As I read The Daily’s editorial entitled, “The Last Straw,” I couldn’t help but smile, because it confirmed an idea that I’ve had about the editorial board for a long time.

First, there is no doubt that Pat Buchanan has a lot of ideas that have no place in the Republican Party. But what exactly would George Bush and the other candidates accomplish by publicly denouncing him? After all, Al Gore, who has just as much of a shot at winning as does Bush, has not publicly denounced Buchanan either. Does this mean that Gore must be some kind of closet Nazi? The fact is, it is much smarter politically to not justify those type of comments with a response. Let Buchanan’s crazy comments stand for what they are; the American people are smart enough to see through them.

Secondly, the fact that the editorial board seems to think, “Bush hasn’t said much about what he believes,” shows that they have either not listened to him or they didn’t try to find out what he has said.

Bush has said that he wants to cut taxes, restore local control of schools, focus on the basics for education, appoint judicial conservatives, modernize Social Security, push for tort reform, encourage adoption not abortion, build a missile defense system, increase defense spending and beef up intelligence.

These are all things that Bush has said, but the editorial board has chosen not to look into. This is bad journalism. The Daily’s editorial board is doing an effective job of establishing themselves as something worse than bad journalists.

They’re incompetent.

Jason Darrah

Junior

Political science

Chairman

ISU College Republicans