Lugar has stopped listening

To the editor:
On Jan. 26 US News and World Report quoted Senator Lugar insulting the Tea Party saying they use “large cliché titles, but are not able to articulate specifics.”
The far left finds every conservative opinion ignorant, but we don’t expect that kind of condescending rhetoric from the party’s elder statesman.
Calling his base inarticulate is tantamount to admitting he just doesn’t care enough to listen.
If he wants to hear “articulate specifics” on conservative issues I would suggest the writings of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Charles Krauthammer, since the media rarely allows the Tea Party to express more than a sound bite.
I quit writing Lugar 20 years ago when his office made it clear he was an anti-gun Senator and wasn’t going to listen to any other opinion.
Tea Party spokeswoman Monica Boyer describes traveling to Washington in December 2010 to accept an invitation to meet with the 78-year-old Lugar to discuss his policies.
She said, “He explained why he voted like he did and said he would do it all again. No connection. Lugar basically told us how it was. There was no discussion and he didn’t hear us.”
Lugar, ranked by The National Journal as second only to Olympia Snowe as the most liberal Republican, has become an elite Washington insider who seems more interested in listening to his friends across the aisle than his constituents in Indiana.
And that is just one of many reasons why the Tea Party has chosen to challenge him in 2012.
Stephen Erwin
Portland

A question
To the editor:
This is not the usual complaint. It is a question.
Here lately, I have been getting quarters from Guam and Puerto Rico.
When did we get two more states to the United States? What’s the deal?
Are we going to get more illegals or what?
Richard Haffner
Portland[[In-content Ad]]