Public won’t support backers of Iraq war

Baltimore Sun Letter to the Editor August 21, 2006.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman’s quip that Ned Lamont’s victory over Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is proof of the Democratic Party’s strategy of “retreat and defeat” says more about the desperation of the Republicans than about the results of the Connecticut primary (“Democrats find direction in Conn. vote,” Aug. 10).

The bottom line about the Lamont-Lieberman race was that one centrist millionaire was narrowly chosen over another. But what really worries the Republicans is that more than 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq.

By standing still while the rest of the country moved away from President Bush’s hopeless “stay the course in Iraq” policy, nearly all Republican and Republican-lite candidates (like Mr. Lieberman) now find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion and the wrong side of history.

Dave Goldsmith
Woodstock