To the Editor:
RE “A Healthy Government Thrives on Compromise, Accountability, Representation for All” (Letter, Feb. 25).
I am an unaffiliated voter from southeastern CT, and not familiar with the details underlying the concerns of Collin Colburn, a Republican member of the Fairfield RTM.
However, while I very much applaud and support the practices of good government he purports to embrace, it does ring a little hollow coming from the representative of a party which defiles such principles so regularly and so egregiously.
Every day I read of detention camps in foreign countries, attempts to suppress voting and editorial license, evisceration of government organizations critical to the safety and well-being of a majority of our population, disregard for women’s health and rights, disrespect for long-time friends and allies, and subservience to the interests of powerful business and perhaps even foreign leaders among many other things which don’t reflect the best of what we were, and maybe hopefully still are.
We know that it is not even a Republican supermajority in the federal government, nor in many red states, that are very successfully stifling any opposition with flagrant disregard for opposing views and no interest at all in compromise.
I struggle to see Mr. Colburn’s fears as anything more than ingenuous at best and perhaps even a bit cynical. If for example speed cameras were a dangerous overreach of government power, then what is DOGE? And should the use of speed cameras really rate high on any list of divisive partisan issues given what republicans are promoting nationally and in many states?
Couldn’t Mr. Colburn help avoid the perpetuation of any partisan disharmony, lead by example in our state and just let it go? Perhaps it would be more constructive to focus instead on promoting these principles more aggressively within his own party?
While I emphatically support the legitimacy of the points he raises, I can’t help but be more impressed by the dissonance between what his party’s actions say and what his words say, than by his actual concerns.
Joe Rice
Niantic CT