I found a stiff cardboard flyer in my mailbox last week. It promoted your campaign for reelection. The language and the tone of the flier were very like your intemperate rant on nationwide Fox News the other night, if you will remember.
In an interview, you stated that all the Democrats in Congress mourned the death of terrorists, in fact loved terrorists more than our own Constitution and rule of law. Those remarks, outside the melodramatic, hyperbolic setting of a Fox News interview, might easily have been taken as a sign of mental imbalance, of sudden breakdown of rational process. In another setting, the guys in the white coats might be waiting in the wings to take you to a safe location where you are less likely to harm others or yourself.
The flyer I got in the mail repeated over and over your desire to fight. It trumpeted your devotion to your Fearless President. In the flyer, you shared your leader’s sense of victimization at the hands of critics. The flyer demonized them and, by extension, all in your district who might be opposed, as “leftist,” a label the flyer made no effort to define.
When you are elected to Congress and take your oath of office, you sign on as a representative of the citizens of your district. All of them. When you paint all who might disagree with you as suspicious of motive and as secondary in character to the ones whose votes landed you, ready or not, into your seat, you defile the character and the dignity of the office itself.
The president’s sweet Kool-Aid, when gargled as directed, gets bitter at the back of the throat and always triggers a retching response. Just ask anyone who has worked for him. That little orange jug might well go dry come November, and after it does, maybe he will give you a job as a porter in one of his hotels, or as a caddy on a golf course.
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