Re "Huntsman scolds GOP for losing focus, will skip convention" (Tribune, July 6):

Former Gov. Jon Huntsman's recent, well-founded criticism of today's Republican Party leads me to urge each of Utah's candidates for Congress, and all Utah voters, to read Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's short book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.

Written by two eminent scholars of American political history, both centrists, their book is a blunt, well-documented indictment of what has gone wrong with the legislative branch of our government.

The evidence continues to grow that the right wing of today's Republican Party and its big-money enablers are becoming the American Taliban: attempting to impose a narrow, ideological dictatorship on this country through electoral manipulation and legislative obstructionism, distortion, brutish incivility and outright blackmail.

Read this book, and then ask yourself what kind of member of Congress you want to represent us in Washington: whether you want them to put our nation first or their ideology first. Then educate yourself about the candidates for this fall's election, and vote accordingly.

Douglas Johnstone

Sandy