Consequences of not condemning Trump

Jim Slusher finds it "troubling" that so many state and local Republicans were swept up in Tuesday's "Blue Wave." He blames it on the negative "coattails" of the president. But it's much more than that. All that was necessary for (almost all) Republicans to be defeated was to speak of Donald Trump or his policies that affect people locally in positive terms, in less than negative terms or, by silence, implicitly approving of them.

Operation Midway Blitz; the killing of people, including citizens, in the streets by his new Gestapo; the removal (persecution?) of farmworkers; the new concentrations camps; the tariffs; and, of course, the Iran war and its consequences for us all proved to be extremely unpopular for the majority of the voting population. The frustration expressed by Patricia Kladis-Schiappa that "candidates were unfairly overlooked simply because we had an 'R' next to our name" can be easily explained by the old saying: "If you sleep with dogs, you get fleas."

If one wishes to be identified as a Republican, one takes ownership of Republican policies unless that one vociferously repudiates those policies.

Slusher states that, in the future, "may their fates be decided by their own personal strengths and ideas." I submit that their fates were most definitely decided by their personal weakness in not condemning the "unpopular weaknesses" of Trump and their (personal) ideas of embracing his ideas.

David J. Wagner, Bartlett