Saturday, March 19, 2016

Open Letter to Senator McConnell



Dear Senator McConnell,

I am writing as someone who considers himself a moderate.  Over the years, I have voted for members of both parties based on who seemed to me to be best qualified.  But since the rise of the tea party, I've found it harder and harder to justify voting for any Republican.  Members of the party seem much more interested in making political statements than in doing their jobs.  Your recent decision to refuse to even consider President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court is just the latest and most egregious example of this.  The President's constitutional responsibility was to make the nomination.  Yours is to carefully and fairly evaluate the nominee.  By not doing so, you are violating your oath of office.  It doesn't matter that it is an election year. You are simply refusing to do your job, a job for which you are being paid by American taxpayers like me, and that isn't acceptable.  I'm sure I speak for many other American voters.  We are not fooled by your claim that it is a matter of principle.  It is clearly a matter of politics.

For our two-party system to work, members of both parties have to be willing to work together to find compromise solutions that don't really please either completely but that will work.  The current Republican absolutist determination to oppose anything Democratic is hurting our country.  It has to stop.  You have the responsibility to set an example for the rest of the country.  At the moment, that example is a bad one.  Donald Trump's success is just one symptom of the result.  If this continues, things are likely to get much worse. 

You were not elected to play politics.  You were elected to do a job for the American people.  I appeal to you to do so.

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