What do they stand for?

Among other positive attributes, the Republican Party of the past valued fairness, common sense and this country’s great governmental institutions. This served the party well during the Reagan years and beyond. Listening to the Clark County GOP shows these values to have long since fallen by the wayside, to be replaced by a state of constant grievance and vengeance.

Representative Jamie Herrera-Butler was forced to make what shouldn’t be an unpopular stand for her country and Constitution when she criticized former president Trump’s obvious role in the capitol insurrection. This stand for the truth “broke precinct committee officer Carolyn Crain’s heart.” Even though it has nothing to do with the subject, Christian advocate Heidi St John would rather talk about preventing socialism in her opening speech.

Along with procedural objections this is a time-honored distraction from whatever the subject at hand happens to be. In this case that subject is the recent capitol insurrection and the lies that led to it. It’s much easier to smear a fellow Republican with the “socialist” tag than to defend your support for the lies that almost caused a fair election to be overturned by violence.

Representative Herrera-Butler’s standing up for her country took integrity, courage and a belief in the institutions that have sustained this great nation. By publicly opposing these values, by embracing domestic terrorists, by ignoring public health and refusing to condemn the most un-American act imaginable, one has to ask: Clark County GOP, what do you stand for?

Brian Lehman

Spokane Valley