6 March 2017
Mrs. Ronna McDaniel
Chair, Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
Dear Mrs. McDaniel:
I first became a Sustaining Member of the Republican National Committee in 1980, the first Presidential election in which I was eligible to vote. I was then a College Republican, working part-time. Even before that I had been active in Republican groups and campaigns, the highlight of which was to be among the young Californians who traveled to the 1976 (by bus) and 1980 (by rail) Republican National Conventions as volunteers for then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.
I have since contributed annually as an RNC Sustaining Member, but I was increasingly dismayed in the latest years there was both a Republican Congress and Republican President as they further expanded, rather than reduced, the Federal Government’s role in our lives, most dramatically in education and health care, while Republican Congressmen simultaneously used earmarking to escalate, rather than eliminate, Washington’s spendthrift ways. Our Party deserved to lose Congress in 2006 because we weren’t legislating or acting as Republicans.
Nevertheless I continued my RNC Sustaining Membership. Party leaders said they learned their lesson and, once returned to control of Congress because of their firm opposition to ObamaCare, proved it by regularly voting to repeal it. In the 2012 election I gladly voted for, and made a small contribution to, your uncle’s Presidential campaign largely because he clearly articulated that the key difference between RomneyCare and the supposedly “identical” ObamaCare was that the Democratic law federalized a matter properly left to the states.
The morning after the 2016 election, I awoke content that, while he has not yet shown me that he is much of a Republican, a President Trump means Republican principles again have a chance to be enacted. But this can happen only if the President and the Congress act as the Republicans they have been elected to be. Alas, what I’ve seen in news reports ever since the election is discouraging.
After the last Census, I was re-districted from Congressman Shock’s “safe” Republican district to a “safe” Democratic one, and last November Illinois’ Republican Senator lost his bid for re-election. It seems that as a life-long Republican I have only one way to voice how seriously I consider this matter -- for our Republican party and for the Republic itself. Enclosed without payment are my 2017 RNC Sustaining Membership form and card. Please send them back to me when this Congress repeals ObamaCare, as the Party has been promising to do since its enactment, and I will gladly contribute the requested $85 renewal (an increase from last year’s $75, and a further increase from 2015’s $65). But not until then. And please tell this to the other Republican leaders in Washington, D.C.
Yours truly,
(The Rev.) Steven P. Tibbetts
cc: The Hon. Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House; The Hon. Darin LaHood, Member of Congress
N.B. To date I have received no response.
