GOP turns on its support base

To the editor:

In rural Missouri we are losing jobs left, right and center. And it's not just the family farmers who are being driven into bankruptcy by state and federal Republican policies that favor the large agribusiness corporations that are gobbling up small farms across the state and the nation.

The problem is also the Republican commitment to international free trade without protection for workers (American or international), and without protection for human health or the environment. This policy is encouraging businesses to leave the United States in search of cheaper labor in Mexico or Asia.

The irony is that we rural Americans, so many of whom voted the Republicans into state and national control, are the ones to suffer most at the hands of their policies. This party is destroying our communities and our way of life.

Over the next four years we will suffer even higher levels of unemployment and will become even more dependent on state and federal support programs -- ironically programs generally developed and enacted by the Democrats) we voted against in the last election. Even as so many rural Americans resist and resent large government, we must realize that those we elected to power are out to destroy us while those we rejected are dedicated to helping us.

JUDY CURETON, Cape Girardeau