Readers React: California Republicans’ best hope: a Democratic Party that gets drunk on power

To the editor: Conor Friedersdorf puts the onus entirely on the Republican Party to re-brand itself in the face of sweeping electoral defeat across California.

But as news columnist George Skelton points out in the same day’s paper, one-party rule in California places a nearly impossible burden on the Democratic Party: magnanimity in victory.

Will the Democratic Party decide that the opinions of millions of Republican Californians no longer matter simply because they have less political representation? And, will members of the same party be able to entirely police themselves when it comes to issues like corruption and nepotism?

We’ve been inculcated with the message of “the resistance” contesting unaccountable one-party rule in Washington. But if California presages the nation, will one-party Democratic rule be any more virtuous?

Kurt Hofer, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Friedersdorf’s op-ed article on the moribund California Republican Party does not reference the numerous GOP policies that may be embraced in certain red states but not here. The unpopularity of Republican doctrine has much to do with the sad state of the party here.

Lack of concern for the environment; distaste for financial regulations to protect us from corporate malfeasance; support of voter suppression and gerrymandering; opposition to any tax regardless of the results to be obtained; thinking of healthcare as a commodity; support for a theocratic style of governing in which women’s rights, end-of-life decisions and intimate personal choices are controlled — all these are simply not popular positions here despite the Trump base’s enthusiasm for them.

Jan Rainbird, Irvine

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