Lotz: America should not ditch its values for political race
POLITICAL VOICES
We have asked two political junkies, one conservative and one liberal, to share their viewpoints on issues and politics leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
We will be publishing guest columns from time to time from Mike Miller and Blaine Lotz.
Miller's experience in politics includes working in the Reagan White House political office. He produces a blog on politics called MikesAmerica.
Lotz is chair of the Beaufort County Democratic Party and a former candidate for Congress.
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley are all qualified to be president. Their values are America's values. On the Republican side, however, we see candidates expressing views that are out of the mainstream of American politics.
Donald Trump, the frontrunner in polls for the Republican presidential nomination, wants to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the U.S., wants to send 11 million undocumented people back to their native lands, and wants to ban Muslims from coming to the U.S. and monitoring those who are here, including their mosques.
Ted Cruz, the runner-up in polling for the nomination, agrees with or has remained silent on virtually all of Trump's proposals. He has pledged to repudiate the internationally approved effort to deal with climate change, to oppose any gun safety measures, to reverse laws allowing same-sex marriage, and, of course, to reverse the Affordable Care Act. Each of the three Democratic presidential candidates takes an opposite view on these issues.
Immigration, freedom of religion, care for our planet, gun safety in the face of gun-related massacres, respect for individuals' right to love and marry whom they wish, and health care for all are values which have made and are making our country great.
Enough has been said and written about each of these hallmarks, but what needs to be stressed is how the Republican Party has been hijacked by Trump and Cruz, who are taking this once great national political party out of our country's mainstream.
No, our country has not changed; some individuals who align themselves as Republicans hate our president and, by transfer, those issues he espouses.
No, government has not failed us; government led by Democrats, under difficult and divided circumstances, has put our economy back on track after a Republican administration nearly bankrupted America.
Government has enacted and affirmed health care, making us consistent with other Western democracies. Government has expanded Medicaid; some states have accepted this assistance for their neediest citizens. Others, such as South Carolina, have refused this federal funding out of disdain for most things coming from Washington, but not when it comes to holding out both hands for federal assistance to alleviate the devastation from the terrible floods that hit the Midlands particularly hard. What leaders would accept flood relief, but refuse health care for hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians who have none? Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.
The other Republican presidential candidates are very conservative but remain in the center-right lane of the American political highway.
How has Trump turned campaign discourse into talk-radio conversation? His vulgarities in describing Clinton's loss to President Barack Obama in the 2008 nomination process and his anti-woman description of Clinton's bathroom break during the last Democratic debate as "disgusting" are just two examples. In the first, he even argues with Merriam-Webster's definition of his vulgarity to defend his use of the word.
Despite his protestation, the second example is just another sample of his disdain for women. Remember his statement about fellow Republican Carly Fiorina as "Who could vote for that face?" To demean and bully are his trademarks.
So, this campaign has entered a phase where the leading Republican candidate says whatever outlandish fabrication he wishes, then denies it means what he says. Trump's values and Cruz's, too, are not consistent with the values of our country or of the three Democratic candidates.
Hopefully, the Republican Party will nominate a candidate for president whose values are consistent with that party's heritage.
Blaine Lotz of Hilton Head Island may be reached at gblotz@yahoo.com.
This story was originally published January 6, 2016 at 9:26 AM with the headline "Lotz: America should not ditch its values for political race."