Letter: Republicans should stand together

The 1975 movie, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” starring Jack Nicholson, contains a moral that weak-kneed Republicans like Carl Rove and John McCain could learn from.

In the movie, after learning that many mental-ward patients can leave whenever they feel competent to cope with life while he is committed and cannot, Nicholson makes a symbolic gesture. He tries to tear a water fountain from the floor and throw it out the window so he can escape. When he fails, he says, “At least I tried.” Later in the movie, another committed inmate with sufficient strength tears the fountain from the floor, tosses it through a window and gains his freedom from the tyranny of Nurse Ratchet. Nicholson’s futile but courageous act showed others the way to freedom.

Last week, the House of Representatives made the bold move to defund the Affordable Care Act. This happened because Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah ignited a demand from the American people to stop this horrible and disastrous law. A month ago, there were only about 50 representatives in support of defunding the ACA. Cruz and Lee helped change the minds of 180 representatives.

Now Rove and company have ratcheted up attacks on Cruz and Lee for putting the Republican Party in a “tough spot.” It’s all a waste of time, they say, because the Democrat-controlled Senate will make the vote irrelevant. And, they tell us, the news media will criticize Republicans. They are in effect asking, “why try?”

Such pronouncements are exactly what empowers power-hungry Democrats and biased news media people who criticize Republicans no matter what they do. If Senate Republicans would unite with the House, our nation would be dumbfounded. The spectacle of politicians standing on principle and working for the good of our nation would be something not seen in many decades.

If you are unwilling to sit by and watch America turn from the freest nation in mankind’s history to a sniveling, feckless, Old-World style welfare state, help defund the Affordable Care Act by signing online petitions and making telephone calls to senators.

David C. Wilcox
La Cañada Flintridge