Submitted by Joanna Swomley, Greenwich
The Republican Town Committee Chair has asserted that local Democrats are divisive and hit below the belt. He obviously hasn’t been paying attention as his local party faithful rip up Democrat lawn signs around Town, engage in conspiracy theories and insults online, attempt to have the RTM make wearing masks optional, and try to get the public to look anywhere other than at the plain fact that local GOPs across the country collectively comprise the national GOP.
A single person cannot corrupt our democracy. It takes a team. The local GOP is unquestionably part of the national team and is the local party of Trump. (See this New Yorker article for the detailed analysis on Greenwich.)
So if you believe that science and facts matter, if you want to protect a woman’s right to choose, protect our environment and our civil liberties (all on the ballot in Hartford too), and you don’t want to see Betsy DeVos’ educational platform in Greenwich, you need to vote blue up and down the ballot this November because a 6-3 Supreme Court has put everything in play at the state level.
Whatever one could have thought about a potential Trump presidency in 2016, now we know the reality and, given the chants of “12 more years” at Republican gatherings, the choice in 2020 could well mean the choice of democracy or authoritarianism. While the Greenwich GOP would like you to think Trump has nothing to do with Greenwich elections, that is only true if you believe character and leadership do not matter and ignore the parallels on policy issues.
There is no daylight between the Greenwich Republican Party and the party of Trump.
The Trump administration has used government troops against our citizens, undermined the integrity of our electoral system, divided us along racial lines (separating children from parents, stoking racism by saying that racists and anti-semites are “fine people” and, last night, refusing to condemn white supremacists), compromised our military (through insults, firings, demotions and withdrawals), made our friends, allies and us less safe in the world and used our hard earned taxpayer dollars to enrich private citizens and government officials. Crickets from the Greenwich GOP. Not once have they come out against anything that Trump and his administration have done in the last three-plus years.
Covid is a hoax that has pretty much disappeared and masks are absurd. You think this is just Trump and not part of Greenwich? Wrong. Two prominent town Republicans introduced and seconded a move in the RTM this month to allow Greenwich residents and businesses to ignore the State mask mandate. One of the state GOP candidates, Harry Arora, has gone so far as to mimic Trump by endorsing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid. Talk about quack
science. And the Republican Town chair says local, state and national politics are separate?
They are one and the same.
Some Republicans around the country have bravely stood up and denounced the lies and hate that have spewed forth. They have chosen our democracy over their party. They are patriots.
Sadly, they are missing from the Republican Town Committee and its endorsed candidates. So far not one Republican official in Greenwich, including those running for office on the local GOP ticket, has had the courage to do so.
Greenwich has four state races on the ballot this year: one senate and three assembly. The Republican candidates are people who have embraced Donald Trump, explicitly and/or tacitly by their silence and refusal to denounce undemocratic and anti-American actions. If they cannot take a stand against Trump, it is clear that we cannot count on them to stand up and protect us in Connecticut. We cannot count on them to protect against further environmental roll backs, our constitutional rights, our voting rights, or our democracy because, quite simply, they are happily riding the Trump train. Look at their voting records if you have any doubt.
This November, every Greenwich voter who values democracy, or who thinks lying and gaslighting the American people about everything big and small is unacceptable, needs to vote Democrat up and down the ballot.
Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor in support of local candidates in the Nov 3, 2020 election may be submitted to [email protected] for consideration beginning July 15 and with a hard deadline of Oct 26, 2020 at noon.