I just read the political cartoon in the Feb. 5th edition of the Juneau Empire captioned “IRON CHEF Competition.” It pictures a Republican chef making cuts, while President Obama’s recipe is tax and spend and.....OH NO!...national healthcare? The elephant chef thinks, “Wait’ll everyone gets a taste of that....I can’t lose.” (The Canadians, French, and British, Germans, and Italians have national healthcare and they think it tastes pretty good.)

The message I got was that things haven’t really changed much with the Republican Party, at least according to the perspective of cartoonist Gary Varvel. The Republican recipe is still that the country’s problems can be solved by just cutting more government spending.

The latest buzz is that the GOP is trying to develop a new approach.. If this cartoon is on the money, it isn’t. Republican trickle down economics hasn’t worked over the last 33 years. The gulf between the rich and the poor has increased and the real income of the middle class has decreased. Obama’s recipe resembles that of the New Deal, the era I grew up in. in which the middle class grew as did our infrastructure, economy, and educational opportunities. It was more socialist in that it cared more about our society than about individual and corporate greed. At this point, I think most Americans would like to return to that philosophy because it worked better for most people.

Whether the GOP chooses a presidential looking white man, a woman, or a person of color, it is the message, not the messenger that really counts. People didn’t like the Ayn Rand message that Romney and Ryan were trying to sell. Eventually, making a sale depends upon the quality of the product.

Lisle Hebert

Juneau