Republican hopefuls spend forum bashing GOP

UPDATED: Three candidates for the Republican nomination in Iowa's 2nd District spent much of a forum bashing the GOP and its recent track record.

“I've been pretty disgusted with the party myself,” life-long Republican Rob Gettemy of Marion told a questioner who said the Republican brand is “trash.” “I will tell you I am more disappointed in my own party than the Democrats. A Democrat never looked me in the eye and said ‘I agree with you' and then gone to Washington and didn't live up to what they said.”

Gaining credibility is an uphill battle for candidates wearing the GOP label, said Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

“It's embarrassing to run as a Republican and talk about limited government when the largest expansion of the federal government occurred in the Bush years,” the Ottumwa physician said April 29. For Republicans who did not support the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and Medicare Part D and other government expansion, “Certainly, there is a great deal of frustration.”

Steve Rathje will leave it to voters to decide whether he is a “true blue Republican.”

“I refuse to walk in lockstep with a party that did to us what Republicans did to us in regard to TARP and prescription drugs,” the Cedar Rapids businessman said at a forum sponsored by the University of Iowa chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, an off-shoot of Texas Rep. Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. “Rather, it will be they that walk in lockstep with you and me and the values and principles instilled in us by way of the Constitution, its framers and God almighty.”

Gary Sicard of Robins, a Libertarian candidate for the 2nd District seat held by Mount Vernon Democrat Rep. Dave Loebsack, said he had been a Republican until he realized there was nothing in his life that wasn't touched by the federal government.

“The Libertarian Party believes the best way for government to run is to simply say that government doesn't belong in everything,” Sicard said. “If it's not hurting yourself or others, if it's not taking away liberty, why does the federal government belong there?

A fourth GOP candidate, Christopher Reed of Marion declined to participate in the forum (http://tinyurl.com/2c4czb5), claiming to have been attacked by YAL members for “having conservative principles and a desire to defend this nation.”

Ani DeGroot, a junior in political science and president of the UI YAL, said Reed misunderstood comments by chapter members who hold a non-interventionist philosophy. She disagreed with Reed that YAL has a “blame America first” philosophy.

By James Q. Lynch