The American Spectator

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C. Kenna Amos BR>Princeton, West Virginia p>Mr. Hogberg has present an interesting article. I do not doubt his migration stats in the least. I would, however, suggest a different and more realistic interpretation. Yes, folks do often leave the high tax and cost of living solid blue states for the lower tax and lower cost of living, usually more red or purple states. That is certainly what has happened here in New Hampshire. I would dispute, however, that the new arrivals benefit the GOP. More often than not, these folks are just as liberal as they always have been. The result is a fairly solid red state moving toward the Dems as the new arrivals demand the same services and policies that they had where they used to live and work. They, of course, want that all while maintaining the new low taxes and cost of living. It certainly has happened in New Hampshire, which is now really a blue state. It certainly happened in Oregon with the refugees from California. I would argue that is also why Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, etc. are now no longer solid GOP bastions up and down the ticket. As for Florida, the solid Democrat areas are majority populated by the refugees from the high tax northern and rust belt states (see Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach, etc.). p>I maintain that this migration that Mr. Hogberg notes is decidedly NOT an unmixed blessing. BR>-- Ken Shreve p>As long as self-described conservatives vote for liberals (23% for ultra-leftist Sherrod Brown in OH) and chameleon "conservative" Democrats (leftist in conservative verbal drag) the conservative movement is a sham. Those so-called conservatives who voted against Santorum, Talent, Allen, Burns and DeWine are either totally ignorant or so juvenile that they have put the country's safety in the hands of Muslim appeasers. p>For those who think Arkansas is a "red state" wake-up and look at who runs the state. Arkansas is a solidly blue state. It may vote for Republican Presidents, but the state is a bastion of corrupt tax and tax Democrats. As far as 2008, if the GOP follows the lead of the testosterone challenged Nation Review and jumps on the McCain bandwagon we're doomed to seeing Rodham-Clinton/Obama in the White House. BR>-- Michael Tomlinson BR>Crownsville, Maryland p>The last thing the Republican Party should do now is despair. This is only a house-cleaning and brighter days will return (there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and no it isn't the headlight of an oncoming train). Americans in general are "against the war" in Iraq not because the U.S. was wrong in deposing Saddam, but because it has taken so long and cost so much and we lost some damn good people, without an end in sight. If military operations in Iraq had been more aggressive, focused, and ruthless, and had we kept 300,000 (or more) ground troops in Iraq instead of 140,000 this mess would have been mopped up a long time ago and the President's poll numbers would have been sufficient to carry the day on November 7. This is hardly a liberal position. In reference to Don Rumsfeld, we needed another MacArthur, but got another McNamara with predictable results. p>Americans in general, and conservative Americans in particular, were mad as hell at the Republican Party prior to election day and the Republican leadership has only itself to blame. I have voted Republican in the past because I wanted social security reform, tax cuts, fiscal restraint, a balanced budget, accountability and CHARACTER in my elected representatives. I instead received a half-assed effort on social security, tax cuts that will expire in a few years (never to return, either), runaway spending, an ineffectual and incompetent Speaker of the House and a blatantly corrupt House Majority Leader, a Senator who pledged "term limits" when first elected (in 1988) and now running for his fourth term, naturally (of course) found to be in bed with a sleazy lobbyist, a senior Republican congressman cruising for gay sex with teenage pages, and only a partial victory in our quest for sanity on the Supreme Court. The worst of it, though, was the sense that the powers-that-be in the Republican Party didn't even care to listen.

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