There’s so much more that Lance Dickie missed

Lance Dickie in his Feb. 3 column “GOP faithful: It’s your party, you can cry if you want to” [Opinion] didn’t get even half of what is wrong with the current permutation (mutation?) of the Republican Party.

The party’s been taken over by increasingly bigoted, delusional and hypocritical men. The candidates are using increasingly racist and classist rhetoric, evoking stereotypes of poor minorities which only serve to continue and worsen the problems the downtrodden have in trying to get past the biases of hirers to get employment.

They blame President Obama and the federal government for not creating jobs when it is the private sector that needs to do it and companies are still sitting on cash piles.

The strident, hypocritical so-called “pro-life” stance of the candidates further threatens poor women and their children who are already between a rock and a hard place: local governments have already cut back on access to birth control, schools don’t teach anything practical about preventing unwanted pregnancies, and there is little access to health care.

Further, they threaten to end food stamps and other anti-poverty programs that ensure access to the necessities of life; they are also threatening to pass an amendment which would essentially criminalize using birth control, let alone having an abortion or even suffering a miscarriage!

The Republican Party has lost all rationality and it’s the fault of the party faithful.

The rank and file let their party be taken over by these kooks. The few rational moderates left have been utterly gutless and done nothing to check the slide of the party into the abyss. The country needs to have choice and balance in politics, but Republican Party has given us no rational alternative.

— Leslie Jordan, Shoreline