Unfettered Letters

Who’s unpopular?

In a fit of wishful thinking that would make Tinkerbell blush, columnist E. Thomas McClanahan claims that Obama’s popularity has peaked and the Republicans are on the rebound (3/29, Opinion, “Obama’s big-government express is losing steam”).

We shouldn’t underestimate the well-documented ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Right now, though, Republican popularity is dropping faster than the economy, and there is no end in sight. The Republicans are in a free fall because their message — less government — conflicts with the public’s perception that this economic disaster was caused by lax government regulation. McClanahan’s intellectual ancestors wrote in 1933 criticizing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s massive government spending plans, and they were just as wrong then as McClanahan is today.
 
If Republicans insist on promoting solutions from the Herbert Hoover School of Economics, they’ll be rewarded in 2012 when they win as many states as Alf Landon did in 1936.

Steve Simon
Leawood

Republicans didn’t appreciate Bush

My last letter from Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee states that Republicans “failed you on bailouts, spending, immigration and so much more.” It says Americans expect Republicans to “cut taxes, create jobs, defend this nation, put strong judges in our courts, shrink Washington’s power and let individuals run their own lives.”

George W. Bush was such a president, but the hateful media rhetoric blinded many Americans. The constant chant “distance yourself from Bush” put Republican candidates in peril and resulted in a Democratic victory and much change.

Bush propelled our nation to higher ethical standards, more cooperative attitudes, respect for everyone including political opposition and genuine honesty.

We do not know the strength of a person until they are gone.

James F. Westhues
Overland Park

Limbaugh and the GOP

I am disappointed to see columnist Jonah Goldberg come to Rush Limbaugh’s defense (3/5, Opinion, “Rush to judge Rush doesn’t advance debate”).

Limbaugh is popular because he can make outrageous remarks and get by with it. Some agree with what he says but are not comfortable expressing the same opinion out loud, so Limbaugh has become their voice.

Mr. Goldberg’s reasoning that he also wants President Obama’s programs to fail, but of course he wants to see the stock market come back, doesn’t make a lot of sense. President Obama inherited this economy and debt, which took the former president eight years to produce. But the Republicans have jumped in with criticism after only a few weeks of Obama’s inauguration. When recovery comes, it will mean that Obama was on the right track, but the Republicans aren’t being shy about letting everyone know they don’t want him to succeed.

Limbaugh’s rhetoric is what freedom of speech is about, and we are so lucky to be Americans, but he is a negative force at this most difficult time for our country and the economy.

Barbara Pfaff
Gladstone

Jonah Goldberg was right. Conservatives need another William F. Buckley Jr. Rather than the incendiary bombs of a Rush Limbaugh, conservatism needs an intellectual undergirding. Bill Buckley was respected because even if you disagreed, he made you think and improve your ideas.

I believe, however, as much as conservatives need a Buckley, they really need a Margaret Chase Smith. In 1950, she was the first Republican to stand up to Joseph McCarthy. She stressed she wanted Republican victory, but “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to potential victory on the four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.”

We need a strong two-party system in this country. Hopefully, there is a present-day Margaret Chase Smith with the courage to speak for principles and ideas, unafraid of the emperor of dittoheads.

“No” is not a solution to the nation’s problems.

Bond Faulwell
Overland Park

Let me get this straight. The Republican Party, the party that has sold itself for years as the only one that can keep us safe from foreign interests, terrorists and economic meltdown, is now the party that doesn’t have the guts to stand up to a radio personality?

That’s just pathetic.

Bud Simpson
Kansas City

Credit for Dow’s rise?

The Dow went up 379 points Tuesday. I wonder how many of the Republicans who have been screaming that Mr. Obama has caused the Dow to drop will give him credit for the Dow rising? Charles Krauthammer? E. Thomas McClanahan? Rush Limbaugh? Anyone?

Nah, I didn’t think so. I don’t think I have ever seen such a group of folks so bankrupt as to both honesty and good ideas beneficial to our economy and our nation.

Richard L. Strickland
Mission

Limbaugh and the GOP

So the left and the mainstream media are up in arms at the comments of Rush Limbaugh suggesting the failure of President Obama’s policies. How dare Limbaugh not support nationalizing health care, vastly expanding the welfare state, likely tripling the deficit of Bush, weakening the military, supporting a suspect global warming treaty, rolling back support of Israel, expanding abortion rights, illegal immigration and an almost unending list of other left-wing social programs that will bankrupt future generations?

Am I to believe that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, television networks and newspapers were striving to support George Bush over the last eight years?

Millions of conservatives disagree with Obama’s policies. Last I heard, we had that right. God knows that the left has been exercising the same position as Limbaugh for years.

Tom Zach
Gladstone

To claim Rush Limbaugh to be the head of the Republican party demonstrates the intellectual grasp of Mary O’Halloran as much as it does the power of Mr. Limbaugh (3/4, A-1, “Is Rush GOP royalty?; Limbaugh is the party’s leader, some Democrats think, while Republicans are wary to cross him”). But it has provided the Democratic Party leadership a much-needed distraction from Americans’ close examination of their policies. You know, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

What Mr. Limbaugh should have said was that these liberal attitudes and policies toward governing can no more succeed here than they did in Cuba or the Soviet Union. Whatever relief the Democratic Party may temporarily enjoy now will be short lived, as their wild spending, tax policies and massive deficits in the face of economic crisis work against America over the next two election cycles. They will then pay at the ballot box, as surely as all Americans will pay for these deficits.

