To the editor:

It would be interesting to know how many moderate Republicans have switched parties, or, as I have, voted for Democrats or moderate Republicans, at both the state and federal level. In the old days, there were voters known as Dirty Dog Democrats; these were Democrats who would vote for a dirty dog before they would vote for a Republican. This sobriquet could just as well apply to modern day Republicans who will vote for anybody who has a capital R before their name, regardless of the candidate’s political philosophy or ability. This is in spite of what the governor and his minions are doing to the state of Kansas in their reach for complete power.

Recently, I was furnished a national Republican Party survey to fill out and send in to party headquarters. I did so with answers which will not be pleasing to the party and with the following comment.

“I am a moderate Republican whose Party left me about when the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Iraq war began. I would love to belong to the old Republican Party again, but since it has become the Tea Party, totally beholden to the big money, the NRA, the Chamber of Commerce and big corporations, and opposed to anything progressive, I, like many other moderate Republicans, have very little in common with the present GOP. It is no longer Grand nor Old. The Tea Party’s efforts to defeat, by any means, moderate Republicans in the primaries running for state and federal offices, efforts which ignored personal beliefs or abilities, really ripped it for me.”