With reference to John Balentine’s column in the Nov. 22 Forecaster, his basic premise is quite correct that the citizenry should willingly consent to be governed to avoid “discordant calamity.” However, he seems ignorant of recent history and is now seeing it repeated.

Almost immediately after Barack Obama was inaugurated, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell proclaimed that the Republicans would oppose every initiative that President Obama proposed. For eight years they did just that without ever proposing alternatives for consideration. A situation that comes immediately to mind is the Affordable Care Act, with which the Republicans refused to cooperate in crafting and then railed continuously against its provisions once it became law. To this date, they have failed to put forward an acceptable replacement to Obamacare.

While the current Democrats’ reaction in Congress to President Trump is inappropriate and mimics the Republicans’ former behavior toward President Obama, the latter’s behavior is conveniently ignored by Trump supporters such as columnist Balentine. While the Democrats have lowered themselves to the deplorable behavioral level of the Republicans, they at least have offered counter-proposals in Congress to Trump’s initiatives. That may be small solace for voters to the Democrats otherwise childish resistance to everything Trump, but it does seem to indicate some effort to govern.

Warner Price

Harpswell