To the Editor:

Dean Scontras’ Nov. 8 Op-Ed piece “The Left’s will to disbelieve” (Page A15) begins by quoting a 1984 essay claiming that liberals were soft on communism, then parades before us all the things that he thought were wrong with the Left then, and now, 30 years later, he thinks, still are. And in the end, he blames the “mainstream media.”

Yawn. When is the Republican Party going to come up with new ideas for the whole country, not just their aging white male constituency? Fresh ideas that don’t involve shutting down the government and threatening us all with a default on the national debt, or preventing people from voting?

There are major issues hanging over our country that the Republicans simply ignore or obfuscate: Income inequality that has been building since the beginning of the Reagan years and is now the worst in the Western world; health care that is the most expensive, least inclusive, and growing more mediocre by the year (where is the Republican health care plan?); large ethnic populations that feel ignored and disenfranchised. And so on.

Unless the Republican Party shows more flexibility, inclusiveness and innovativeness, they will, within a generation, fade away into an obsolete bastion of frightened white people.

We need two strong, viable political parties in the United States to develop effective, consensual solutions. Scontras’ thinking will not get us there.

If the Republicans continue in that vein, we will be looking at an era of Democratic dominance that could last for generations.

Kevin Twine
Brunswick