The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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April 4, 2009

Your View: Today's problems traceable to GOP

Leigh Pomeroy, Mankato

It’s fascinating how the Republican Party, after eight years of financial and regulatory mismanagement, can with a straight face criticize the measures President Barack Obama is taking to keep the country from sinking even further into a recessionary tar pit. It is even more amazing when one of their chief spokesmen, as evidenced by regular articles in the Wall Street Journal, is Karl Rove, a man who may have committed treason during his tenure at The White House by revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

The lengths to which Obama and Congress must go to repair the current financial mess is scary. No one is sure if the measures are going to work. No one wants to go into as much debt as seems to be required. No one wants the government taking over businesses.

In 2002, I was among those who argued against tax cuts, preferring investing in infrastructure as a means to pull the country out of the economic downturn triggered by 9/11. Unfortunately, we got nowhere.

The country has now been forced into a huge economic experiment. The first choice is not to borrow and spend our way out of economic stagnation. But when all other means have been exhausted, including reducing interest rates to near zero, there are no alternatives left.

If Karl Rove and Republicans of that ilk had spent their formidable skills towards bettering the country instead of attempting to create a permanent Republican majority, then perhaps they would not have been so successful at destroying both.

And if they had acted accordingly — who knows? They may have succeeded in placing their party and our nation in a much better position than either one is today.

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