Alan Caron’s May 22 column about “fiscal moderates” is a load of hooey (“Politically, fiscal moderates are becoming the new homeless”).

He has a notion rattling around in his head that both the left and the right are equally severe in their economic policy, but only one side has recently taken extremism to a whole new level of cruelty, dishonesty and needless austerity: the Republican side.

To claim that Democrats “cling” to the notion that “government is the miracle cure for everything” is silliness.

I dare Mr. Caron to back that claim up with actual facts, and show me legislators on the left who have advanced that idea.

What a lousy and undeserved accusation.

Since the election of President Obama, the right has gone off the rails at the federal and state levels.

Just look at the Maine GOP party platform passed and renewed in 2010 and 2012 to see just how ridiculous they’ve become.

Why did they back off some of their planks this year? Because it finally dawned on them how nutty they sounded on “Sharia law” and “Austrian economics” and other ridiculous ideas.

Democrats would love to meet in the middle, but Republicans have swerved so hard to the right that the “middle” now sits in Rush Limbaugh’s lap. Or Paul LePage’s. Take your pick.

Distinguished Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe didn’t pack her bags because the left suddenly became radicalized.

She left because her own party – the party of “birthers” and “death panels” and austerity fanatics who wouldn’t agree to $10 in budget cuts for $1 in tax increases – had jumped the tracks.

So, no, Mr. Caron. The left is not causing this crisis of government.

That is firmly the right’s doing.

Democrats can easily reach compromises with Republicans. But first Republicans need to return from Pluto.

Bill Harnsberger

Portland

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