LETTERS: GOP too dumb to take sound advice
To the editor:
At a conference here in Las Vegas, Republican thinkers Michael Steele and Steve Forbes warned their party that unless it embraces immigration reform, eschews Obama Derangement Syndrome and develops a positive agenda for governance, they are doomed to lose national elections for the foreseeable future (“Speakers lay out GOP path to victory: vision, inclusion,” July 12 Review-Journal). Fortunately for Democrats, no one in the real GOP leadership will pay any attention.
Instead, Republican leaders will continue lapping up a steady diet of nutty lawsuits, impeachment lunacy, Fox News fantasies, gun lobby interpretations and the Review-Journal editorial page. Why? Because this kind of over-the-top insanity raises huge sums of money from their frightened, gray-haired donors who feel they’ve lost all control, as well as the Romney-Koch types who believe that all political power rightly belongs to those who know what’s best for the rest of us.
Mr. Steele and Mr. Forbes, does the phrase “snowball in hell” ring a bell?
JOHN ISAACS
LAS VEGAS
Media and the GOP
To the editor:
In reading George D. Coghlan’s letter, I couldn’t help but marvel at his concern that the Review-Journal doesn’t go after President Barack Obama enough (“R-J ignoring Obama,” July 10 Review-Journal). The fact is the Review-Journal is a newspaper in a predominantly blue state, and it still has to report the news accurately.
If you’re looking for information similar to the offerings of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, the Review-Journal editorial staff does a great job at that, especially on Sundays. The problem is that many people display an irrational hatred for all members of the opposing party, instead of giving a thoughtful analysis to their policies and whether those policies were successful or not — while not being realistic about the disastrous mistakes and bumbling of the previous administration.
I think it will be a while before we see another Republican president, precisely because of the irrational hatred promulgated by right-wing media. Right-wing billionaires created Fox and its spinoffs, and now the monster they created is in control of the entire party. The people who get their information from right-wing outlets are precisely the ones who won’t let a moderate, nationally electable candidate get through the primary process.
Because of right-wing media, the entire conservative movement hates and despises the president for perceived transgressions against them, their liberty and the Constitution, but can’t demonstrate anything he’s done that George W. Bush hadn’t already mastered. Except for that little white lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the 4,800 Americans who died fighting on that front. Of course, that’s not nearly as bad as that darn Barack Obama making health care available and affordable to millions.
I never hated George Bush nor Ronald Reagan. To me they represented exactly what the Republican Party does when it has the power to do so: sell out the country to moneyed interests. I was against their injections of religion into government and was completely embarrassed by their inability to speak intelligently on many subjects supposedly under their control and ultimately the condition in which they left our country, but I never hated them.
Mr. Coghlan, the Review-Journal isn’t ignoring Mr. Obama; it just has to be competitive for its paying readership, a majority of whom have no use for slanderous half-truths, juvenile attacks and made-up accusations often found in alternative “news” sources.
RICK REYNOLDS
LAS VEGAS
