GOP deserves a chance to show what it can do

James Loeper, Henderson

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011 | 2:02 a.m.

The Las Vegas Sun’s Tuesday editorial says the No. 1 domestic priority should be job creation, but one “wouldn’t know it by the way Republicans are pandering to their base.” Go back two years and you could say the same about President Barack Obama wasting two years ramming health care through when what we needed were jobs.

The editorial says that House Speaker John Boehner’s $60 billion budget cut was “draconian” but that the Democrats’ $41 billion was “bipartisan.” The difference of $19 billion on a $3.5 trillion budget is hardly “draconian.”

In addition, the editorial calls for ways to help small businesses and agreement on rebuilding highways, airports and infrastructure — but wasn’t that what the $800 billion stimulus was for? Maybe Obama never got the memo, but a few months ago he did admit there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs!

The editorial also says Republicans are mistaken to think the November election gave them a mandate — so I guess you and Obama were wrong to assume he had a mandate after 2008.

If Democrats passed the budget in 2010 like they were supposed to, we wouldn’t have this mess, but they didn’t because they were afraid the last election would have gone even worse.

The left calls the GOP the Party of No, but isn’t that better than the left leaving a mess for the next Congress, including a bigger deficit for our kids? Tea Party adherents have been in power in Washington less than 50 days. Please give them a chance before you haul out your “draconian” rhetoric.

We gave Obama two years, and we deserve no less.