GOP's outrageous comments

To the editor:

Since President Obama took office, the Republican Party's top priority, as unambiguously stated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been to make President Obama a one-term president.

They have pretty much done this by lock-step standing in the way of anything he has tried to do that might speed recovery from he near second great depression that their policies had caused. The game plan was simple. Have the recession last long enough to be blamed on Obama and his failure to fix the economy rather than on Bush and his doubling down on Reaganomics which, simply put, was an horrendous increase in unfunded spending combined with tax cuts for the rich.

I watched Governor Romney's acceptance speech intently. Evidently, more so than did most political commentators because none of them seem to have found fault with a few statements that I found outrageous.

Most outrageous in my opinion was this statement: "President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise...is to help you and your family."

First of all, I would like someone to come up with the text of President Obama making that promise. It isn't that it would be a bad thing to say, it's is just that I don't recall his saying it, like so many other things Republicans claim he has said.

Secondly, wouldn't stopping the rise of oceans from eventually flooding lands the majority of Americans live on or the destruction of the planet everyone lives on pretty much help all those children and grandchildren that conservatives keep claiming to be protecting from the socialist agenda of Obama and company?

Next, I found it intriguing in a number of ways that the governor took time to honor both John Glenn and President Kennedy in his speech. Ever notice how much more likable Democrats become after they die?

Romney said, "To be an American was to assume that all things were possible. When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn't whether we'd get there, it was only when we'd get there. The soles of Neil Armstrong's boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent's sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. God bless Neil Armstrong."

President Kennedy had a big advantage over President Obama. He hadn't inherited a country that had been bankrupted by three decades of Reagonomics. The top tax rate when Kennedy was president was 90 percent and we could afford to do things like build the interstate highway system and send a man to the moon. Also, President Kennedy didn't have to face a Republican Party with a top priority of opposing anything he wanted to do, even if it was originally their idea.

In some respects, the country has improved since then, especially when it comes to racial discrimination; but when it came to county, we were Americans first.

Now, the Republican Party has nurtured divisions within the country to the point at which we are more divided than at any time since the Civil War. They have nurtured divisions of white against blacks, and hispanics, evangelicals against about everyone else, employed against unemployed, young against old, and tea party types against science and facts and thinkers.

Perhaps the greatest irony of his praising the landing on the moon and the triumph of the Apollo program is that it was one of the biggest government programs of all times. I guess a big government program that leaves a footprint and flag on the moon is OK while one that lifts people out of poverty is government waste.

The statement that made me think that he might be living in some kind of fantasy land was that every president since the great Depression (except Obama and Carter) who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction "you are better off today than you were four years ago."

Well, let's take a look at what the country was actually like four years ago:

It was coming to the end of a four-year term of President Bush that saw no net job growth, a devastating loss in net worth of the middle class, a year that saw the loss of 1,200,000 jobs and year that saw the stock market drop from a high of 13,000 to a low of 8,000 when Obama was elected president.

By the time Obama took office, and could do anything about the economy, the rate of job loss had accelerated to more than 700,000 a month and in spite of Republicans doing their best to impede progress, the economy is gaining more jobs a month under President Obama than it did in the entire four years under President Bush.

It was coming to the end of a four-year term of a president that led us into a totally unjustified war that killed 5,000 Americans and will have cost a trillion dollars before all costs are totaled.

It was coming to the end of the term of a president who led us into another war, that history showed was a mistake, to take out bin Laden who was eventually taken out by clandestine action independent of the war that has cost 2,000 American lives and will cost nearly half a trillion dollars when all costs are added up.

It was coming to the end of an an administration that fostered a combination of unfunded tax cuts for the rich and unfunded mandates that have added close to 50% to the deficit that Obama is being blamed for.

It was a time of the culmination of the shredding of the safeguards put in place after the Great Depression to precent another financial disaster by politicians of both parties paid off by the same financial interests now throwing tens if not hundreds of millions into preventing President Obama from being reelected.

Rory Ryan wrote an article about missing Walter Cronkite who told it like it was. If Walter was still around, I think he might have made some of the points I just did. I also think he would have taken local TV stations to task for running ads from super packs that are outright lies. I think truth meant more to Walter than making a fast buck.

In today's big corporation-dominated media he would probably be fired for doing it.

Sincerely,
Charles Leach
Lynchburg