The recent e-newsletter distributed by Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC) has angered many voters as he has unabashedly defended Donald Trump and defended him against the impeachment accusations, despite growing evidence that the president tried to enlist the aid of a foreign government to investigate a potential Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Here is a letter sent to Rice by a lifelong Republican, Bart Collins, who is so disenchanted with Trump and the Republican Party that he has now joined us at HCDP to actively serve on our Communications Committee.
Representative Rice,
I’m a 45-year-old man that is a second-generation Myrtle Beach native. I’ve spent most of my life in Myrtle Beach with the few exceptions including following in my father’s footsteps by attending the University of Georgia after graduating from Myrtle Beach High School in 1992. My father did the same after graduating from MBHS in 1956.
I moved to Florence, SC in 1999-2001 to work for a local broadcast television station, and then to West Palm Beach, FL from 2004-2005 to work for a Viacom O&O television station in that market. I have B.A. with an academic minor and have been a lifelong Republican until recently and voted a straight Republican ticket up until 2016.
I voted for a third-party candidate for president in that election because, in part, I believed what Senator Lindsey Graham said about Donald Trump. However, the way Republicans have enabled the bad, and now criminal, behavior of this current administration has caused me to leave the party I was raised in and supported for most of my life.
You have a J. D. from the USC School of Law so I expect you to understand that the impeachment inquiry is not a trial and is more akin to a grand jury and hearsay is routinely allowed in grand jury proceedings. Not to mention that the White House is refusing to cooperate in any way with the investigation, is blocking witnesses who might have firsthand knowledge of the president’s wrongdoing by ordering them to ignore lawful congressional subpoenas, and, as seen in real time during Friday’s live televised hearing, is criminally tampering with witnesses who do cooperate with Congress.
That being said, witnesses with firsthand knowledge are and will be testifying. What will the Republican’s defense be when this thin “hearsay” argument erodes as the winds of truth and facts continue to pick up speed? Are you willing to continue to sell your soul and go down with the ship when there are seats left in the lifeboat that’s right in front of you?
The president has clearly violated the Constitution of the United States of America by seeking foreign aid with his campaign. He has done this in public as both a candidate and as the president. The summery of the July 25th phone call that the White House released clearly shows this.
Stop defending and enabling this behavior. How is America going to be better by allowing President Trump’s impeachable behavior to continue and go unpunished?
Do the Republicans believe that you will stay in power indefinitely? The hypocrisy that the party has already shown in relation to the current proceedings compared with the Clinton impeachment is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. So too is this farce that the Republicans are performing now with their “hearsay” and defense centered on procedural processes that they in fact understand and have employed.
Let me conclude by making it real simple and putting it like this:
Your email newsletter story titled, “Hearsay, hearsay,” and other actions rallying around Trump lead me to believe that you were most likely one of those people who hated and criticized Steve Spurrier and called him every name in the book including a crook and a cheat while he was Florida’s head coach, but quickly changed your tune when he came to USC and became, “your guy.”
What are you and your Republican teammates going to do this time when your head coach leaves in the middle of the season?
Bart Collins 
