Letters to the Editor: An anti-democracy party holds a debate. Why should we care?
To the editor: Why should we care what the Republican presidential contestants said in this first of many organized spectacles for the party that has sworn off honesty, decency and democracy in the pursuit of power that corrupts absolutely?
The candidates represent a party that no longer deserves support from thoughtful and concerned citizens. Most of them cower before a traitorous demagogue who swears the 2020 election was rigged, even though he was the one who tried to steal it.
For that matter, what is it with a vetting process that starts more than a year and a half before the general election? A sitting president isn’t even granted three years to show what he can do before there are endless polls and power-hungry candidates throwing their hats into the ring, lambasting the president with gross distortions of his record.
Other major democracies do not utilize such an unhealthy process. It contributes to the low-information and cynical voters we have in such abundance.
TR Jahns, Hemet
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To the editor: The Republican presidential debate was an interesting spectacle.
Vivek Ramaswamy was clearly the most obnoxious Trump toady on the stage, while Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, attempted to present a reasonable and comparatively moderate alternative.
Everyone else fell somewhere in between, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was, as expected, a bloviating braggart.
Marcia Goodman, Long Beach
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To the editor: Six of the eight candidates on stage raised their hand when they were asked if they could support Trump if he was convicted and ended up as the party’s nominee for president. Only former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said they could not support a convicted felon.
The remaining six candidates in effect resigned the GOP from being a law-and-order party.
Trump was defeated in 2020, and there is no reason to believe that the same person but this time a convicted felon facing a prison term would be more successful.
Richard C. Armendariz, Huntington Beach
