A recent column by Nathan Crabbe included a list of contradictions the Republican Party demonstrated in Florida. I would like to add the contradictions in federal governance.

For example, Congress has not adopted a regular budget for 25 years. The Republican Party that has insisted on fiscal responsibility voted to allow the national debt to rise by around 40% during the last administration, demonstrating that the increase in the national debt was not the bogeyman that they told us it was. Now they insist that we cannot increase the national debt.

In my 30 years as a Conservative, I believed in balanced budgets, the rights of states and the Constitution; the three pillars of the Republican Party. My defection began when George W. Bush erased the concept of a balanced budget with the misguided war in Iraq. I was appalled when Bush started “selling” America to foreign nations for billions in loans in addition to buildings, businesses, and outsourcing.

Bush’s budget called for cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, veteran health care, law enforcement, medical research, and food and drug inspections. So much for compassionate conservatism. I also rebelled against the Bush administration’s intimidation of journalists into naming their sources and wiretapping American citizens.

Finally, I was opposed to the Christian religion receiving benevolent support to exert political influence. So much for the separation of Church and State. It was all a carefully orchestrated effort to consolidate political power while ceding our freedoms.

We must remember that although this country was founded as a Christian nation, it guaranteed the freedom to choose any religion – or not – thus allowing us to be the most freedom-loving country in the world.

Today the items on the Republican Party’s agenda seem to be removing voters, defending the big lie, cutting taxes for the rich, and undermining our democracy by disrupting the laws and standards that guarantee free and fair elections. The very distinction of American freedom is the ability to criticize our government – and to change it, with our vote, with nonviolent marches and with factual journalism backed by evidence. It is not unpatriotic, it is constitutional.

As a woman, who just won the right to vote in 1920, I am very concerned about the decision to make voting difficult, if not impossible. Poor blacks, browns and whites are marginalized by current voter suppression laws. Will women be next?

State lawmakers are already legislating our health care choices. No man of any color is prevented from making his health care choices. Will women ever be free to make their own choices in life?

Another contradiction is the “right to life” of Republican states which enact laws and regulations that will result in the deaths of their teenage girls. The lives of living girls and women are sacrificed for unborn children.

More from June Littler:

We have a crisis with our children

Voters need to know their responsibilities

Postal voting reduces poll worker fatigue

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative hero, said: “I think when the Constitution says that people have the right to equal protection of the laws, I think that clearly means people are walking around.”

If women had the equal rights amendment, no legislature could take away their equality. But this is another story.

June Littler lives in Gainesville.

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