TO MY REPUBLICAN FRIENDS

Dear Republican Friends,

We need to talk.

I believe you to be reasonable, intelligent, good-hearted people. Otherwise we would not be friends. You would not like me and, I regret to say I probably would not like you. Which is okay; we don't have to like everybody! The people I like are reasonable, intelligent, good-hearted people like yourselves. I know some of you as Republicans; others, I know without knowing you're Republicans; still others I don't know at all, I just know that we could perfectly well be friends.

I want to ask you to consider voting for a Democrat.

I need to ask you to reassess your loyalty to a party that can no longer reasonably claim to represent the "conservative" values you reasonably embrace; to a party that is now dominated by unreason and bad faith.

If we are honest with ourselves, you and I know that the Republican party is headed by a man who utters untruths as readily as he breathes. As a leader, he is erratic, impetuous, headstrong, unreasonable, and lacking in the good heart and the human compassion that you and I value. Far from providing the checks and balances required by the Constitution, your congressional representatives in both the House and Senate support this man mindlessly in his every excess, his shameless self-interest and his endless display of administrative incompetence.

The Republican party has lost its way. "Fiscal conservatism" is no longer anything but a bad joke in the light of their dysfunctional economic policies. On virtually every issue, from health care to the reasonable regulation of weapons of war in the hands of criminals and madmen, from the protection of our increasingly vulnerable environment to the modernization of our infrastructure and the education of our children, Republicans have proved themselves incapable of producing, let alone enacting a coherent policy.

Facts, science and truth itself--those things that you and I value--have been discarded in favor of blind partisanship and ideological purity. Far from "making America great again," this Republican president is well on the way to destroying our image and the trust placed in us by our global friends.

We live in fear of what the next scandal or the next misstep might be. If we are to return to sanity, if we are to restore reason and mutual trust, if we are to honor our national heritage, we can no longer allow ourselves to be dominated by the fanaticism that has overtaken the Republican party.

I ask you to join me in voting for a Democrat, if only to restore the balance in our national discourse. I ask you, in particular, to vote for a man for whom the practice of reason, scientific empiricism, and action based on observable truths has been a way of life, and I believe that to be Dr. Hans Keirstead. Republicans and Democrats alike, we all need a voice of calm sanity to represent us. Republicans and Democrats alike, we need to return to an America respected for sound reason, intelligence, and a good heart.

As I said, we need to talk. I warmly invite response from my Republican friends.

With my sincere good wishes,

Peter