Selfish representation

Dear editor:

I wonder if the Republicans can ever find anything positive and rewarding to vote for. When I joined the party in 1960, their platform stated they were conservative in economic matters but progressive in social matters.

I looked at the voting record of the last week in Congress. Not one of the state’s Republican representatives or senators voted for a major issue promoting progressive subjects. All four voted against removing the Equal Rights Amendment deadline of 1982. Thirty-three states’ ratifications stand. Women were not included in the Constitution per se. Surely in 2021, it is time for women to be given equal treatment with men.

Not one vote for the Renewing Violence Against Women Act. Republican opposers argue that ambiguous and dubious question that transgenders who were male will enter women’s shelters and force themselves upon women there. Really?

Not one voted for protecting Dreamers and other immigrants (granting permanent legal status and a path to citizenship to 2 million children who were brought to the U.S.). Republicans say the bill encourages more illegal immigration.

Not one voted for overhauling farmworker visas. This bill would allow undocumented migrants for temporary agricultural jobs that the local workforce is unable to provide, and that is often a great number. Republicans argue, regardless of farmers needing the workers, that it is just another way to let illegal immigrants in.

In the Senate, neither Arkansas senator voted for the confirmation of Deb Haaland as Interior secretary, the first American Indian to hold that office, needed years ago. Nor did either vote for confirmation of Xavier Becerra as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the first Hispanic to hold that position. Are Republicans against Native Americans and Hispanics?

Perhaps these actions demonstrate why I decided 25 years ago to drop my affiliation with the GOP. Somewhere they have lost their original purpose, so much that in the recent election, they had no platform. What has happened to their original purpose of social issue progressivism? I shudder to think what Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, and Taft would think were they alive! What has happened to my state of Arkansas politically to elect such selfish representatives in Congress? John W. “Doc” Crawford

Hot Springs