Should Tarrant Democrats ‘work with’ GOP? No!

I am amused that Richard Greene thinks that Tarrant Democrats should “set an example” and work with the GOP (Jan. 29 column).

How incredibly ironic that now, just days into a Republican administration, Greene encouraged Democrats to do that, since the example set for the past eight years by Republicans was to do everything in their power to obstruct, delay and prevent.

Even if we ignore that track record, let’s consider what Trump and his GOP cohorts have offered the country so far.

With a flurry of executive orders (yes, the same tools lambasted by Republicans as autocratic and dictatorial when used by Obama), Trump has:

Begun the process for taking health care coverage away from 20 million Americans;

Alienated our neighbor to the south by summarily declaring that a useless wall will be built along the border, to be financed by a 20 percent import tax that will hurt Americans far more than it will hurt Mexicans;

Revived an unnecessary oil pipeline, no matter what environmental harm it is likely to cause and in complete disregard of the heritage of our Native American brothers and sisters;

Announced that the United States — until now the shining moral beacon for the world — will resume torturing prisoners;

Torn immigrant families apart by barring even legal visa holders from seven predominantly Muslim countries, rationalized on the outrageous grounds that somehow Christians should be given immigration preference because “they have suffered” while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of Muslim casualties caused by the rampaging Syrian and ISIS armies;

Channeled Watergate by firing the attorney general who had the moral courage to tell him his immigration policy was probably illegal.

All of this from a man whose opinion of women is guided by how willingly they respond to his sexual assaults.

Democracy cannot function when the president of the United States pursues a dictatorial agenda.

Trump’s mean-spirited, poorly reasoned orders are insulting to American democracy and to our sense of decency.

It is our duty to do everything we can to expose the danger posed by the actions of a demagogue. Such a person has no business being in charge of our country.

What is most troubling to me is the fact that the values now being frivolously cast aside by this man were once the values of the Republican Party that Greene believes to be deserving of Democratic Party kowtowing.

It was, after all, Republicans Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich who championed the individual healthcare mandate Trump now seeks to skewer.

And a sound, reasonable immigration policy has been a hallmark of Republican policy proposals for years — at least until “America First” lobotomized what had once been reasonable minds on the Republican side of the aisle.

The GOP’s abandonment of the values that came from reasonable discourse with members of both parties not only stymies any thought of setting the “example” that Greene so naively trumpets, but it also illuminates the intellectual dishonesty that now permeates the Republican Party.

I am proud to say that if it is up to me, the Democratic Party will not work with a party whose leader offers us nothing more than the chance to betray every values and every principle that has made this country great.

Indeed, I sayGreene should convince his GOP buddies to join in the resistance to this misguided man before it is too late, and save what little humanity is left in his party.

This story was originally published February 3, 2017 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Should Tarrant Democrats ‘work with’ GOP? No!."