Mr. President: Some Republicans Do Good

Tues. May 8, 2012:

Open Letter to President Barack Hussein Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Mr. President,

Readers of the bitesfromedwin blog can be forgiven for concluding that Republicans are all anathema.
But this is not so.  In fact, although I'm likely to vote for you in 2012, I'm also voting against the scorched-earth politics of what the Founders intended to be "Loyal Opposition."  Since Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2009, Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Jim DeMint announced the party's extreme-rightist-driven agenda:  Do whatever it takes to make Barack Obama a 1-term president.

But here is a list of good Republicanism, and it would sure be easier to vote for you in 2012 if you had not made the following mistakes:

1.  Openly embrace your own commission on the national debt & deficits -- Simpson/Bowles.  It included Republican & Democratic proposals that could help the country a whole lot.  Yet, not a word from you.

2.  Support 80-year-old Richard Lugar, U.S. Senator (R-Indiana), by speaking out against him, or in favor of his Tea Party opponent.  [Most Indianans hate Obama so much, that anything he recommends will be opposed in Indiana!]  Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, Lugar & his conservative Democratic colleague Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) have done more to secure loose nukes -- sometimes out of their own pockets! -- than anyone.
Yet today, with no word from you or any other bipartisan voice, a Tea Party candidate will unseat Richard Lugar in Indiana's Republican primary election.  We are watching a great nation self-destruct with such myopic extremist politics.  You could have led, here, via "Opposite Day."

3.  Be more pro-active, in ways that Paul Krugman suggests.  Yes, Republicans blocked everything, but earlier quiet steps by the White House could have headed off last fall's budget deficit debacle.
Instead, too often your White House team seemed paralyzed into inaction.
See Krugman's "Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity":
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/opinion/krugman-plutocracy-paralysis-perplexity.html
and
"Those Revolting Europeans":
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/krugman-those-revolting-europeans.html

4.  When Republicans are funny, make a big deal of giving them credit.  It will help you with independents, I promise you -- as would steps #1 & #2 above, if not #3.
Republicans CAN be funny:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/87be7156f5/republicans-get-in-my-vagina

Mr. President, as expert as your campaign advisors are, you need to trust your own decent instincts toward doing what the country needs.  Believe me, giving bipartisan credit is atop the list right now.

Sincerely,
bitesfromedwin