Open Letter to all Republican Officeholders

In the past few weeks I have heard too many of you Republican politicians refer to your party as the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Well, Abraham Lincoln is spinning in his tomb in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln hated cant, obfuscation, and obstructionism, which is all you Republicans have offered American citizens since the last election.

Your effort to turn voters against the stimulus package, President Obama, and the Democrats isn’t working.. We voters remember that you Republicans destroyed the budget surplus accumulated by the last Democratic administration, and you increased the national debt. You also deregulated industries or chose to ignore your responsibilities as overseers of the national interest. In short, you created the mess we are in.

So you will soon learn that, on the floor of the Senate, your waving about the six-hundred page bill won’t work, nor will your shrill declarations against deficit spending and the burden of debt our grandchildren will have to shoulder. Despite your outdated arguments and posturing, it is clear that you are trying to block government action to put people back to work, prevent the needed re-organization and regulation of the banking and investment services industry, and inject capital into state and local governments so that they can begin desperately needed repairs of the infrastructure.

By the way, we also know your policies were responsible for the nearly trillion dollars (not yet accounted for in the National Debt) wasted on a war in Iraq, for al-Qaeda’s success, for torturing prisoners, and for the outing of CIA agents. But those are the subject of another letter.

In the next election, you who currently hold office may be re-elected, but only if you stop practicing the politics of the Bush administration and start working to solve the problems that you and your fellow members of the Republican Party created. Stop inflating small programs in the stimulus package into gigantic boondoggles. Stop referring to the stimulus program as just another spending program. Stop the tired rhetoric of right-wing, neo-Conservative obstructionism.

Start working to get us out of the mess that you put us into.