I've been deeply concerned about what's been calling itself conservative in recent years.

It seems to me that it's merely a wallowing place for persons who are fundamentally inflexible, and who are incapable of letting anything go and moving on.

A salient example of this is a guy I spoke to last year who was still bent out of shape about the Panama Canal Treaty.  (As he'd been taught to be.)  Reagan strategists had contrived this as an issue against Gerald Ford in the 1976 primary, and resurrected it against Carter in the 1980 election, thus inculcating it in the rank and file.  But that this was just a ploy to get votes with was made abundantly clear by the fact that Ronald Reagan, who'd made such an issue of it in two campaigns, did absolutely nothing about it once in office.  Nary a peep!  Yet 34 years later it remained festering inside a grass-roots conservative, who could still parrot the phony-baloney rhetoric of long-ago campaigns.  Only to him it still mattered, inexplicably.

Just like there are still conservatives fuming about "Hanoi Jane" after 43 years!  I saw another one of those bumper stickers to that effect just last week.  (The poor clod.)  That same day, in the same parking lot, I also saw that old bumper sticker with the menacing cartoon Confederate and the words "Forget-- HELL!"  (Please try.)  There are folks still griping that Roosevelt allegedly tried to pack the Supreme Court, before they were born!  While they're at it, they might as well be disgruntled about the Peloponnesian War.

It makes me wonder:  what is "conservatism", if not an ad-hoc collection of impotent and hopelessly outdated resentments?  And how can such aberrant thinking claim a superior entitlement to rule over as society moving ever forward without them?

Sincerely,

Stephen Van Eck

Rushville, PA

I am addressing my comments to Mr. Stephen Van Eck's letter in the 9/23/15 edition of the Transcript

Why would anyone want federal money (taxpayer money) to go to an organization that dismembers and then sells the body parts of unborn human babies? Regardless of what good things that organization may do, how can we morally justify the barbarity of the evil things that they do?

Are we to bury our heads in the sand to stifle the silent screams of those children who Planned Parenthood murder? The pagan Canaanites sacrificed their children to Moloch by having them burned alive in the arms of their idol. To dampen the screams of those children the pagan priests beat drums to stifle the screams of the children and their mothers. But today the children are killed in the wombs of their mothers to the sound of whirling abortion equipment.

What is wrong with our nation? Have we completely lost our minds or do we simply have a dead conscience?

Sincerely,

Barry Corrigan

Jackson, PA

Remember the Arab Spring? It was the uprising in the Mid-East against the entrenched dictatorships of eight Arab nations. Now four years later, the Republican Party is experiencing its season of discontent.

There were signs of things to come, but no one paid them much mind.

Last year, a political outsider, Dr. David Brat, an obscure economics professor from an equally obscure college, was challenging the House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for the Republican primary in Virginia. Talk about long shots, Brat was a no shot.

Cantor had the support of his party, almost $6 million in his war chest, and a crushing 30-point lead in the polls. And Brat? He had $100 K, no Republican Party support, only the backing of the Tea Party and its meager resources.

We know that the impossible is not possible, yet it happens. David Brat won, and he won big with 56 percent to Cantor's 44 percent.

But well before this stunning upset in 2014, there were rumblings of rebellion in the RP. From 2003 to 2005, the electorate gave the RP complete control of the government: the presidency, the Senate, the House, everything.

Then Republican voters waited for the RP to keep its promises, to shrink the government, and reign in spending. And they waited.

What was accomplished during the RP years? Let us count the ways: ObamaCare ($2 trillion over the next decade), the Medicare Prescription Drug Act ($550 billion from '06 to '15), increased federal expenditures, a new cabinet department Homeland Security (funded amnesty), an increase in the size of government, No Child Left Behind (increased spending for education by 64 percent), TARP (net loss after payback $40 billion), the Iran Treaty, and futile attempts to control immigration.

Much was accomplished, not for the Republicans for the Democrats. The RP abandoned its base and marched steadily leftward.

Facing the ire of Republicans and an insurrection of more than two dozen fellow Representatives, John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, quit. His resignation was greeted with cheers among conservatives and tears among liberals.

This writer suggests a bye-bye gift of the white flag that get-along-come-along Boehner waved so often. He can hang it from the balcony of his million-dollar winter-getaway condo in Florida.

So no sad farewells for Boehner. He entered the halls of Congress as a man of average means and leaves it a millionaire five times over. He accrued his fortune by investments in blue-chip stocks. But whether Boehner is a stock market genius or the beneficiary of tit-for-tat insider stock tips is an open question.

Whose head is next on the political chopping block? Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader of the Senate is looking over his shoulder. And for good reason.

One reporter noted that nearly every bill that was passed during the McConnell-led Senate had the support of 90 percent of the Democrats. Which is to say, the Senate was passing legislation with more Democratic support than Republican support.

And he continues his conciliatory way.

Recently, McConnell picked up the white flag that had fallen from Boehner's hand. He supported the Iran nuclear deal and refused to defund Planned Parenthood by saying he would actively seek to avoid a government shutdown over the issue.

An insider summed up a commonly held sentiment of McConnell: “He's an unprincipled inside-the-Beltway deal-making sellout.” Maybe so. But there's no maybe that he lacks zeal for conservative causes.

Who will replace Boehner? Will McConnell be the next to fall, and if so, who will take his place?

And one more question: Is there a growing rift between the young Turks and the Republican stalwarts of the status quo like Karl Rove, George Will, Bill Kristol, and political pundits such as Charles Krauthammer?

In other words, Will the Republican Spring wither or flower?

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA