After reading the commentary by Cal Thomas in Tuesday’s Spokesman-Review (May 5) on how bad Sen. Arlen Specter was for the Republican Party, I was struck by the honesty in the line “Republicans, when they gain power, spend most of their political capital trying to prove they are not mean, uncaring, racist, sexist and homophobic.”

Could it be that the Republican Party needs to spend their political capital trying to dispel an image that has been well earned over many years of wooing the “mean, uncaring, racist, sexist and homophobic” to the Republican Party? It was good to see a far right-wing spokesman actually put it into print. However, I don’t remember President Reagan, or either of the President Bushes, ever apologizing for catering to the far right of their party.

If the Republican Party has an image problem, it was one they very purposefully created by trying their best to exclude rather than include political views outside their very narrow, far-right agenda.

R.W. Munk

Rathdrum