Letter: Capsizing a drifting boat

In a vacuum, someone will take control. It appears to me, as an independent voter, that the Republican Party is in a deep, dark vacuum. There is no leadership. Its members cannot exercise the constitutional responsibility they took an oath to uphold. After seven years of being only able to oppose anything the president does, the Republicans have lost their way. They know not how to represent the interests of the people who elected them. They openly refuse to uphold their constitutional duty to confirm a new Supreme Court justice. They are a sailboat in a storm with all sails up and no rudder or keel. The rogue wave that is going to kill them is Donald Trump. They are so used to bullying that they do not know how to stand up to the biggest one of all. They have crippled the government with obstructionism to the point that according the latest Gallup poll of Feb. 3 through 7, only 14 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The American people seem to express this by throwing their support behind “outsiders,” Trump and Bernie Sanders being the prime examples.

Is everyone so afraid of Trump that they refuse to tell him he has no clothes on? In a vacuum, Trump has taken control. In Iraq, there was a vacuum. ISIS took control. The world seeks order. It does not exist in a state of chaos for long. The Islamic people need to control their own fanatics. So do the Republicans.

Ward Hauenstein

Aspen