An open letter to former KY Governor Steve Beshear after his SOTU response

Mr. Beshear, as a Kentuckian, I watched your speech in expectation you would represent KY with dignity, even if I disagreed with your opinion. I am part of the two-thirds of Kentuckians who abandoned you and your party and supported President Donald Trump. I thought you got off to a good bipartisan start by declaring yourself as a "proud Republican." Unfortunately, the prepared remarks show you merely misspoke. Your speech went downhill from there. You tout the fact 500,000 in Kentucky got health insurance under the ACA. I guess that is true if you consider Medicaid to be health insurance. It's actually medical welfare. Most of that 500k got on Medicaid. Only about 75,000 got insurance through the exchanges and most of them are being subsidized heavily on the backs of taxpayers. One in three Kentuckians now get medical welfare. That is hardly a record to be proud of.

After President Trump gave a very presidential speech, where he attacked no one, and reached out to Democrats, you launched partisan attacks on the man two-thirds of Kentuckians support.  Democrats in congress set on their hands for most of President Trump's speech. Many refused to applaud even when Mr. Trump was advocating things they support. This made them look small in comparison to our President. Your partisan attacks made you look small to. I expected better from you.

The following statement was truly disappointing.

And as a Democrat, I believe that if you work hard, you deserve the opportunity to realize the American dream, regardless of whether you are a coal miner in Kentucky, a teacher in Rhode Island, an autoworker in Detroit, or a software engineer in San Antonio.

Under your administration and Democrats control of Washington, the "American dream" of many coal mining families were utterly and completely destroyed. Although you have spoken out in support of coal mining in the past, your actions to support President Obama and the Democratic Party's 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton prove the dreams of coal mining families are nowhere near the top of your list of important things. You should be shamed to even mention them. Former President Obama promised to destroy the coal industry and he nearly succeeded. Several major coal companies went bankrupt under his and your leadership and over 83,000 coal jobs were lost. That's not a dream, Mr. Beshear. That's a nightmare.

Sincerely,

The Bluegrass Pundit