Subject: A bad bargain: Larry, the ideals of the GOP have shifted radically in the last 25 years. But most conservative voters are more likely to see President Bush as an incompetent leader than to reexamine their core values. Bush's policies are an extension of Ronald Reagan's: deficit spending, hawkish foreign policy and deregulation in favor of corporate interests. The Bush administration has simply taken these principles to an extreme, with disastrous effects. But conservative ideologues will never question these principles because Reagan is the messiah of the modern conservative movement. Any change will come from rank-and-file voters who have begun to realize that these policies run counter to the public good. So many Republicans are now waking up to the fact that they have sacrificed principles for power? Pity they didn't realize sooner what a poor bargain they were really getting. Ralph M

RESPONSE: One would have hoped it would have become obvious by now to even the dumbest Republican that deregulation only results in corporate fraud like Enron, WorldCom and the list goes on and on and products that make us sick or kill us as in the case of the present ecoli spinach contamination...profits and the expense of the pubic well-being is the end result. And the large tax cuts have only made the richer richer and dumb folks in the middle class have more and more begun to see they have lost ground to the Republi CON in terms of their overall buying power. DUH!!