LETTER: Don't trust the GOP

“Make Montana great” … “Vote Republican — it’s less taxing” … Rinse and repeat ...

The former is a condescending Trumpesque slogan — Montana IS great! And the latter is an outright lie — check their hypocritical records, or just look at your eye-popping property tax bill! Remember, Republicans have been in charge of Montana’s bright red map for a long time. Too long. I’m sorry (not really) that their outside-money, bloated cash cows are wasting their yuuuge tax breaks on full-page newspaper ads and gaudy mailers. Although, I suppose, endlessly reciting simplistic misinformation does work on those too bothered to research the big lies.

Small government? Now there’s a whopper! Take a quick drive around Kalispell and notice all the gov’munt Taj Mahals sprouting up like weeds. Oh, and let’s build even more jails, so we can lock up faux criminals for smoking pot, plus women and their doctors for abortions. It doesn’t get any more big government than that.

I guess the jobs they crow about will be even more public-sector cops, lawyers, and bureaucrats, with a few low-paid service employees to mop floors and take out garbage. Self-dealing “conservatives” are not against big government per se — that label only applies when Democrats win. Republican big government is just fine, especially for their billionaire donors.

But I am truly sorry for all those smiling, down-ticket faces (not exactly profiles in courage), stubbornly hitching their wagons to the ridiculous jackass still featured at the top of their propaganda pieces — an immature cretin so obviously ill-equipped emotionally, intellectually, and morally to represent our great nation to the world.

Incidentally, I’ve lived through many rough-and-tumble male environments, and no one engaging in so-called locker-room banter ever bragged to his buddies about raping or otherwise sexually assaulting women. He would’ve been duly ostracized and shunned as a despicable predator. As should Trump. —Ryan Lawlor, Kalispell