Terry Koch’s recent Forum letter ("Renouncing my membership in the Republican Party") parallels my own experience and is indicative of what’s happening nationally. Regrettably for the GOP, this appears to be necessary if the party is to survive.
It’s not as if no one saw this coming. Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, a syndicated column in this newspaper concluded that the election of Donald Trump would “deface the GOP beyond recognition” — and it has happened. Voters were confronted with an impossible choice, and since then party "leadership" — along with those lacking the courage to break with the president — have been complicit in their party’s decline.
One of the clearest indications of a person’s true motives is how he handles money, whether it’s his own or others’. In their rush to enact an inequitable and unpopular tax bill heavily favoring corporations and the rich, GOP leaders are ignoring fiscal responsibility and the voice of the people. Only the people can hold them accountable, beginning with the 2018 midterm elections. I for one will no longer support 18th District Congressman Darin LaHood if he has not sufficiently detached himself from some Trump administration policies.
In order to survive and have any chance of governing effectively, the GOP must return to some of the moral and political values that it has lost sight of. For us as conservative voters individually, if this requires supporting an independent or Democrat where the Republican candidate is in lockstep with Trump, so be it. More than the party, we owe it to our country.
Ron Menold
Morton