Vote’s mixed message

Re “GOP victories send message to Democrats,” Nov. 4

I’m not quite sure what there is for the GOP to celebrate. While the GOP gained two governorships, two Democrats won seats in the House, where they are likely to vote with the Democratic majority.

And while the GOP can try to point at the governors as something positive, Republicans should be looking over their shoulders at the two reasons they didn’t gain in the House: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Had there been no input from either, I think the GOP would have won the seats.

There was no referendum on President Obama’s popularity. The onus was on the Republicans to gain seats in Congress. On that they failed, again.

David Hittelman

Encino

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I’ve lived in New York’s 23rd District. If a “tea party” conservative can’t win in that region, there are probably not too many places where he can. The Republican Party had better realize that spewing the blather of Beck, Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh might please the ditto heads and neocons, but they are a very small portion of the electorate.

Americans rejected a same-sex marriage law in Maine and passed a civil-union law in Washington state. This should not surprise anyone; we have consistently said that while we do not want to redefine the word “marriage,” we do want all couples involved in long-term, caring relationships to have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples.

So where does that put us? Slightly right of center, the same place we have been most of the time since our founding. We don’t like extremists on either side -- and the two parties had better wake up to it.

Chris Daly

Yucaipa

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The victories by the Republican Party tell me that my fellow Americans’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. It was only 10 months ago that we were talking about the country going into the worst depression in our history. And who put us there? The Republicans.

When Obama took office, he told us it would take at least two years before our economy would stabilize. He is right on schedule. In the last 10 months, Obama and the Democratic Party (with a few exceptions) attacked global warming, our dysfunctional healthcare system, two unpopular wars and almost everything Americans are supposed to care about. During those same 10 months, the Republican Party’s only purpose was to say no to everything.

Is our attention span so short that we no longer remember what our country was like before the Democrats got into office? Independents are voting to put Republicans back in office again. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, couldn’t they at least wait another year and two months?

Steve Binder

Oxnard