Letters from Linden
by JACK LINDEN
The Iowa primary caucus is finally over, but what was really accomplished? The one thing we know for sure is the candidates did not abide by Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment – not being negative about a fellow Republican.
Several candidates on the Iowa campaign trail had a very rapid rise – and a quick fall. I am not sure if it was the quality of the candidate or the issues of the voters. The extreme right of the party is terribly divided and no single candidate had all the attributes that the various factions wanted in a candidate.
I will be happy, though, when at least one of the candidates will be home again. The Governor of Texas has been an embarrassment to the state and frankly, to the Republican Party.
While he is campaigning across the country, telling the people of the many jobs he created while saying that government does not create jobs, he was spending large amounts of Texas’ money. His security force will cost the state close to a million dollars before he figures out he can’t win and hightails it home. In addition to the extra money we are paying for security, we are also paying the Lt. Governor more salary as he is acting in place of the governor. Our governor’s candidacy has been terribly expensive for all Texans.
While he is out campaigning for the nomination of the Republican Party, we here in Texas continue to pay for his rental house to the tune of $10,000 a month. Why can’t he take a lesson from the former governor of Arkansas and fellow Republican who lived in a “double-wide” while the mansion was being renovated? Adding insult to injury, our governor is also double dipping in the state funds. He is drawing about $7,000 a month in retirement while drawing a governor’s salary, even when he isn’t acting as governor.
Another candidate, Michele Bachmann showed that Americans don’t always elect the brightest bulb in the package. How could a candidate who wants to return to the “days of the founding fathers” make so many factual errors as she has on the campaign trail? Not knowing where the revolution began could be overlooked by a fourth grader, but I would have thought someone with a law degree from William and Mary would surely have known it. I was also amazed that she mistook John Quincy Adams for his father, John Adams, when she talked about the founding fathers being opposed to slavery. I assume she did not read the part in the Constitution about slaves being counted as 3/5ths of a person. She might have thought it was John Adams who defended the men on the slave ship Amistad.
The point is that the Republican Party has presented a very weak slate of candidates. Part of the problem? The rise of the Tea Party and the oath required of many candidates by Grover Norquist. It seems that the best of the Republican Party chose to sit this one out due to the factions and demands of a significant number of the far right.
I don’t know if there will be a new face to come forward in the Republican ranks. The Republicans had better hope that a new, electable candidate emerges within the party or they may face a total reversal from the election of 2010. A third party candidate would be even worse for Republicans. Such a candidate would only take away from an already weak Republican candidate.
