Politics: August 2010 Archives

There are some surprising twists in our interminable Washington election.

Republican John Koster has come from behind to take the lead in the Second Congressional District race by 160 votes, and is likely to end up beating incumbent Rick Larsen. The good news for Larsen is that the total Democrat vote is over 50 percent; the good news for Koster is that independents who didn't vote in the primary will likely swing his way in the general.

Of course, Koster won the primary in 2000, too: but Larsen ended up winning the general. But it was an open seat in 2000, and that the incumbent might finish second in the primary is really bad for Larsen.

Similarly, incumbent Democratic Senator Jean Berkey (38th LD) is coming in third in her primary, and is likely to be eliminated from the general election ballot. At 32.24% of the vote, she's falling behing Conservative candidate Rod Rieger at 32.63%, and fellow Democratic candidate Nick Harper at 35.13%.

According to Jerry Cornfield at The Herald, she'd be the only incumbent for the state legislature to fail to get to the general election this year. More incumbents, like Sound Politics troll Geoff Simpson, are likely to lose in the general, though.

From the Democratic Party: "The only thing Boehner seems serious about is raising campaign cash. After the speech, he told reporters that he's prepared to help Republicans spend $50 million to win back Congress. ... Democrats have a different plan. We're asking supporters like you to make a contribution to the By the People Fund." How dare Boehner say he's trying to raise money! We're different: we want to raise money!

As I mentioned yesterday, Rick Larsen criticized John Koster for saying good things about the Tea Party, even though Larsen himself has recently gone to a Tea Party candidate forum to try to get their votes.

And Larsen has twice criticized Koster over oil -- once saying Sarah Palin's endorsement of Koster would bring in money from oil companies, and then attacking Koster for wanting to drill more -- even though Larsen's the only candidate in the race to receive money from an oil company: BP.

And this morning I noticed that, despite attacking a display of flags from our nation's history that included the Confederate flag (which, last I checked, is part of our nation's history), Rick Larsen was at a presentation of those exact flags last summer. He's sitting next to the presenter, 38th LD candidate Hugh Fleet, in the fourth image in the slideshow.

Did Larsen tell the veterans in attendance of his disdain for showing the Confederate flag in a historical context? Probably not, just like he didn't tell the Tea Party members of his disdain for them, nor tell BP how much he hated oil companies when he took their money.

OK, actually, I am being too hard on Rick: he certainly, as a smart and rational person, does not hate Tea Party members or oil companies, nor does he have any problem with showing the Confederate flag in a historical context. He just dishonestly implies otherwise when it comes time to attacking his opponent.

This video from WA-2 Democratic incumbent Rick Larsen is hilariously sad in its level of desperation and deception.

Larsen first implies, incredibly, that just because -- like hundreds of millions of Americans -- Republican challenger John Koster thinks favorably of the Tea Party movement, that therefore he is a racist whackjob.

I wonder if Rick Larsen told the people of the Tea Party events he attended that he thought they were all racist whackjobs. (Larsen right now has a link on his own web page to an article about the event he attended, where, apparently, Larsen didn't have the cajones to tell the attendees how he really felt about them. This reminds me of the time Larsen attacked Sarah Palin for using the word "target" in a political context, while linking to a Seattle Times article on his web site using the same language. You'd think he would be more careful about that sort of rookie mistake.)

Then Larsen -- who is the only candidate in the race who has received a campaign contribution from BP -- actually attacks Koster for doing what Obama did: saying we need more domestic oil drilling, shortly before the BP accident happened. It's a fair comment on Koster's views, but it's also something the head of his own party agreed with at the time, just a few months ago.

And then Larsen turns back to attacking the Tea Party as racist as a means to attack Koster, even going so far as to show a Confederate flag juxtaposed against "Koster's" parade entries: but that flag was one of many different flags that was part of a larger historical flags presentation, and in no way advocates that flag in particular. And despite what the video claimed, it wasn't even Koster's parade entry, it was the county GOP's.

The sad thing is that Larsen is ruining his own good name with his blatantly dishonest attacks. So many people have told me, "Rick Larsen's a good guy, I just disagree with his politics." Implying that Koster is racist just because a tiny minority of people in a nationwide movement are racist is the exact opposite of being a "good guy." It's being a damned liar.

But I guess Larsen has nothing else to say. He can't run on his own record of record debt and deficit; he can't attack Koster for things he has actually done or said in his long career; he can only attack Koster by dishonestly taking pictures out of context and implying he is guilty of crimes committed by people he's never met and has nothing to do with.