In your letter you explained your vote on insider trading, and why you voted how you did, and I will take your explanation at face value. For the record, I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican, so while I have your attention, I would like to offer a one-man focus group of feedback on various issues, I hope it is helpful:

1) Our Founders established a union built on compromise, consensus and cooperation; but what I see increasingly in your party flies in the face of that. Those concepts are rejected in favor of hyper-partisanship, hyperbole and grandstanding.
For example, you guys last year seemed ready willing & able to shut down the government rather than deal with routine debt ceiling increases. I see an obstinate and frankly totalitarian streak running through your party's ideology, and one need look no further than Republican efforts to demean women by trying to dictate invasive vaginal procedures obviously designed as a starting point to outlawing reproductive choice.
I feel that Life is Sacred, and no one actually prefers or takes lightly the concept of 'abortion', but taking legal decisions out of the hands of women and their doctors, in favor of such demeaning and invasive procedures is going to make your party the enemy of women everywhere and exemplifies the totalitarian streak I mentioned. For a party of smaller government, reaching into every woman's womb belies that stance, ringing hollow the idea of being a smaller government party. That is just one example.

The Republican Senate has used the filibuster a record number of times, even for the most routine procedures, which to me is a misuse of the democratic process. The Constitution was not written to require a super majority for every single vote, and I believe misuses the democratic process itself, using the tools of democracy to undermine the very democratic process you are sworn to uphold.

Your leader McConnell has let the cat out of the bag by stating early on that the number one priority of your agenda is to deny President Obama a second term. Lovely. Not jobs. Not repairing the economy wrecked by the faulty ideology of wealth redistribution to the very richest, deregulation and letting predatory capitalism run roughshod over the citizenry, policies of outsourcing, offshoring of the tax cut for billionaires boon implemented by one party Republican rule. Which brings me to....

2) I happen to take seriously the Teachings of Christ, and assume you do too.
How do you reconcile His Teachings
"Woe be unto the rich, for they already have their reward"
"For it will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into Heaven"
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
"Store up your riches, which are in Heaven"
"For unto whom much is given, much SHALL be required"
"What you have done unto these, the least of my brethren, you have done unto me"
"You cannot serve God AND Mammon"

Why is your party so fixated on wealth, and lowering taxes at all costs, even to the detriment of this country? If those tax cuts allegedly create jobs, then we would not have been losing over 750,000 jobs per month during the last months of the President you served, Bush the younger. The snake oil that your party sold us nearly destroyed us, not the least of which being diverting our military resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, in the most expensive manhunt in US history, destroying and shock-and-aweing the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, where the tyrant Reagan/Bush propped up & armed in the 1980's all the sudden became our boogey man, even though we had him well contained. Why did you support that war, in the face of Christ's Teaching "Blessed are the peacemakers"? Why does your party deny, or even betray those Teachings? Christ hung on the cross and said "Forgive them, for they know not what they do". To go to war without a direct and imminent threat, without even declaring war, not only went against the Constitution, but those Teachings I keep referring to.

Mammon is defined as 'wealth, and especially its debasing influence', yet your party nominated and installed Supreme Court Justices that literally gave Mammon a body when they ruled that 'corporations are persons', and that 'money equals speech'. Do you support those rulings? I've never heard a Republican denounce them. The Republican Party seems to represent Mammon on Earth, yet you cloak such policies in the rhetoric of 'free market', when you actually perpetuate predatory capitalism', and 'free enterprise', when the policies of Reagan/Bush were designed to consolidate wealth upwards and create and perpetuate monopolies. What we saw was merger after merger after merger, disregarding the dangers to the country of unregulated wealth consolidation as well as throwing away anti-trust ethics, there to protect us from those dangers. But where do you think the 'too big to fail' concept originated? Do you endorse those policies? I don't hear Republicans denounce such policies, instead they deify everything Reagan and live in some sort of cognitive dissonance.

3) Speaking of Reagan, he was quoted as saying, "Government is not part of the problem, government IS the problem".
Our Constitution starts with the words 'We, the People'. We the people ARE the government. So you consider US the problem with that ideology.
We operate within the constraints of those words, yet your party would dismantle every bit of government you can get your hands on, leaving us to the tender mercies of the predatory capitalism you go to bat for. Can you even see why your party is held in such low esteem by many?
Your seat is safe for several more years, so you will probably disregard these views, but I had to restate them, since I have been watching since Reagan was elected, as Republicans favored a laissez-faire stance for everything from pollution standards to monopoly creations.

