In Richard Wilson’s letter, “Vote Conservative” (Oct. 19), he encourages everyone to vote for Republican candidates.

Making loans to General Motors and Chrysler and passing Obamacare doesn’t constitute socialism, as Wilson implies.

PolitiFact ruled his policies “may have expanded government, but they don’t justify this socialist hyperbole.” PolitiFact ruled: “Pants-on-fire.”

The tea party’s “Americans for Prosperity” is running TV ads in this state claiming Obama had a fair chance. What a joke!

On Nov. 3, 2010, Mitch McConnell said he would not work with Obama on programs that benefit Democrats and Republicans alike. He said his goal was to get a Republican as president in 2012.

Michael Grunwald’s new book, “The New New Deal,” has much to say. It shows Republicans denied Obama cooperation for the purpose of rendering his presidency a failure, making it easier for them to mount a comeback after their disastrous 2008 losses.

Grunwald has Joe Biden on record making a striking charge. Biden says a number of Republican senators privately confided to him that Mitch McConnell had given them the directive that there was to be no cooperation with the Democrats.

McConnell decided, “We can’t let the Democrats succeed.”

Former senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) also goes on record telling Grunwald that Republican marching orders were to oppose everything the Obama administration proposed.

“If he was for it, we had to be against it,” Voinovich tells Grunwald. And at another point, characterizing a strategy session, Republicans and McConnell held in early January of 2009, Voinovich said, “He wanted everyone to hold the fort.

All he cared about was making sure Obama could never have a clean victory.”

On major issues, McConnell has held Republican defections to somewhere between minimal and nonexistent, allowing him to slow the Democratic agenda or defeat it.

Douglas Aldrich

Whispering Pines