Letters

In agreement

    Thank you Brenda Babb for your letter concerning the bust of Joseph Stalin being brought to the D-Day Memorial.

    I’m convinced that most of the people in Bedford are in agreement with you. To honor such a man along with those who served this country is unthinkable. By doing so you are bringing dishonor to all the names of our service men written there.

    Think again before you act.

Ouida Witt

Bedford

Lockstep

    I have voted for Democrats, Republicans and Independents. I vote for the man and his ideas.

    I read the article in the Roanoke Times 01/10 about how hard it’s been for him (Warner) and Webb to vote for the so called “health care bill.” How it’s hard for a junior senator to get things done. They voted in lockstep with the leaders like good little sheep. Give me a break.

    They voted for the La. purchase ($300 million) the purchase of Nebraska and Lord knows what other goodies for their Dem. cronies.

    Virginia taxpayers will be footing the bill for all this for years. Their votes could have stopped it and forced the real reform. Instead they chose to try to increase their standing with the Big boys.

    These two need to be one-shot wonders. We need people that listen to the people.

    I say to them, look at the governor’s races here and in N.J. and really look at Massachusetts.

Durell Haydon

Bedford

Learn the lesson

    Republicans as well as Democrats should learn the loud lesson of the historic Massachusetts election Tuesday. Just as Obama misread his 2008 win as a mandate for a dramatic turn toward European-style socialism, Republicans risk misreading Scott Brown’s win as a dramatic return of popular support for the Republican party. Neither could be more mistaken.

    In 2006 and 2008, conservative voters had no reason for enthusiasm with Republicans. The party had presided over bloated budgets, massive deficits, bailouts, “stimulus packages,” “Medicare prescription drug” entitlements and hugely unpopular attempts to throw our southern border wide open in the midst of a war against Islamic terror. “Values voters” refused to drink the Kool-Aid for a party that blasted Elliot Spitzer while coddling Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter, and their ilk. European socialism failed the GOP miserably.

    Now even in far-left Massachusetts, Obama’s even more extreme brand of European socialism has swung the pendulum back the other way. And Republicans risk missing the entire lesson.

    Here in Virginia’s Fifth District, the out-of-touch Washington GOP leadership has handpicked Robert Hurt as its candidate to oppose Congressman Tom Perriello. When Virgil Goode refused to label Hurt a conservative in a Washington Post interview recently, the Post appeared surprised. Frankly, there is no surprise at all.

    Hurt proposes to run against the Obama deficits. Yet he supported state budgets that nearly doubled in a mere 10 years under GOP governors and General Assemblies. He supported Mark Warner’s largest tax increase in Virginia history in 2005. In a shot to the heart of basic principles of liberty, he even voted to allow taxation of Virginia voters without representation, by unelected bureaucrats (HB 3202 in 2007). Thank God for the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled 7-0 that we actually fought a war against taxation without representation, and Hurt’s bill was unconstitutional.

    He proposes to run against government-controlled Obamacare, yet he himself supported requiring vaccination of all Virginia’s 12-year-old schoolgirls against HPV (a disease transmitted only by sexual contact) unless their parents choose to opt them out (HB 2035 in 2007). He proposes to run against Tom Perriello (who conveniently voted “present” on the “hate-crimes” bill), though he himself voted to allow government employees to place their homosexual partners as beneficiaries on their life insurance policies, in defiance of Virginia’s Marriage Amendment, which reserves the privileges of marriage to traditional married couples (SB 945 in 2009).

    In Robert Hurt, Republicans would nominate a candidate who has consistently demonstrated a failure to understand basic principles of liberty. A candidate who promised to attend TEA Party debates, then ducked them. A candidate whose nomination would be a slap in the face to Virginians frightened at the prospect of ever more intrusive government in their lives.

     Scott Brown’s election proves that there is a wave brewing. The question is, will Republicans heed the message? Or will they recapture Washington only to revert to the 2006-08 ways that reduced the GOP to the Gross-Out Party? Will they embrace the patriots of the TEA Party, or join Obama and Co. in repudiating them? The battle is on for the soul of the GOP. If the Robert Hurts of the world are the best Republicans can do, we will have our answer, and we will deservedly return to minority status once again.

Rick Boyer

Lynchburg