Why are conservatives only speaking now?

It's amazing to me how all these Republican fiscal conservatives have been coming out of the woodwork since President Obama and the Democrats took over.

Where were they during all the Bush years when the Republicans were driving up the deficit by leaps and bounds? Wasn't it Mr. Cheney, the guru of the Republican party at the time, who said deficits didn't matter when he was micromanaging us into the disastrous, bank-breaking, Iraq war?

Now that the real cost of the war has been added to the bottom line of the national debt, where it should have been in the first place, and we now know the true cost of the war, Mr. Steve Quick is telling the young people of America to boot the scoundrels out in November. What was he saying in 2004 when his buddies in Washington were spending money like the proverbial drunken sailors? Was he worried about those people's children's future then?

The hypocrisy of some of this electorate knows no bounds.

Either one is a fiscal conservative or they're not; it should not be predicated on which party in office has the power to make decisions.

When the party in power was driving us over the precipice during the highflying, house of clay building boom, where were all these fiscal conservatives? Did we hear their voices raised in alarm that it could not possibly be sustainable?

What a short memory Americans have. It lasts from one election to the next, depending on who does the winning.

What I would like to ask Mr. Quick and all those teapartiers railing against the profligacy of the government - where were those voices all the years before? What sacrifices are they now willing to make to alleviate our tax burden? Why is it always the federal taxes you're so loudly vehement about? What about the ones closer to home, like the state and Cook and municipal taxes? Which ones take the biggest chunk of your paycheck? Why is it in America, taxes on behalf of one segment of the population are palatable; when used on behalf of the "other guy," they induce fiscal alarm?

Rosemary Colbert

Schaumburg