It is with deep disappointment that I must write this letter to one of Vermont's most recognized institutions of journalism, but your March 27 Times Argus editorial, the Prism of Paranoia, crosses the line of opinion and enters the realm of outright lies with the apparent intent to deliberately mislead the public about the nature and actions of the Republican Party.

To say that the Republican Party has no ideas and has nothing to offer but anger is flat out false. Republicans offered an alternative to the Obama health care plan that included tort reform, allowed for the purchase of health insurance across state lines, and ended the tax break given to employees who get health insurance through an employer, replacing it with a refundable tax credit of $2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families to buy insurance.

The Congressional Budget Office scored the Republican plan and determined it would lower health care premiums by as much as 10 percent for American families and small businesses, and would do so without tax hikes, without cuts to Medicare benefits, without individual mandates, and it would reduce the federal deficit by $18 billion by 2019.

Your editorial page may not like the Republican ideas, but to say they don't exist or are not substantive is not true, and an abuse of your readers' trust.

Your accusations regarding Act 6-0/68 are similarly unfounded. Republicans have offered specific ideas to fix and replace the law that most people agree is both broken and bankrupting our state.

One idea, the Local Education Affordability Formula (LEAF), was introduced by Republicans in 2008. Governor Douglas worked with the Legislature to pass Act 82 in 2007, the two-vote school budget law, which, as we can see, has had a tremendously successful impact on controlling school budgets at the local level.

Republicans have also offered ideas on implementing processes for reaching bipartisan education finance reform, all of which have been rejected by the Democratic supermajorities. So, again, your editorial page may not like these Republican ideas, but to say all we have to offer is anger is false and misleading. Given The Times Argus' keen awareness of matters in Montpelier, I can only conclude this is intentionally so.

As to the overall theme of this editorial, that all the anger in politics, even to the extreme case of the Oklahoma City bombing, is somehow the sole responsibility of a "radical" Republican Party, this is a reprehensible and unjustifiable accusation.

Unfortunately, anger exists on both sides of the political spectrum. Inappropriate actions and statements made toward those who are doing their best to serve the public have no place in our political discourse. And to unjustly assume that all of these comments were made by Republicans is disingenuous and contributes to the political incivility that we should strive to avoid.

I don't expect an apology, but I do expect the owners, the editorial board and the staff of The Times Argus to feel embarrassed that their paper would print something as baseless and unfounded as this editorial. While the Herald is entitled to its own opinions, it is not entitled to its own facts.

The vibrancy of our democracy depends on our ability to debate issues with civility and honesty. Unfortunately, the Herald editorial resorted to the lowly tactics it professes to discount.



Steve Larrabee is chairman of

Vermont's Republican Party.