Letter to the Editor: What Are We Taking the Country Back From?

Like programmed robots you see Republican spokespersons with straight faces repeat phrases like “make America great again” or “take the country back,” which begs the question, take the country back to what?

Because we have Republican majorities in both the house and senate, taking the country back must mean electing a Republican president. Do we really want to go back to the wreckage of the Bush/Cheney years when in 2008 the stock market was at the bottom and unemployment was about 10 percent? Would we like to tell about 17 million Americans who didn’t have health insurance or had policies not worth the paper they were printed on that Obamacare is to be repealed? Should we scuttle the slight progress we have made on protecting the environment? Should we go back to a go-it-alone, bullets first foreign policy and cancel the progress made with our European partners on slowing nuclear proliferation as with the Iran accord? Would we like to return to the days when we checked the weekly military casualty reports hoping not to see names of kids we know?

I would like us to take our county back and I mean take it back from the tea party obstructionists who have been preoccupied for the past seven-plus years with trying to make our first black president fail. Despite their effort they have not been successful but have succeeded in fueling the frustrations of voters who in response have selected the worst possible choice as the GOP presidential candidate.

George Krall

La Crosse, Wis.