As a former Republican who cast my first vote for Gerald Ford for president it’s difficult to watch the once proud GOP descend into the land of make believe. They’re afraid of an evolving world and keep trying to legislatively turn back the clock.

Senator Ernst recently decried tax incentives for electric cars as being bad for Iowa corn growers. Apparently, she hasn’t noticed the 500-year floods that have devastated her own home territory with some regularity in recent years.

Ag. Secretary Vilsack has suggested paying farmers to grow green strips to sequester carbon into the ground as a way to help growers adjust. We have to adjust to a changing world.

At the state level, the pathetic attempts by Republican legislatures to pass laws making it harder to vote are solving a non-existent problem. They want to reinforce Trump’s big lie, that he really didn’t lose the election, but that it was stolen. His own top election official, Christofer Krebs, said the election was the most secure in the modern era. Biden won by over 7 million votes, but polls say most Republicans still believe the lie.

On January 6 a Trump inspired Republican mob sacked the U.S. capitol in a rage that horrified the world. These people aren’t patriots, they’re sore losers who have been conned by a silver-tongued charlatan.

Whether it’s climate change, human rights for people of color and LGBTQ people, income inequality and many other issues Republicans are on the wrong side of history.

Instead of trying to restrict the vote they should say what they are for and run on the merit of their ideas. Sadly, like the anti-immigrant, conspiracy infested, Know Nothings of the 1840’s, if the Republicans don’t collectively pull their heads out, they may end up on the ash heap of history.

Tom Jacobson

Riverside