When I heard this on the news, I was stunned and had to see it in print: “We did not send him there to vote his conscience,” David Ball, chair of the Washington County Republican Party, told KDKA political editor Jon Delano. “We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”

Ball is speaking, of course, of Sen. Pat Toomey and his guilty vote of President Trump in the recent impeachment trial. No senator should be vilified by doing what he or she thinks is right. Ball is thinking only about his party and how all should conform to the party’s ways to keep its strength.

I know about conformity. I was a schoolteacher. Schools need conformity to instruct masses of students effectively and efficiently. But independent thinking is good, too. Consider what country has the most Nobel Prize winners: America has 388 Nobel Prize winners, and Great Britain is second with 134, just over a third the number.

Congratulations, Mr. Toomey, for being a nonconformist independent-thinking Republican senator.

Richard Patton

Franklin Township, Beaver County

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)