GOP Candidates

In “Candidates Who Drop the ‘I’ Say a Lot” (Commentary, March 6) former Chief Justice Rose Bird offers a plausible “packaging” explanation as to why Sen. Bob Dole says, “Bob Dole believes such and such,” not “I believe such and such.”

That anomalous manner of expression is based upon the common tactic of circumlocution as a subtle means of personal denial. Dole does not, for instance, accept responsibility as an individual for his tough antiabortion stand, but he uses the third person to attribute that position to his candidacy. Somewhere during this campaign, the voters might well insist that both Dole and Pat Buchanan tell us what they, as responsible human beings, really believe.

MARSI ANN O’MALLEY

Menifee

* “Now It’s a War of Maneuver for Top Candidates” (Feb. 29) reports that a source familiar with campaign plans suggests that Sen. Dole’s campaign might hit the campaign spending limit “like a speed bump,” go past it and pay whatever fines may be levied later.

To deliberately ignore spending limits after accepting taxpayer money would be a massive, premeditated swindle on the people of the United States, and is something that should be rewarded with a jail sentence, not the presidency.

JOHN LYONS

Ventura

* Now Republicans want to take us more into debt with an unaffordable missile defense system (Commentary, by Jeane Kirkpatrick, Feb. 26).

Let’s do this: Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars on research, let the country pledge to purchase from any company in the world its proven missile defense system, at a fair market price. This is capitalism at its best. When a system is developed, the Republicans will have to come up with some sort of plan on how to pay for all the bases along our coasts and borders with Canada and Mexico.

Are you sure this isn’t a welfare program for the military-industrial complex?

ROD BARRETTE