Pressure mounts on Republican leaders as they realize Donald Trump’s threat to the party’s unity and success in November. It’s too bad they didn’t act sooner to stem his tide.
Republicans have fence-straddled in their responses to Trump, supporting but not endorsing him, explaining that claims against him are exaggerated or false. Trump, who modifies his facts to suit his predilections, denies prior documented evidence of his errant behavior.
Many political leaders have been in denial about the intrusion of such a renegade. Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and the like all supported him despite his cruel and lewd behavior. Sen. McCain has endorsed Trump despite the latter’s statement that “he’s not a war hero.” McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, who has done more than anyone to create the Trump phenomenon with his legislative obstructionism, has been silent regarding Trump’s assertion about a rigged election.
Most important is House Speaker Ryan, who failed to oppose Trump a year ago when he and other leaders together probably could have rallied the GOP to reject Trump. Did Ryan not have suspicions about Trump’s potential divisiveness early on? He remarked after their May 12 meeting that additional discussions would be held and remained confident of party unity and success this fall. It took the release earlier this month of Trump’s lewd comments about women for Ryan to state that while he supports the nominee, he would not campaign on Trump’s behalf. Even when Trump exclaimed the election is rigged, Speaker Ryan failed to affirm the fairness of our democratic process and condemn Donald Trump’s comment.
For New York Times columnist David Brooks, the big lesson of 2016 is the need for “moral repair.” It begins with “a renunciation of the Trump style, which can only happen if people police members of their own party. If somebody is destroying the basic social and moral fabric through cruel rhetoric and vicious misogynistic behavior, it doesn’t really matter that he agrees with you on taxes and the Supreme Court; he has to be renounced or else he will drag the whole society to a level of degradation that will make all decent politics impossible.”
Bob ScobieHanover
During an election period, there are always people who claim that not voting is unpatriotic. They claim that if you don’t vote, then the candidate they are opposing will be the beneficiary, thus making the assumption that you were going to vote for their candidate. I call this fuzzy logic.
The primary principles of a democracy consist of, but are not limited to, town meetings, majority rule, establishing a consensus and protection of minority rights. However, there is no mention that “not voting” is contrary to these principles. Our Constitution supports the right not to vote. Governments, national and local, are based on democratic principles and provide for “non voting” in the legislative and administration processes of establishing law.
The Constitution establishes that there are four methods available to legislators for expressing their support or non-support of legislation. These are yea, nay, abstention and absence. The president has the right to sign, veto, or not sign proposed legislation. Also, the president can allow legislation to become law or be vetoed by not signing it within a specified time period. So by not voting, people are expressing essentially a “veto” of the choices they have been offered. In some countries, ballots consist of “against” and “for” boxes beside a candidate’s name. The Soviet Union under Communism always touted its so-called democratic process by claiming that everyone voted. However, there was only one party on the ballot and all citizens were mandated, under law, to vote.
So, those who are being badgered by their contemporaries that you are being unpatriotic if you do not vote, take heart in the Constitutional provisions that govern our legislative, executive and judicial branches. They all provide for a “non vote” capability, and it is used frequently. If the choices offered to you by various political parties violate your moral conscience of decency and self-respect, then don’t feel distressed by not voting.
Jim MinnichBethel
Headline
I appreciate the interesting graphs that appear on a regular basis in the Business & Money section of the Sunday Valley News. My problem is that whenever multiple lines or bars appear in a black and white graph comparing a variety of issues, all of them are represented with various shades of black and gray lines or dots; I am not able to readily distinguish one line from another.
Case in point is a graph in a recent issue (“Winter Heating Bills will be Higher” Oct. 23). In order (at least for me) to really understand the details of this graph, it needs to be presented in various colors rather than shades of black. The accompanying bar graph, “Social Security Payments,” is all in one shade of black, which is fine, because it simply shows the annual cost of living adjustment by year since 1975 without showing a comparison to anything else. To make “busy” graphs more easily understandable in the future, please consider using graphs with color.
Henry Buermeyer East Corinth