smiling grandmotherly exterior, she has never mounted an objection, as far as I know, to a single part of the extreme leftist program of the current Democratic Party, dutifully voting for all that they propose with nary a discouraging word.
Shaheen is basically a phony moderate of a type that has become standard in the Democrat Party. Pappas – her possible replacement – is no better.
They’re so used to the media just accepting everything they say without question, they’re shocked when someone challenges them with minor details like “facts”, “evidence” or “your own words”.
Two pet peeves of mine in the same post: political dynasties in what’s supposed to be a representative democracy, and old news recycled and spread through the online world as though it just happened.
I realize that neo herself did not say this was recent news, but the Shaheen clip is from October 2025, and all the right-wing media is talking about it today just like they were talking about it the day it happened. Not sure why the right-o-sphere picked today for this one, they probably could have found a new one or at worst waited a bit for a new one.
Once in a while you can see the machine at work. Yes, there is one on our side of the fence too.
Robert Kerry once said that Bilge Clinton was ‘an unusually good liar. Unusually good’. Richard John Neuhaus replied that an unusually good liar would not have a reputation for being an unusually good liar. The unusually good liar is Jeanne Shaheen.
Art Deco:
Excellent point.
Niketas:
I think perhaps because the NH primary to replace her was yesterday?
Except that facts and evidence are racist, oppressionist, colonialist, and white supremacist.
Pretty sure one can add the law and the Constitution to that…
File under: Make Medea Great Again!
@neo:I think perhaps because the NH primary to replace her was yesterday?
You got me, I don’t know why the Batsignal went out, but it did. There’s a constellation of websites all owned by the same content provider that all have it today as though it just happened and don’t mention the primary at all. Salem Media’s websites brought it out again today, but usually marking it old news. I don’t know if those were independent but I doubt it. One went with it and got a strong response and the other followed suit, is my guess, probably the Salem people saw it trending on X.
That’s the reality we’re living in, that there are people who make their living successfully injecting things into the discourse. The blogosphere used to be amateurs in pajamas writing about what interested them, X used to be people who had something to say followed by people who wanted to read it. Those days are long gone, and there’s lots of money to be made in faking that things are still the same in order to shape what we talk and think about. Engagement goes up a tenth-point and somebody can buy a Lambo.
Those days are long gone. . . .
Well, yeah. “Behold, [man] travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood.”
It is ever thus. Surely this is not news to you?