Letters

The drubbing and calls for Phil Keith’s banishment by his fellow Republicans are unjust.

I almost never agree with him but honor his right to write what he thinks. But I think he is wrong — side-stepping the history of his party — and can’t expect a pass because he now embraces Biden, pragmatically [“Too Close For Comfort,” Mostly Right, December 3].

He writes: “In November 2016, the warning signs were everywhere” — electing Donald Trump risked losing “our democracy.” Many of us saw the warning signs of cynicism and the power-driven destruction of democracy as early as the election of Reagan. Saw it in the machinations of Newt Gingrich (thought too unsavory to run for president, so the Republicans, with the help of Ralph Reed, searched for a more appealing face to speak his doctrines, thus beginning the education of Bush Jr. and de facto presidency of Dick Cheney).

We watched democracy at risk as Republican after Republican was shoehorned into office by the Electoral College after losing the popular vote. Gore (“patriot and good citizen that he is,” according to Mr. Keith) ceded an election he won to the criminal machinations of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris (remember her?) for democracy’s sake.

“True Republicans … understand that Trump was never one of us” (Keith again). But he was! He is the apotheosis of the Republican Party since Reagan: a shape-changing public face with no aim but power, bankrupt and bereft of ideas, values, morals, knowledge or decency.

Though convenient, one can’t ignore his political parentage: Nixon, Agnew, Bush, Gingrich, Rove, Boehner, McConnell, Bannon, Kochs, Ailles, Murdoch, Atwater, Stone, Limbaugh, the Fundamentalist chanters, and all the other Republican horses he rode in on.

And don’t underestimate the mother of them all: “trash-talkin” Sarah Palin. This is the True Republican Party. Mr. Keith thinks a new party can be “rebuilt from the ground up” on this foundation of rot? No use now casting Trump as a single case of the flu during the Republican pandemic.

I also take strong exception to Keith’s offhand dismissal of Hillary Clinton, who saw clearly and warned forcefully of the “signs” he now laments retroactively. He refers to her as “having a baggage train a mile long.” That burden and the pervasive, toxic “dislike” smear campaign was created and relentlessly pushed by the Republican Party, aided by sanctimonious James Comey, who, fresh from his triumph in prosecuting Martha Stewart, used his office to smear Clinton while downplaying Russian criminal activities aiding Trump.

“As for her husband being “unfettered in the White House to chase interns,” remind me, and #Metoo, who snapped a thong in whose face?

The less-than-Grand Old Party continues to descend. They are the true risk to Democracy.

Frances Genovese

Southampton