GOP- Corruption for personal gain

To the editor:

The corruption for personal gain within the Republican Party is finally being revealed. The protestations of right-wing extremists to try to cover up and divert attention are becoming shrill and irrational..

The list grows: 1. The chief adviser to Vice President Cheney is under indictment. 2. The chief adviser to the president could soon follow into indictment. 3. Tom DeLay, Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, is indicted for illegal corporate campaign contributions. 4. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist is under investigation for managing a supposed blind trust with insider trading. 5. Former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon and his business partner, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, are under investigation or have pleaded guilty in a series of scams that defrauded Native American tribes and many others via influence-peddling deals, 6. implicating several Republican congressmen and the White House. 7. Republican U.S. Rep. Duke Cunningham resigned as a consequence of his involvement in a bribery scandal that netted him millions of dollars in exchange for political influence, 8. implicating Missouri Republican and current Republican Party whip Roy Blunt (father of our Republican governor). Trying desperately to divert attention from these unethical acts, apologists raised the defunct Whitewater case, a Republican vendetta against Bill Clinton that ended in a whimper of nothing years ago.

Far from representing a legitimate conservative political philosophy, current Republicans are committed only to the unethical goal of increasing personal wealth and the wealth of friends and cronies at the expense of average Americans and our environment.

JUDY CURETON, Cape Girardeau