Letter to the Editor: Our Government Deserves Better

I’m 66 years old and I’ve been involved in the process of politics and government since I was 17. I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of knowing and working with members of both parties, the saints and the sinners alike. It pains me and relieves me to say that I’m no longer an active participant in an endeavor I love. The last 10 years of very personal experience at the professional level has left me dispirited with the path the Republican Party has pursued and because it takes two to dance, I’m now a wallflower.

The disgraceful display at what was purported to be a Republican “debate” confirmed my observations. The “base” that the candidates are speaking to has been around for hundreds of years. The current state of its “outrage” is the result of very deliberate, calculated and now as we see a very successful strategy by certain actors that need not be named. If the base hears and sees only what those who pander to it for 30 years, this is precisely what you get.

We are all so very much poorer for what they have become and the poorest are my Republican friends who find themselves being cast as pariahs in their own party if they do not agree with a “base” that relishes bombast and denial of any achievement of those in the other party. Is the GOP, the one that spoke in measured tones and tamped down its fringe players, gone forever? It sure looks like it.

The Republican Party and the process of government deserves better, in both our state and nation. It’s just too bad it doesn’t appear to be able or willing to deliver it.

Mike Serpe

Egg Harbor, Wis.