GOP cant seem to understand how to court minority voters
It's no secret that the Republican Party has had a rough go courting minority voters this election cycle. The inability to appease a right-wing base, while simultaneously adapting to changing demographics, has haunted the GOP's nationwide efforts. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard at least something about Donald Trump leading the GOP pack in polling, even after his now infamous remarks about Mexicans.
Donald may be the biggest and loudest kid on the block, but that doesn't mean other GOP candidates aren't saying something along the same lines.
This week Sen. Rand Paul, one of the starters on the GOP's JV team, came to Anchorage and Fairbanks to launch his last-ditch effort to salvage a presidential campaign that has struggled from the get-go.
In his opening speech Paul mentioned the Bill of Rights and how it defends the rights of minorities. Paul then defined a minority. He said, "You can be a minority because of the color of your skin or the shade of your ideology."
He then inferred that evangelicals could be minorities. However, evangelicals are far from being a minority within the Republican Party.
Last time I checked, the Voting Rights Act being stuck down had no mention of evangelicalism. No, it had everything to do with race, and we must restore the VRA to protect our rights.
— Kevin D. McGee
Anchorage
Health care is for everyone
It's hard to have dignity as a poor person in America, where there is this idea that if you're poor, it's your fault. You don't work hard enough, you make poor choices. The condescension flows from this entrenched idyllic ethos like a comment bubble on a Horatio Alger portrait. While certainly pervasive, I'd say it is most glaring in the medical context, if only because people tend to be more vulnerable than usual and blame assignments are almost always completely irrelevant to the problem at hand. But it's there, with occasional bonus indignities like comments on your parenting capacity when opting out of well-child exams, health deterioration from untreated ailments, invasive inquiries as to how you spend your money, having to prove to others that treatment is "medically necessary," uncontrolled symptoms because medication is too expensive and the perpetuation of poverty from debilitation and/or interest-bearing medical debts.
Maybe we could sidestep our future as a shaming medical meritocracy, and maybe we could even resolve the Medicaid debate, if we simply all agreed that affordable health care for everyone is something our society needs.
Whether something is "affordable" is a relative enough qualification to administer equitably and without judgment. We brainstorm a path to that future instead of fighting over a system that works and fails and breeds indignation on all sides.
— Sara Taylor
Anchorage
Leave drug advice to physicians
On Friday (Aug. 29), the advice column by Phillip Galanes (of The New York Times) suggested that the reader visit his/her doctor for an Ambien prescription. As I personally know, Ambien is a strong drug with sometimes serious side effects. I don't think that an advice columnist should be recommending it by name. This is a matter beyond his bounds.
— Jeannie Adams
Anchorage
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