Dear Lexington,

Your recent essay Are the Republicans mad? reeks of contempt and disdain: of an Olympian view of the great politically unwashed: Messrs. Mann, Ornstein and Norquist. How very clever of you to find a contempt and disdain that is utterly democratic in it's application. N'est pas? And the expressed virtues of your essay is that it is set in the most beguiling rhetoric of self-infatuation and the political omniscience of a master thinker, yourself. But to the question of the Republican Party's descent into 'madness' ,which you find as a change of basic philosophy and a strategic maneuver, one could point to the adoption by state governments in fourteen states of the union, that have passed voter suppression laws that limit the votes of the working poor and the disadvantaged : black,Hispanic, students, the elderly, all primarily Democratic voters. Here from the ACLU is a graphic that demonstrates the extent of the 'madness' of the Republican Party, that even you might find comprehensible. One could interpret this attack on the right to vote, of those you disagree with as a form of 'madness', even a betrayal of the fundamental right to vote in this Republic. In essence you have ignored the empirical evidence of 'madness', even of betrayal of the basic right to vote, in favor of your a priori political omniscience and it's rhetorical corollary.

A faithful reader,

Political Cynic