Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept. - The Republican "Identity Crisis"

From today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, two readers take issue with a recent article by Ford/ Reagan/ Bush I assministration official Roger Porter on a Republican "identity crisis":

Regarding the March 5 front-page article “Republicans face an identity crisis”:

As someone who grew up in an extended family of racists and bigots who strongly associated with the Republican Party, I had trouble recognizing the party described by Roger Porter. He said the GOP tended “to be a group of people who like to view themselves as serious, having decorum, being orderly, being thoughtful.”

My experience has led me to associate the Republican Party with narrow-mindedness, intolerance and hateful speech against minorities. When my father saw a black person on the street, he would derisively say, “There goes a Democrat.” The election of a black man to the White House was akin to the downfall of civilization as we knew it. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s bile is what I’ve been used to hearing from my GOP-supporting relatives for all of my 54 years. Mr. Porter asked, “How did [the Republican Party] get to this situation?” The Republican Party has been in this situation for decades.

Lloyd Jansen, La Plata

I nearly choked on my cereal at Roger Porter’s assertion that “Republicans . . . like to view themselves as serious, having decorum, being orderly, being thoughtful.” Mr. Porter may imagine the GOP thusly, but party leaders have behaved otherwise for the past seven years — heckling President Obama at the State of the Union address, labeling him a socialist, misstating his faith and questioning his patriotism and citizenship while offering a policy agenda that amounts to nothing more than bomb strikes, tax cuts and obstruction. They have made know-nothingism their method and obstruction their mission. The Republican Party that Mr. Porter imagines left town years ago.

Matthew Freeman, Rockville

Pearl- clutching and denial by people who have watched or actively participated in the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's party descent into the swamps it currently inhabits is becoming quite a cottage industry these days.  It brings to mind a certain song, including these lyrics, from "West Side Story," and the cause- and- effect pathologies of right- wingers to which they seem oblivious:

Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get.
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!