As a Republican representing Jefferson County on the state Executive Committee, I would like to point out to Chris Anders (“The Republican Party must return to its roots”, Jan. 31), that he and Gina have arrived on the scene too late and in the wrong vehicle – as state coordinators for Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty (C4L). They could possibly be helpful if they returned to Maryland, from which they came in 2011, but in Jefferson County, the Party is still at its roots, a fact that Chris and Gina could have noted by attending Executive Committee meetings which are announced publicly and open to all Republicans (of course, Gina would have had to change her registration to Republican in order to come.)

The county Executive Committee is made up entirely of conservatives, including Tea Party conservatives. Last year, for the first time in my memory, the state Executive Committee elected solid conservatives as its three members of the Republican National Committee. In the meantime, Campaign for Liberty has concentrated its efforts on criticizing conservative legislators like Del. John Overington, Sen. Craig Blair and Del. Paul Espinosa.

The roots of the Republican Party, contrary to Chris’s misstatement, lie in the movement to abolish slavery in the middle of the 19th Century. The current chair of the Jefferson County Republican Executive Committee is the great-granddaughter of Nathan Cook Brackett, who came to Harpers Ferry in 1865 to found Storer College for the higher education of the freed slaves. You can’t get much closer to your roots than that.

After achieving their anti-slavery goals in 1865, the GOP had to battle the Democratic Party through all its days of discrimination, Jim Crow laws, segregation, Ku Klux Klan lynchings, filibustering of civil rights laws, and other un-American schemes. Today, it evidently will have to battle a misguided Campaign for Liberty as well.

The Democratic Party has now morphed into an organization intent on, according to President Obama, “fundamentally transforming the United States”, the greatest country the world has ever seen. This country was founded on, among others, the principles of “Life, Liberty and Property” that Chris incorrectly defined as the founding roots of the Republican Party. I can see where Chris was misled, in that the Republican Party, unlike the Democrats, has never wavered in its belief in this country and its founding principles. In fact, living in Shepherdstown for even as short a time as Chris and Gina have could lead anyone to great confusion; after all, half the population of the town seems to be plotting to overthrow the government of the United States while the other half is engaged in the search for the perfect croissant.

The vehicle in which Chris and Gina recently came to West Virginia, Ron Paul’s golden carriage, has historically turned into a pumpkin at midnight on each election eve. There is no reason to believe that this year will be any different.

Gary Dungan

Harpers Ferry