Republicans seem to survive on half-truths and deliberate partisan spin as their main goal of “rescuing America.” Rewriting history relies on an unreal expectation that the public has forgotten who drove the car into the ditch in the first place.
Republicans would like us to forget the war built on lies and who was sitting in the Oval Office. The war built on lies cost us billions of dollars with over 4,000 lives lost in a struggle that didn’t have to be fought and which in all probability destabilized the Middle East. They would like us to forget that the Republican President Bush left office with an unemployment rate over 8 percent and climbing.
The Republicans would like us to forget that due to President Bush’s reckless deficit spending policies, he left the new President Obama with $1.3 trillion in debt after receiving a balanced budget from his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who left President Bush with a surplus. The Republicans would like us to forget that the first, almost trillion-dollar bailout of the Wall Street banks was made by President Bush.
I don’t blame Republicans for their intentional memory lapses, but I don’t think we should give back the car keys to the folks who drove the car into the ditch to begin with, or elect another Republican who promises to reduce taxes on the wealthiest American while increasing taxes on the poorest and the middle class.
Just to clarify a couple of points, Gov. Romney is not a nerd, only the product of a privileged class, and Paul Ryan does not fit any definition of a nerd either; Ryan has “worked” his entire life for his father and well-connected friends of the family inside Washington, but I’m confident that being part of a losing team in November, Ryan could do quite well selling exercise equipment.
Richard Nielsen
Royal Palm Beach
The Obama legacy:
• 23 million Americans are out of work, have stopped looking for work, or are underemployed
• $16 trillion national debt (that’s $50,000 for every American)
• 43 straight months of 8% or higher unemployment
• 4 straight trillion dollar budget deficits in a row — more than any other president combined
Oviously Mr. Morelli is forgetting about the legacy he was left to deal with. Things were much worse when he took office then anyone realized. He’s still better then George W. Bush and any person or platform or ‘solution’ the Republicans have had to offer yet. George W. Bush left this country so badly off, he is possibly the worst president ever. Nobody could have fixed this less time, and while things are still bad, they are better off then they were.
Mr. Morelli, A couple of more things I just thought of. I am not saying Obama is the best president ever, far from it. I am a bit let down by the past few years. But I also blame Congress for this. The Republicans stated from the very beginning that they would do anything they could to make him a one-term president and they showed this by being unwilling to compromise and then trying to block and stand in the way of anything he wanted to do. That being said, people of his own party (such as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi) also did the same!! I don’t think anyone could have turned around the country any faster unless both parties were 100% on the same page, which didn’t happen. For the morass we are still in I blame an ineffectual Congress whose members are more concerned with their jobs then with the good of the country (not all of them, but it seems the majority are in this group).
Can we at least agree that both parties need to compromise, work hard together to avoid any further damage?