Nelson exposes flaws in some GOP thinking

Thank you to Rex Nelson for his bold and compelling column in the Jan. 17 edition. As a lifelong conservative and Arkansas Republican, it had to be painful for him to call out the unpatriotic and petty partisan behavior of so many of his fellow Republicans, especially officeholders.

Telling the truth publicly has always carried significant risk especially at times when it might be unpopular. Consequently I fully expect he will receive a great deal of undue criticism. I have always respected Rex and his well-articulated political positions dating back to the years when he was a regular panelist on AETN’s Arkansas Week. Sunday’s column was every bit as well written as any of his previous opinions and even more convincing.

For the past four years I have lamented the failure of the whole Arkansas congressional delegation to ever show the integrity, courage and backbone to call out the president on any of even his most egregious misbehavior. Even though I am not a card-carrying Republican, this has actually surprised and disappointed me a great deal. Seems that most Republican officeholders tend to frequently refer to themselves as patriots and defenders of the Constitution. Typically such claims are pretty safe since it’s seldom that one would have to prove it publicly. I guess for most of them, especially our congressman and senior senator, I always have assumed if the time were ever critical for demonstrating that claim, they’d definitely do the right thing. I based this on the idea that, if required, they would stand for American democracy and ideals over party. How naive I have been. Neither have done so despite the undeniable evidence that the mob riot attempting to overthrow the U.S. Capitol represented insurrection … pure and simple.

And under President Trump, even before that dreadful event, the Republican Party has not represented conservative values. It’s only really reflected his self-serving values.

I look forward to a day in the not-so-distant future when we might see our federal government and our congressional delegation representing all Americans and defending again our most important principles of American democracy. We desperately need to cleanse the hatred from our politics and restore the mutual respect for our citizens and leaders from both sides of the political spectrum. In this hope I can only be optimistic now that Trump has been legitimately voted out of office and with the possibility of true American patriots in both parties taking back the reins of our national government.

While I am not a political conservative, I have always respected the conservative voices as represented by such compelling commentators as George Will and David Brooks. I’ll add Rex Nelson to that list. The Trump years have proven how solid their thinking is, while exposing how unsound is that of most Republicans whose conservative values really only express petty partisan politics.

LARRY D. WRIGHT Springdale