Re: “New leadership: The Republican Party’s big tent returns to Colorado<\/a>,” April 6 commentary<\/p>\n I appreciate Brita Horn\u2019s wish to open up the Republican tent to new members. I was one for the first 20 years of my voting life. I am now an unaffiliated voter.<\/p>\n If she really wants me to rejoin the party, she and her fellow Republicans must recognize that when elected to Congress, a new member takes an oath, stating, \u201cI do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I believe President Ronald Reagan was wrong in stating that Republicans shouldn\u2019t speak ill of fellow Republicans. Any politician who feels they owe more to their party than to the Constitution should not be in office. A Republican or Democrat who refuses to call out members of their party who are not abiding by the Constitution is violating their oath of office. Any politician who refuses to abide by the Constitution is a domestic enemy of our country.<\/p>\n There is nothing in the above oath about supporting a political party. If Horn wants me and the more than 40% of unaffiliated voters in Colorado to join her party, it must demonstrate that its elected officials will abide by their oath and call out any politician (of any party) that is ignoring the Constitution.<\/p>\n Wayne Patton,\u00a0Salida<\/em><\/p>\n Having attended the \u201cHands Off\u201d rally in Durango on Saturday, April 5, this unaffiliated voter became more progressive than ever. What may have been true about unaffiliated voters leaning conservative in the past, I believe, is no longer the case.<\/p>\n Until Republican office-seekers can truly condemn the current administration\u2019s rape and pillage of our democratic republic, voters like me will vote the other way. Republicans seeking election or re-election will hang on to the coattails of their almighty leader because that is the only way they will get the party nomination from their constituents.<\/p>\n The \u201cbig tent\u201d cannot be big enough! Until the current president, with his crusade to limit government services, is no longer in office, Horn\u2019s words of inclusion ring hollow. This is demonstrated by the dismantling of government agencies that were created to help people in need: the poor, the disabled and veterans who served our country.<\/p>\n Horn\u2019s commentary was very well written, and I may have been persuaded to vote Republican before President Donald Trump and his theatrics. But the \u201cbig tent\u201d idea is too little, too late!<\/p>\n Cory D. Wheeler,\u00a0Durango<\/em><\/p>\n At least Brita Horn admits that the party does not, and has not, had a big tent. The Republican Party used to promise it regularly but then continued to move further and further to the right. Look where we are now. I wonder if people will fall for this “big tent” trope again?<\/p>\n Marianne E. Duer, Parker<\/em><\/p>\n I was happy to read Brita Horn\u2019s commentary. Republicans who can reach across party divides by allowing for all voices within the more conservative spectrum can help meet the need for balance in our state\u2019s political life.<\/p>\n As a pro-life Democrat, I would like to see a similar expansion of the Democratic tent to include those who see that life does not start in the delivery room and yet also recognize the right of a woman to safeguard her own bodily integrity.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t stop there. As Horn has shown, there is room for reasonable discussion on all the topics that face and so often divide us.<\/p>\n So many of the tenets held by the Democratic Party — equal economic opportunity, robust social safety net,\u00a0\u00a0public education, respect for human rights,\u00a0and an attitude of cooperation towards allies and trading partners\u2014 can be promoted and implemented in ways that respect legitimate concerns of those on the more conservative side of our population.<\/p>\n Having two parties that complement rather than oppose one another would give us all an opportunity to make more reasoned judgments in our choices as voters, in place of the nose-holding-lesser-of-two-evils ones we\u2019ve had in the recent past.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s have less \u201ceither\/or\u201d and more \u201cboth\/and\u201d in our political process.<\/p>\n Frances Rossi, Denver<\/em><\/p>\n Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online<\/a> or check out our guidelines<\/a> for how to submit by email or mail.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A promising change, but skepticism remains about Colorado’s GOP Re: “New leadership: The Republican Party’s big tent returns to Colorado,” April 6 commentary I appreciate Brita...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":603,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/spanishliteratureintranslation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}