Dec. 6, 2011: Our readers write

Don’t be immovable in government
Admirers of Sen. Mitch McConnell like to evoke the name of Henry Clay in praise of our Republican senate minority leader; that compliment is in many ways arguable. Like Clay, McConnell has risen to high office in the legislative branch of the federal government.
Also like Clay our senator always has been a political in-fighter, which is not always a bad thing. However, unlike the great Clay, Mr. McConnell has never been, nor will he ever be, open to compromise and this is his great failing.
Abraham Lincoln, before becoming the first president elected as a Republican, was a member of the Whig party and declared that Henry Clay was his “beau ideal of a statesman.” Unfortunately, there is nothing statesman-like in the makeup of Mitch McConnell.
Clay promoted his party’s ideals but never at the expense of his country. McConnell’s publicly stated goal is to make the current commander-in-chief a one-term president; not the loftiest of goals.
The United States in the middle of the 19th century stood at a precipice which threatened destroy it. Henry Clay, the “Great Compromiser,” stepped into the breach and at least delayed the serious rupture threatening our government.
We again stand on the edge of a great divide; that is between the rich and the poor; those with a disproportionate amount of the country’s wealth and power versus what we now refer to as the 99 percenters. They feel, and rightfully so, that they have been disenfranchised by the very legislators they elected who are corrupted by unlimited amounts of money flowing from K Street lobbyists.
We all know where Sen. McConnell stands. He is the “beau ideal” of the uncompromising, radical right-wing and a one-percenter to the core. It is sad Sen. McConnell cannot put the people who elected him over the bankers and CEOs who now own him. Sen. McConnell, rule or ruin is no way to govern.
Steven L. Wright
Hodgenville