State GOP needs new leaders

Re “State GOP is ‘dying at the box office,’ gov. says,” Sept. 8

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is right on target in his criticism of the Republican Party. I registered as a Republican in 1946, on my 21st birthday. I have not left the Republican Party. The party has left me.

To me, a conservative is someone who wants to conserve what is good and change what is bad. That is not what it means to the people who now dominate the party. They want a way of life that may be consistent with life in 1807 but has nothing to do with 2007. They are completely out of touch with reality. To them, global warming is a myth spread by left-wing tree-huggers. Evolution? An anti-Christian creed spread by atheists.

The Republican Party needs new leaders, people who accept science and are not locked into fundamentalist religion. If it does not change, it will go the way of the Whigs, the Know-nothings and other vestiges of the past. I am not comfortable with the Democratic Party, but I find that now I am even more uncomfortable with the Republican Party.

Alfred Hexter

Kensington, Calif.

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Thanks to Schwarzenegger for coming up with a brilliantly descriptive slogan for the Republican Party. Let’s order our campaign buttons now: The GOP -- a party at odds with the future.

Jack Wright

Marina del Rey