To the Journal editor:

Watching the mid-term election results on TV knocked me for a loop; not because of the clear victory of the Republicans over the Democrats, whose voters took the day off.

Rather it was because the states in the Republican fold were colored in red on the election board. What possessed the GOP, some of whose members hold beliefs to the right of Louis XIV, to identify with the color of the politically far left?

Republicans fail to realize that color matters in politics. Since the Russian Revolution of 1917, red has been the established color of communists and radical socialists.

Red Banner, Red Army, Red Square and Red China were familiar terms to Americans during the Cold War.

The disgraced Republican Joseph McCarthy had faults but political color blindness was not one of them. The communist hunter say, or imagined he saw, Reds in every sector of American life.

If today’s Republicans continue to wrap their election victories in red, they will find themselves being addressed as Reds by the electorate.

Roger Magnuson

Marquette