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Following is a letter I wrote in March, 1999 to the U.S. Senator who was heading the Republican Presidential Task Force at that time. Re-reading this letter after 10 years, I am saddened that nothing has happened to change my perception of the Republican party. If anything, the situation has continued to deteriorate. It also seems more than a little ironic to me that the Senator to whom the letter is addressed is the same U.S. Senator who was involved in the highly publicized 2007 incident in the men's room at the Minneapolis airport. In any case, here's my letter:

U.S. Senator Larry Craig
Republican Presidential Task Force
425 Second Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002

Dear Senator Craig:

I am returning your recent Strategy Poll and solicitation without a contribution. I hope you will take the trouble to read the rest of this letter because it may give you some insight into the thinking of some of your Republican "base".

I am 70 years old and a long-time Republican supporter who is totally dismayed by the Republicans' failure to take advantage of their hard-won position as the majority political party in this country. You act more like you lost the election in '94. So much so that I am about to change my registration to an "Independent." For what it's worth, I am not alone. I belong to a group of about 40 senior citizens that meets weekly. Most of them are strong conservatives, so it may surprise you to learn that a number of them are also starting to voice the same intention.

We are sick and tired of watching our party being mismanaged to the point that the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats are almost indistinguishable. Republicans talk a lot about limited government, but they continue to aid and abet the liberals in increasing its size and cost. The Republican platform calls for reducing taxes, but the representatives of our party keep voting for higher taxes or "targeted" tax reductions that only serve to make an already overly complex tax system more complicated and which generally do not result in any true savings. As a businessman and executive who is also a retired Certified Public Accountant, I am outraged that I have not been able to do my own tax returns for a number of years.

The Republicans have let Clinton and the Democrats gut the military to the point that it is questionable whether or not we will be able to continue to adequately defend ourselves. The Democrats have been permitted to usurp many of our conservative positions, and we continuously fail to respond aggressively to their lies and distortions about our values and intentions. Are the Republicans ever going to get the courage to stand up and fight for the things that most of the people who live in "fly-over country" value?

We have created a political class that no longer thinks about anything but getting re-elected and increasing their compensation from the public trough. When is our party going to stop talking about standing on principle and actually do it????

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