Submitted by Brian Raabe
I was sanctioned here for too many Letters to the Editor of the Greenwich Free Press and for painting all Republicans with a broad brush.
(Rota: Raabe is Rabid Aug 9, 2025)
On the former, I would write to the Greenwich Sentinel, but that desk reserves the right to edit for “clarity and length” and will only accept letters that among (many) other things satisfies the criteria for:
• Relevance: Submissions must pertain to topics of public interest, particularly those related to Greenwich. Broader regional or national issues are rarely considered and only if they have direct local relevance.
For a Republican party that claims to be censored by the liberal press, there’s too subjective a needle to thread over there.
And anything important at the national level is, by definition, relevant locally Dear Sentinel.
So, I have been writing to the Greenwich Free Press in advance of the upcoming elections because there is a lot at stake.
Which brings me to item two, painting Republicans with a broad brush.
The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and the Bush family thereafter is dead.
I was raised in a typical household for the time and place.
Religious. My father was a WWII veteran. A quiet industrious home of goals set and achieved.
Conservative. I consider myself same.
The conservatism of my past has been replaced by something inferior at its helm.
A spewer of profanity. A womanizer.
A TV personality…
The antithesis of quiet religious conviction he is instead the photo-op President in the midst of civil protest.
A Bible held aloft and a ridiculous tough guy scowl that has never known a day of hardship.
The broader Republican party claims to be cracking down on MS-13 in the name of safety and instead deploys ICE to arrest taco vendors at Home Depot while kitted out for Desert Storm.
The Republican party of cruelty had a bipartisan deal on a path to legalized immigration and torpedoed it for political gain.
A nation that was the tip of the spear among a League of Nations enjoys Republican leadership that insults foreign leaders almost daily.
A Republican party that unleashes the dogs of DOGE as a means to balance the budget and professes to see $2 trillion in savings as a “slam dunk” barely comes up with 10% of that number.
A Republican party that wants the electorate to believe tariffs are great and really sticking it to our trading partners, but avoids the inconvenient truth that tariffs are paid by Americans, not foreign exporters.
A Republican party that prizes theatre over substance.
Mr. Fazio (as the catalyst for my being called out) is emblematic of the lack of heft at the party’s core.
That any Republican would suggest with a straight face that this young man has the experience to be Governor says all one needs to know about what the party has become.
You claim yours is the party to address Connecticut’s tax burden?
Your Republican leader and your Republican congress added $2 trillion to the national debt. Don’t lecture on fiscal prudence.
Yes, I am painting Republicans with a broad brush intentionally.
To carry the banner of Republican, you must own all the aforementioned with your membership. All of it. You do not get to pick and choose. In today’s Republican Party tent you are all in, or you are out.
It is not conservatism. It is not good for America. It is not strength, and it is not leadership.
It has been six months of chaos.
And Republicans want to spike the ball.
Let’s talk next summer.
Seize the Panama Canal, take Greenland. Move nuclear submarines closer to Russia.
Unhinged.
“I will end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.” A Republican Party whose leader’s mouth writes checks that can’t be cashed.
The crown jewels of America’s University system paying protection money to a racketeer in DC.
As a conservative, not a flag waving “sunshine patriot” as Washington called them -I keep waiting for the moment that does not come as Republican’s follow their amoral pied piper about on the grounds of Mar a Lago, as they ape his behavior in State Houses, as they follow his lead in Greenwich Connecticut and defend his and the party’s behavior.
Indecent.
With all that, I would think the least of your worries would be a broad brush and hurt feelings.
You’re not “that kind” of Republican?
You aren’t renting the runway here. Every Republican that wears the name owns the conduct.
I keep waiting for the moment that sank McCarthy when he went after the Army to root out suspected communists.
“The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch’s attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy’s career: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
When will one of you Republicans call out what is happening around you?
Until then, yes, you are all in the same bucket.
Too broad a brush? No.
A Republican party that professes a moral compass yet has no magnetic north, only a magnetic Dear Leader.
And so, a Republican party that must be stripped of any access to power over our daily lives.
In the same manner in which Harry Fisher stripped $4 million from schools as a capricious, smug act that felt about right to him.
In the same manner Fred Camillo has stripped money from more productive use and instead has lawyered up and sued the Board of Education.
I am accused of being “rabid.”
When one spends a lifetime in this great nation and sees it being taken over by a party tragically inconsistent with the principles of John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” it calls for saying something – often.
Read the sermon, the link is at bottom.
Spoken in 1630. Not easy to decipher but read it and compare its message to today’s Republican Party.
Anyway, not rabid, lab tests are back.
Rational.