GOP debates raise more concerns

Re “No compassion,” editorial, Nov. 30

According to this editorial, any GOP candidate who believes in enforcing U.S. immigration laws and protecting our borders is mean, lacks compassion and must be hard-hearted.

What The Times fails to comprehend is that it is really just a matter of which group you have compassion for: the people here illegally, or the legal workers who consequently are displaced from jobs or whose wages are depressed, the innocent victims of other crimes perpetrated by illegal aliens and the overburdened taxpayers who already pay an increasingly heavy financial price to subsidize generous social welfare services to this burgeoning population.

It is for this latter, much-larger group of people in this country legally that the GOP candidates -- unlike their Democratic counterparts and The Times -- appropriately have the greater level of compassion.

Peter Rich

Los Angeles

The YouTube/CNN debate was supposed to provide a chance to ask the candidates about issues that are of vital interest to the American public. As a young person, however, I found that the concerns of my generation were sadly neglected, with no mention of the escalating threat of global warming, the exponentially increasing cost of college tuition or other issues that youth are particularly concerned about.

This neglect is all the more frustrating given that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 will make up about a quarter of the electorate in 2008.

For young people, the overriding message of last week’s GOP debate was that young people don’t matter. And we wonder why youth voting rates have not exceeded 50% in the last several decades.

Sujatha Jahagirdar

Los Angeles

The writer is national coordinator of Student Public Interest Research Groups.

I was annoyed with one question in the debate, and rather dismayed by the candidates’ responses. They were asked if they believed every word of the Bible. The ones who responded said they did, although some were compelled to qualify their answers, obviously trying to placate all sides. This was an inappropriate question. Apparently neither the questioner nor any candidate has much familiarity with the Constitution, which states in Article VI: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” The fact than no one had the courage or conviction to say so is an indication of how unsuitable any of them are to be president.

Lenard Davis

Newport Beach

Re “Public inspires intense debate,” Nov. 29

After three years on active duty during the Korean War, my first vote in a presidential election was for Dwight Eisenhower, and I had been a Republican ever since. The Republican Party I worked for and contributed to was based on a few principles:

* The scariest words you can hear are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”

* The government should not spend money that it does not have, except in exceptional circumstances.

* Individual human rights are an important part of being an American.

* U.S. citizens hold the highest standards in the world -- we do not torture other human beings, period.

Nowhere in the debate did I hear a single candidate say he supported these simple values. If these people are the best the Republican Party has to offer, I am glad I am no longer a registered Republican.

James W. Taylor

San Clemente