Charley Morasch
Leawood

Reading Rush Limbaugh’s rants and the ditto remarks of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, I wonder why they’re upset over President Obama’s plan. Evidently there is a blank spot in their memories of the $700 billion bailout of the banking system that President Bush pushed through Congress last October, with the panic that we had to save the economy. All this occurred without any oversight as to what was going to happen to the money.

Any individual, Democrat, Republican or Independent, wishing that Obama fail in his attempts to stabilize the nation is tantamount to saying the United States should go down the tube because you don’t like our current president. Pitiful!

Joseph Zaiotti
Kansas City

Rush Limbaugh should be a happy man. He was characterized as “a big fat idiot” in a book title a few years ago, but thanks to his expressed wishes that our new government will fail, he’s never looked smaller.

Dan Nastali
Kansas City

Democrats ill-informed or insincere?

It just amazes me what has come out of the Democrats’ mouths through the years, and people don’t say anything to them about it.

Joe Biden says it is patriotic to pay taxes. He must have forgotten about the Boston Tea Party.

Now we have the Democrats and President Obama telling us that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s programs in the 1930s brought us out of the Depression. It was WWII that brought us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The last one is Obama telling us that America invented the automobile. Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile. He invented the automobile assembly line. The Library of Congress credits German Karl Benz with inventing the “first true automobile” in 1885.

So are the Democrats really stupid or just lying to us?

Alan Fisher
Independence

Defending the spending

Why do Republicans complain about President Obama wanting to spend money to improve our highways, bridges and schools? This creates jobs and improves our transportation system and schools. What’s wrong with that?

It’s a lot more than Bush ever did for his own country.

John Thomas
Prairie Village

Some Republican governors, including Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, have stated that they will not accept parts of their states’ allotments of the stimulus program.

I suggest President Obama immediately redistribute these funds to other states such as Kansas and Missouri, where there is real leadership in the governors’ offices that cares enough to want to help their citizens.

Sandy Salz
Overland Park

The tax increase on the wealthy that President Obama is proposing is long overdue. Why shouldn’t they pay their fair share?

This is not a step toward socialism, as so many sore losers on the right repeat ad nauseam. It’s a push back to democracy and away from the plutocracy we have lived in since we made the grand mistake of electing Ronald Reagan.

Carl Raccuglia
Kansas City

Kudos to George Lafferty (2/27, Letters, “GOP’s sudden frugality”) who so eloquently wrote about the Republicans’ past silence about debt spending. For weeks now, I have been aghast when I hear on TV or read in the paper about all the Republican outrage over deficit spending. For years we have never heard a peep from any of them.

Suck it up, guys. Your newly found outrage is eight years too late.

Susan F. Weiner
Overland Park

GOP lacks credibility

Predictably, the Republican response to President Obama’s speech before Congress last week was to attack wasteful spending and laud the merits of low taxes and small government. Thankfully, the American public doesn’t seem to pay much heed. It’s not that these are inherently bad positions. It’s just that Republicans have absolutely no credibility left on any of these issues.

Why would we trust Republicans to cut spending when their leadership got us the largest budget deficit in history? Why would we put our faith in more Republican-style tax cuts, when after years and years of them we find ourselves in this recession? And hasn’t our confidence in private enterprise given way to calls for more government oversight in light of the banking crisis?

We always end up with big spending and government. Why not give the reins to someone who might actually put them to good use for a change? I believe this is precisely what Barack Obama was elected to do.

Sine Thieme
Overland Park

The Republican Party is missing the point. The Democratic Party finally found its voice with the emergence and ascent of Barack Obama to the highest office. He inspired, he galvanized, and he led. Barack Obama delivered a message and a vision. He articulated his ideas and connected with Americans one citizen at a time.

Judging by the Republican Party’s rising stars — vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a charismatic, under-qualified governor of Alaska; new African-American Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who wants to give his party a hip-hop makeover; and Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s young Indian-American governor who was selling himself as the Republican Obama as he delivered the rebuttal to the president’s address — it is apparent that the Republicans got it all wrong.

Obama’s message was one of substance. It is about a new direction for America. It is about inclusion and dialogue. It is about hope and community service. It is about America’s leadership in a turbulent world and a chaotic global economy. Republicans need a message and a vision. Enough of the imitations and the superficial symbols.

Rami Saffarini
Platte City

Sore Republican losers

Republicans would rather not have any stimulus bill than President Obama’s bill. Instead of being angry at their congressmen for not caring if they lose their jobs or homes and getting us in these dumb wars, they would rather criticize a man who cares about them and is trying to do his best to change our economic chaos. They accuse him of too much spending, even if it could put people back to work, save their homes, and give them a new lease on life.

Republicans’ answer to all of our problems is to cut taxes. This will leave our nation in worse shape. Cutting taxes would cause our local, state and national governments to not be able to repair our infrastructure, educate our children and get health care for all of us.

Don’t attack Obama because you lost. This man has done more in one month than any other president in history.

Adell Thompson
Overland Park

GOP’s sudden frugality

It is encouraging to hear members of the Republican Party voice concerns about deficit spending. The question: Where were you the last eight years? You took a budget surplus in 2000 and converted it into a trillion dollar deficit this year, and that doesn’t include the cost of the newly passed stimulus package.

With Bush as your leader, we watched you march in lockstep, beating your chests about tax cuts for the wealthy. We saw you give banks, defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies handouts that defied belief. We saw you swoon like teenagers when Vice President Cheney famously said in 2001 that “deficits don’t matter.”

Welcome back, Republicans, but don’t expect to be taken seriously when you suddenly start whining about generational theft.

George Lafferty
Fairway