He’s a Republican, remember?

Rob McKenna?! Really? [“Rob McKenna for governor,” editorial, Opinion, July 1.] Did The Times not notice the ‘R’ beside his name? Or the fact that he joined the lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act? Is The Times going to ask him if he will refuse the expansion of Medicaid in Washington state?

Republicans argued for more than 20 years in favor of the individual mandate. Remember that? They are all for having everyone buy insurance in the private market, and it turns out they are really against all the restrictions placed on the insurance companies, things like 20 percent max on administrative costs, no preconditions for children, no lifetime caps and on and on.

Has The Times not noticed how far the right wing has gone off the rails? Did you not hear that the Texas Republican Party platform calls for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act, and for not teaching critical-thinking skills in schools? Does The Times think that somehow Washington state is immune to this craziness?

Does The Times not remember the Iraq war and the thousands who have died? Or how Republicans outed a CIA agent for political reasons? Or how about Dick Cheney saying deficits don’t matter while they spent the treasury into oblivion? What about the increasing income disparity? Trickle down? Yeah, that actually works. The one percent gets the money, and the rest get a trickle!

And of course there are the national campaigns to destroy unions, disenfranchise voters, take away women’s rights and access to health care, along with being anti-gay and anti-environment. My goodness, it is breathtaking.

And it is decorated with bigotry, lies and a vile and hateful rhetoric. Rob McKenna belongs to this group. Or maybe The Times didn’t notice?

The Times’ endorsement of McKenna strikes me as narrow-minded and self-serving.

— Dennis Matthews, Woodway

McKenna and the Affordable Care Act

There have been several responses to The Times’ Rob McKenna endorsement for governor; I agree with those responses, but the issue that concerns me the greatest, which The Times did not even address in its endorsement, was his arbitrary decision to join with 26 other Republican attorneys general in a legal filing against the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare).

How does he justify this action? What legal authority did he have to join this effort against the judgment of the governor of the state and many other officials — or for that matter, the citizens of this state? He has stated that he did not wish for the act to be overruled completely, but he had no assurances that it would not, and certainly the other Republican attorneys-general have spoken out indicating that is exactly what they intended.

Was he naive? Was he disingenuous? Was he following what seems to be the political path to acceptance/advancement in the party, such as a Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.) who does not show his/the party’s true agenda until voted into power? His actions raise many serious concerns and your endorsement did not address them.

We are fortunate, in my opinion, that the Affordable Care Act was not totally overruled, as we would have undoubtedly been decades trying to undue the damaging effect and struggling to cope

— Virginia Jepsen, Bellevue