When Reagan tore down the solar panels off the White House that Carter symbolically put up there in response to the oil cartel and gas lines and resulting crises, a move which showed me everything I need to know about who your party really serves. Instead of convening the finest mind in the country to developing renewable, non-polluting energy sources, Reagan handed the keys and a blank check to oil companies, while he decimated every alternative energy program that might have swerved us from our dependence on such a toxic and highly polluting resource, supplied mainly by countries belligerent or at least indifferent to our better interests. But no, you guys fixated on 'drill baby drill', because putting the same billions we were giving oil companies, if instead used to perfect battery storage, as well as instituting a full court press to developing solar as a backup system to help wean us from existing energy technologies, could have started us on a road to developing whole new industries, meaning jobs jobs jobs. But you cannot put a meter on the sun.

Just what if Reagan signed an executive order stating that passive solar would be required on every govt building? That govt created demand right there could have started the ball rolling, I have friends who have been 'off the energy grid' for decades, if we have had that technology the whole time, what could have possibly been the reason to disregard such a free resource? Follow the money. As that industry would have been cranked up by government priming, just like computer tech makes leaps & bounds every year, the same would have held true for solar and other renewable energy projects. And once production got up to full speed, prices would have decreased to be affordable to the regular citizens, causing a cascading of interest and use and become ubiquitous. Just like govt projects like our space program in the 60's gave us affordable technologies, too many to count, but exemplified by calculators going from $100 to $5, the same process would have held true for a Manhattan Project search for cheap non-polluting energy technologies.

But the obvious decision was made (ideologically) to let the 'free market' make those decisions. I contend that such a doctrinaire ideological stance actually betrayed the general Welfare clauses where in the Preamble, and again in Article 1 Section 8, our govt is mandated to 'PROMOTE' and 'PROVIDE FOR' the general Welfare. In a related thought, providing universal single payer health coverage is the perfect example of PROVIDING FOR the general Welfare. Why does your party consider anything that promotes and provides for the general Welfare to be socialism? I see how you use jingoistic phrases to demonize concepts that run contrary to the Republican ideology of letting money rule over all.

I hope I've given you plenty to think about, and the Christ message is one you cannot 'un-hear'. And maybe instead of being a party of ;'strict constructionists, that want to disregard the parts of the Constitution you consider 'socialist', and change the rest.....balanced budget amendments, personhood amendments, flag burning amendments, marriage amendments.....can you see how such rank cognitive dissonance just does not fly with many? And now your war on women and their reproductive rights is waking up the sleeping giant of more than 50% of the population, many of which are Republicans, but you flirt with alienating with your stance on birth control. I've seen several Republican women on tv these last few days, like Dick Cheney's daughter, who are saying they are shocked and appalled at such a deliberate agenda. And speaking of Cheney, when he said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter", he destroyed any credibility Republicans have concerning deficits, considering that Reagan tripled the national debt and Bush the younger doubled it, using a Chinese credit card. I guess deficits are only bad under Democratic rule. Much of the deficit we face now cascaded from Republican rule policies of keeping the wars off the books, a corrupt Medicare part D law that prevented the govt from negotiating for bulk prices on drugs (who DOES that?), in what amounted to a giant giveaway to pharmaceutical companies, and written and crammed through by Billy Tauzin (R-La), who then immediately left Congress to head Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America to the compensation of $millions.
Do you even see how corrupt that looks? Money is corrupting, why is Republican ideology all wrapped up in money, which IS NOT speech. And even if you consider money to be speech, which is ridiculous on the face of it (speech is words), then you are saying that the more money you have, the more speech you have, which flies in the face of the egalitarian ethic of our Framers. And even given that, the 1st Amendment guaranteeing the freedom of speech has limits, like shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater, or threatening/violent speech. So why would all of the sudden if a corrupt court redefined the Constitution to consider money to now magically be speech, it can't have limits and defined parameters? You act like, "Oh well, money is speech, we can't regulate it now". Christ AND the Framers are rolling over and weeping over that one. Remember that the love of money is the root of all evil. Do you believe that? It's okay if you're not Christian, but my guess is that you are a Christian. It is looked to you to help stop the empowerment of Mammon on Earth. I hope Christ appears to you in your dream and impresses upon you the importance of the things of which I speak.

Can you see how bad all that looks where your party is concerned? I only just scratched the surface, but you get the picture, if you read this far. These views don't lend themselves to sound bytes, no matter how much some would prefer it that way.
I have no special love for the Democratic Party, as their view of money is that it is unlimited, their immigration policies, and unconditional seeming stance towards free & easy abortions, but even that stance shows they err on the side of freedom of the individual in their own body. And the other stances at least show their priority is people, whereas the Republican stance is to empower money at all costs.

I know I didn't change your mind on a single thing, if you read this at all, but hopefully the seed is planted where you cannot deny or justify within your Christ heart the empowerment of Mammon on Earth.
We are only here for a short time, make Christ proud.....

Thank you for listening.....God bless everyone on Earth, may His Light Shine on all who would receive Him.