Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

GOP exercising selective memory

Some letter writers sugggest that the GOP has no ideas. I disagree with those comments. The GOP had ideas until President Barack Obama was elected and adopted their ideas.

Mandates for health care, cap and trade, and the START Treaty were fine until Obama adopted those plans.

The Dream Act, TARP and the bailout of the auto industry were all acceptable until Obama took office in 2009.

Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush suggested Israel go back to pre-war borders of 1967, but when President Obama made the same suggestion, Republicans and the right wing went off the deep end. Republicans once supported public education, infrastructure spending and child labor laws. Mention those issues now and you have right-wingers frothing at the mouth. Republicans were proud of their stand on civil rights but now try to rig elections by blocking minorities from voting because their failed ideology has them losing at the polls.

Teddy Roosevelt cared about the environment and became our first conservationist president, Richard Nixon created the EPA, and George H.W. Bush implemented cap and trade in 1990. Mention that now and you hear screams of, “Drill baby, drill!”

We hear much about deficit spending, but when Reagan and Bush the Younger went off the rails spending like crazy, we didn’t hear a peep from the right. What we did hear was Dick Cheney saying, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” The Federal Reserve, end-of-life counseling, financial disclosures in campaigning, even gun control under Reagan, all Republican ideas. If President Obama mentions any of those words, he is called a tyrant and dictator trying to take our guns and Bibles.

My point is the GOP was onboard with these ideas until the election of this current president. Then we began hearing asinine comments such as, “I hope he fails!” which this Congress has been working hard at accomplishing, or “I want my country back!” as if it left or became another country. Hate motivates these people, and they are blinded by their bias. I often look into the eyes of these “off the deep end” right-wingers and ask, “Are you living in the real world? Is there anyone in there?”

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