Dear Governor Romney,

It just came to my attention that you will be fundraising for your Presidential campaign in St. Louis today. I just wanted to take a moment and welcome you to the great state of Missouri.

I know that you don’t make it to Missouri as much as you visit our neighbors to the north in the Hawkeye State, but you’ll see while you’re here that Missourians are some of the most hard-working and entrepreneurial folks in the entire country.

While we’re happy to have you in our state, we hope that you take some time to answer a few questions. It seems that unlike most people running for office, you are unwilling to answer questions from voters and the press, and your staff even claims that you’re not “ready” to appear on a Sunday show.

As a career candidate like you knows, fielding questions on your proposals and explaining your record are really a cornerstone of the political process. Unfortunately, it looks like the only questions you’ll be taking today are from donors, so we took the liberty of putting together a few questions we hope you’ll answer:

1) Last night Senate Republicans voted to raise taxes on nearly 160 million Americans just so millionaires and billionaires don’t have to pay their fair share. Why do you support raising taxes on middle-class Americans?

2) The President’s payroll tax cut would let the typical Missouri family keep an extra $1,520 of what they earn. Why do you think that $1,520 is nothing more than a “little band-aid” for middle-class families?

3) Your campaign says that you’re not “ready” to sit down for a Sunday show. If you’re not ready for a few tough interviews, what makes you think you’re ready to lead the country?

4) Reckless behavior on Wall Street led us to the brink of economic disaster in 2008, so why do you want to repeal the safeguards that protect America’s taxpayers and why do you want to let Wall Street write its own rules again?

5) In a recent interview, you refused to answer a question about what book you are reading – are you ready to stop dodging the simplest questions?

I look forward to your speedy reply and again, welcome to Missouri.

Sincerely,

Brian Wahby

Chairman

St. Louis City Democrats

It was great to see the swagger in President Obama’s step last week.  The image of him strutting down the long White House corridor towards the East Room will stay with me forever.   The President announced to the world something that we’ve been waiting nearly 10 years to hear – Osama Bin Laden is dead.

The President and his national security team took a big risk when they snuck into Pakistan, without permission and under the cover of nightfall to kill America’s number one enemy.  It took nearly a year of intelligence gathering about bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound and careful planning to pull off this daring nighttime raid.  Hopefully this successful mission will put to bed the age old Republican talking point that Democrats are soft on defense issues and only Republican president’s can keep the American people safe.

The President called for unity in the wake of this big victory for America.  He invoked the sense of unity that existed in our country in the weeks and months following 9/11.  This time, that unity lasted for only a few short hours.  By Monday morning, the right wing talking heads and some of the leading Republican presidential candidates were praising former President Bush for making all this possible.  Some of them without any actual intelligence to support their position praised the “enhanced interrogation techniques” for providing information that led to Bin Laden’s death.

It pains these Republican Presidential candidates to see President Obama succeed.  They know that their chances of ever becoming President shrink every time the President and his team competently handle a crisis and clean up another one of the Bush Administration’s messes.  Their efforts to belittle the President’s accomplishments are backfiring and they are the ones the look petty.

Let’s look at a couple of examples from the past few weeks.  The President decided to put an end to the birther nonsense, which is nothing more than a veiled attempt to discredit America’s first black President, by releasing his “long form birth certificate.”  This won’t stop the conspiracy theorists, but it should at least silence the serious Republican presidential contenders.  I’m sure it will only silence them until they can devise another conspiracy to talk about President Obama’s race.

It’s no secret that our nation is facing a serious debt crisis that is a result of years of out of control spending by both parties and a shortfall in revenues thanks to the Bush Tax cuts.  The President and his team try to come up with real, grown up solutions to our nations debt crisis.  They recognize that continuing to cut taxes for the rich can’t solve this crisis and that entitlement programs really do need to be reformed.  Rather than responsibly deal with this crisis and work with the President, Republicans proposed a disingenuous plan to solve our nations debt crisis on the backs of the poor and elderly.  They proposed slashing Medicare and Medicaid to cut costs while at the same time giving more tax breaks to America’s richest one percent and to their corporate bosses.

Finally, last week a new jobs report was released that shows the American economy created 244,000 jobs during the month of April and that U.S. payrolls grew at the fastest rate in five years.  This is great news not just for President Obama but for the country as a whole.  Yet, Republicans continue to sing the same old song that they can do a better job fixing the economy by implementing the tired old economic policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

President Obama may never win the respect of the right-wingers, but he is winning the respect of independent voters and of America’s middle class.  Most Americans aren’t interested in hyper partisanship.  They are interested in having good jobs and a decent quality of life for themselves and their children.  They want a President and a Congress that simply get the job done.  I can’t speak for the Congress, but we have a real leader in President Obama who is making tough choices and working every day to make this country a better place.

Brian Wahby is Chairman of the St. Louis City Democrats and Missouri’s At-Large Member of the Democratic National Committee.

Everyone can breath a sigh of relief this week.  The Missouri General Assembly is on spring break.  Missourians get a reprieve from being late night fodder for attempting to repeal child labor laws.  We are spared senseless debates prevent Sharia law from invading our courts and working families can rest easy knowing their jobs are safe for at least another week.

As you know, the legislature is dominated by Republicans, some who are truly interested in making Missouri a better place, and many that are more interested in making headlines and advancing their crazy right-wing agenda that does nothing to fix the problems in Missouri.  I’ve put together a wish list of legislative items that I hope the can be stopped dead in their tracks by the few remaining Democrats in the Senate and the rational Republicans in the House. Continue Reading