GOP failures good for Democrats

I learned two things from Jamie Deal's Sept. 21 article "Victory." One, Deal has left the reality-based community and now resides in a world where facts don't matter. And two, he has a great future as a partisan hack spinning Republican talking points. He claims Democrats are "hostage" to their base, unlike their Republican counterparts. But why then do Democrats have a pro-life leader in the Senate in Harry Reid while Republicans continue to placate their base with gay marriage amendments and billion-dollar tax cuts to oil companies and the über-wealthy? And it's an insult to reality to call Republican policies such as the recent Medicare Reform Bill and Patriot Act "pragmatic." More accurate would be to view them respectively as a sell-out to campaign contributors and a blatant grab for power.

Deal likes to cite recent primary results in Connecticut and Rhode Island as examples of Republican superiority over Democrats. But describing Joseph Lieberman's loss to newcomer Ned Lamont as Liberals purging "anyone who strays from [their] ideology" is little more than wishful thinking on Neal's part. The reality is Lamont's victory is a repudiation of Bush's failed neoconservative foreign policy, the senator who supported it, and the awkward kiss Bush planted on Lieberman's cheek. And Lincoln Chafee's narrow victory over Republican challenger Stephen Laffey? Chafee won after Libby Dole, head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, threw every resource east of the Mississippi into saving Chafee from his own party, abandoning races in Tennessee, Florida and Maryland. So much for pragmatism. And how is Chafee doing now? The latest Rasmussen poll has Democrat challenger trailing Sheldon Whitehouse 51-43.

Only one in four Americans think the Republican-led Congress is doing a good job. Deal's hope for a Republican victory despite Republican failures is really just his disdain for facts at work again. People are tired of six years of failure, the Sept. 11 boogeyman doesn't work anymore, and Democrats will gain seats in the House and Senate this fall. Democrats will finally have something to smile about at the East Campus bus stop this year.

Gregory Feltman

Trinity '09