Many letters of this sort have been written over the last couple of years, mostly by disaffected Republicans, but Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, brings a little more firepower to the pen in this Op-Ed for WaPo:
You [Republicans] have claimed [President Reagan’s] legacy, exalted him as an icon of conservatism and used the quotes of his that serve your purpose at any given moment. Yet at this moment in America’s history when the democracy to which my father pledged himself and the Constitution that he swore to uphold, and did faithfully uphold, are being degraded and chipped away at by a sneering, irreverent man who traffics in bullying and dishonesty, you stay silent.
You stay silent when President Trump speaks of immigrants as if they are trash, rips children from the arms of their parents and puts them in cages. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that my father said America was home “for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness.”
You stayed silent when this president fawned over Kim Jong Un and took Vladimir Putin’s word over America’s security experts. You stood mutely by when one of his spokesmen, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said there is nothing wrong with getting information from Russians. And now you do not act when Trump openly defies legitimate requests from Congress, showing his utter contempt for one of the branches of our government.
It’s worth remembering that, at one time, Reagan, a former Democrat turned Republican, claimed that the Democrats left him, he had not left the Democrats. I think these days, if he were still around and cogent, he’d be an Independent, railing against the moral cowardice of the current crop of GOP members of Congress.
But do you know what I’d really like to see? A reporter hand a copy of Davis’ letter to Senator Graham (R-SC) and ask him for his thoughts, and when Graham responded with the scorn and spittle he’s recently developed since coming in contact with President Trump, ask him why he’s not weeping in shame at his moral depravity.
Yeah, that’s posturing – but it would also be a way to show Senator Graham the road to redemption.
