Editor,
You lost. Get over it. This letter is directed at Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, among others. I'm not sure if you recall this, but there was a democratically held presidential election in November. We hold one of these things every four years, and we have for more than 200 years now. As usual, two people ran, and one lost. There was no legal wrangling. Things went smoothly. Voters spoke loudly. No lawyers bickered. This time, the winner won fairly and squarely.
Look, I'm sorry your guy was a poor candidate. I'm sorry he was joined at the lips with George W. Bush. I'm sorry he chose a governor who dragged down his ticket and who diminished his message even as she promoted hers. I'm sorry he blew in the wind more than the 18th pin at Pebble Beach. I'm sorry his distorted negative campaign - behind which some of you stood, but from which most of you ran - didn't pan out for you. I'm sorry you need to resort to anger and hatred and vitriol as argument. And I'm sorry the Republican Party is in such a sorry state. But please stop fomenting fear by stridently claiming tyranny, fascism and communism and tacitly supporting racism, jingoism, socialism and all manner of insidious hideous-isms.
All this is beneath even all of you. What you're doing is conflating your obvious frustration with having lost an election. That's all this is about. You're not, as you claim to be, big-"C" conservatives on a mission to save the country, because by your behavior, you prove you don't care about the country; you just care about the part of it that agrees with you, that buys your books, that buys your advertisers' products and that buys into the viciously skewed, barking-mad mayhem you make.
True conservatives like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and William Buckley are on spin-cycle in their graves with every mean remark you make and with every false claim you lay on their legacy. All you've become, all you are now, are bitter, radical nationalists oozing an unctuous agenda over the free airwaves granted to you by the same folks about which you claim to care. You don't like President Obama. So be it. Everyone gets this. But you need to get that it took your guy eight years to drive us into the poorhouse, so why not give the new guy more than eight weeks to fix it?
What you need to do is what so many others did after 2000: Get over it, and get on with exercising your right as voters by winning back the White House in 2012. Until then, stop being so mean-spirited and so hateful, stop being such poor losers, and start trying to win the next one, fairly and squarely. That's the American way.
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Michael O'Brien
UNM faculty
