GOP scuttled economy and benefitted

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, defiantly declared in 2010 that his "single most important" goal was to make President Obama a one-term president. You may remember that we were in the depths of the recession at this time making another "single most important" thing a more palatable choice.

Around the same time Republican politicians met in Washington, D.C., to plot their strategy to win back political power by putting the brakes on Obama's legislative platform. At that meeting, Republican Congressman Kevin McCarthy said "If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," and "We've got to challenge them on every single bill ..."

The strategy of gridlock and a tyranny of the minority became the de facto GOP platform. While Americans suffered from the worst recession since the Great Depression, the self-serving strategy of working only to assure their opponents failure played out to our detriment.

And it worked. Americans became disillusioned by a slow recovery benefiting primarily the few. Blame went to the leadership of Democrats. The same Republicans whose choices wrecked the economy and who failed to pass job bills when sorely needed are back in control of both Houses of Congress.

Republicans, with the exception of the Tea Party, are promising us a new era of bipartisan cooperation. Sen. Corwyn, second in charge of the Senate majority, vows "to restore faith in our democratic institutions" after years of partisan strife.

Have we lost our sense of fairness and interest in accountability? How were Republicans able to scuttle the recovery and still end up benefiting from it?

David Troland

Arlington Heights