By Fmr. Illinois State Rep. Bob Bergman -
Dear Peter:
During the time I served with you in the Illinois General Assembly, our party had some successes and some failures. But we did have a coherent strategy and some capable spokesmen.
Speaker Boehner is now drawing a line-in-the-sand, Wile E. Coyote style, over the Debt-Limit and stepping back three months! Since 2010 it seems the Republican Senate and House leaders are in dire need of a basic, crash-course on political leadership 101.
WHY isn't the Speaker holding committee and sub-committee hearings on obsolete and harmful government programs, waste, overspending, fraud, crony-capitalism, corruption, outmoded and unproductive tax codes, and ways to allow private enterprise to spur the economy?
If McConnell and Boehner can't step up, can't adapt, can't articulate and produce a winning strategy, they should be replaced. They certainly can't continue to be the main spokesmen for the Republican Party. McConnell and Boehner make a laughable duo of Phineas T. Bluster & Seymour Skinner.
Certainly the Senate has fresh, new, capable spokesmen that should step up: Rubio, Cruz, Paul, Portman and others. Seniority be damned, this is a fight for relevance and survival.
The House also has fresh new faces, you are one of them.
The failure of Harry Reid and a truly "Do Nothing" Democratic Senate, no longer the "greatest deliberative dog," needs to be highlighted to the nation' not allowing the White House media to label the House as such.
The WSJ recently had several point-on columns on these very topics. We need fresh, new, eloquent spokesmen; and when we do we need to be 'negative' to couch it in language like Lincoln understood and did.
I wish I could afford to send a copy of Robert Caro's "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" Master of the Senate," to each and every Republican member of the Congress. While I disagreed with LBJ's policies, I remain in awe of his political expertise, rapid rise and command of Washington in just a few years. Every member should read, and re-read it.
Please express these sentiments to your colleagues.
With kindest personal regards,
Sincerely,
Bob Bergman
Former Illinois State Representative
