Gary Young: following in the footsteps of Rick Santorum

[illusionofjoy]

Sometimes, someone writes a letter to the local newspaper which is so assinine, that I just have to respond:

I would have found Dormont Republican Committee chairman Gary Young's letter ("About the 'little folk,' Friday, February 18th, 2005) hilarious, were it not so condescending and inaccurate. In five paragraphs, Young has managed to encapsulate those qualities I most despise about the Republican party: slandering the opposition, falsifying information and an undeserved and overdeveloped sense of self-importance.

As a life-long Democrat and middle-class dweller in a suburb, I was appalled by Young's twisting of the facts and blatant lies. The fact of the matter is that Michael Diven is a traitor to the voters who put him in office. By changing parties, he has betrayed the people who voted him in as a public servant in a very self-serving act. As a voter, I have certain expectations of a candidate, one of which being that when I pull the lever for a person, I expect him or her to remain in the party I supported them in voting for in the first place throughout the tenure of the candidacy. Those who elected Diven were subjected to one of the oldest and slimiest tricks in the book: the bait and switch. By joining the Republican party, Michael Diven is most certainly abandoning those who put him in office - "little folk" or otherwise. This is, in a word: wrong.

Much of Young's letter is a condescending and bigoted diatribe that would make Rick Santorum proud. It is said that those in glass houses should not throw stones, and given the track record of the Republican party over the past four years, Young would do well to leave his rocks on the ground. The "party of moral values" would not be so quick to change the rules when one of their own - I refer to Tom Delay - falls from grace. The so-called party of fiscal responsibility would not allow budget deficits in excess of $7.6 trillion. Finally, the party of the "little folk" would not blithely cut taxes for the richest 2% of Americans while also cutting social programs which aid those in our nation who are the most needy. They certainly wouldn't be sending off our young men and women to meaningless and wasteful wars in the Middle East.

Gary Young is obviously too blinded by his grandstanding for his own party to take a good look at the cold, hard facts. His hyperbolic and libellous rhetoric may be a rallying cry for those who already agree with him, but only serves to alienate everyone else. I doubt very much that Young cares much for the "little people." He certainly seems to have done nothing to win our hearts and minds.