Hm.  The new Clint Didier, the chllenger to the right of the Republican congress critter in the fourth district of Washington — and here who has as the greatest issue to depose of the Republican Incumbent that he voted to certify.Biden’s election victory —

And in a past life Clint Didier was a professional football player.  Harmless enough a position — sack a quarterback and pray to Jesus — who cares?  The new guy… Chief of police.  He is authorized to defend the law.

Sucks to be in that town.

Democracy!

Republican Loren Culp placed second in the top-two primary and competed against Inslee in the general election on November 3. Inslee easily won re-election to a third term and defeated Culp in the election by a 13.44% margin. Nonetheless, Culp refused to concede and filed a lawsuit against Republican Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman five weeks after the election.  Culp’s actions drew criticism and were compared to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

I suppose despite it all, it is good the “illegal to lie about election results” bill failed.  But damned if staring at Kulp doesn’t make it a tempting gesture.

But here lies the strength of Washington’s “top two” primary.  In a general election between these two Republicans, Democrats and Independents will pull Newhouse over.  (Had Georgia a top two primary, I doubt Greene would be in Congress.) Though, it will spring a question for that minority Democratic voter… If polls suggest that Kulp, Newhouse, and random Democrat are closed in at 1, 2, 3 in the primary — thus leading to a possibility of Kulp — random Democrat matchup in the general that Kulp will, indeed, win — would enough Democrats just suck it up and get New house in there?

Interesting to look over to Eastern Washington and see…

Republican Clint Didier is facing Republican Dan Newhouse again.  As in, in the general election.

So we get this line of … idiocy…

Earlier this year, Didier’s Washington Patriots PAC ran an attack ad on Newhouse alleging that he advocated for extreme liberal positions on abortion and immigration issues, based on his vote for the omnibus bill.

Great election for the 38 percent of the district who cast their lot with Obama over Romney.

So.  Just how did this go in the primary election?

Newhouse picked up 46 percent of the primary vote while Didier, also a Republican, received 27 percent. Democrat Doug McKinley also remained in the running with 22 percent.

It’s an interesting, this “top two primary”.  Effectively, we have spoilers in the primary working against one party getting any representation in the general.  Though, I suppose it’s worth noting, pulling the total from John Malan in together, we still don’t arrive at Didier’s percentage, but… it didn’t help.

Hm…

John “The Man” Malan.  Is he the new Gordon Allen Pross?

Didier versus Newhouse!

Both support Donald Trump, though Didier more enthusiastically.

Or you can go with this:

Didier supports Second Amendment gun rights and said that climate change is real, but not caused by humans.
“The climate is what God wants it to be because this is God’s earth,” he said during the candidate’s forum.

I see the phrase “Gordon Pross arrest” as a search someone recently got here with.

I assume that whoever was looking, found this item posted in the Ellensburg Daily Record , circa 1992, about the end of Gordon Pross’s suit against prison mistreatment following his (storied in his various congressional campaigns) arrest in 1988.

Beyond that, to the question that turns up in the query, “Who replaced Doc Hastings?” — one Dan Newhouse.  It’s worth noting that had it not been for the top two primary, the man replacing Doc Hastings would have been one Clint Didier.

What’s this mean?  Newhouse voted for John Boehner for Speaker.  Didier probably would’ve been with that tea party contingency and plucked about… probably not joining the “Colin Powell” voter, though.  (Maybe have voted for goddamned Louie Gohmert?)

Moving through the Oregon Voters Pamphlet…

The Constitution Party candidate for Governor, Alan Auer, make the point that…

We are all created in the Creator’s image; therefore, the unalienable rights of the unborn is the first duty of civil government. Human life is sacred. Male and female created He them. For this cause shall a man leave his Father and his Mother and shall cleave unto his wife.

Ahem.  “Male and female created He them”.  Pronoun problems?

Running in the 5th Congressional district is, a (sigh) 9/11 Truther.  Marvin Sannes.  Ther war that we’ve been fighting since 1939 is over?

I’m curious about the eye-patch on the Pacific Green candidate for 3rd Congressional district, Michael Meo.

Skipping over to the ballot measures, we can all laugh at the Reefer Madness on the Opposition Statements regarding Measure 91.

But Measure 90 presents something worth looking at…  First of all, Maurice Henderson and the Yes on 90 pulls that classless schtik of buying a few slots for a couple of parodies and a straight-forward argument for passing the measure…  interesting to see he profers a quote from Sal Parrinto and the Independent Party, the one party that as it an endorsement clearing-house by design benefits from this measure — as representative of third parties.

Moving on to actual arguments against… there is an interesting problem with the case study thrown out here… Washington’s 4th Congressional district… go to Planned Parenthood’s argument…

The negative impacts on women’s health are already clear in Washington, a “Top Two” state. Because of the Top Two, voters in the state’s 4th Congressional District this fall will have their choice of voting between:

Conservative Republican Clint Didier, who is anti-choice, or
Conservative Republican Dan Newhouse, who is anti-choice.

And those will be the only choices available to voters in the congressional race, thanks to the Top Two. Pro-choice voters in the district will be forced to choose between one of these anti-choice candidates, or simply not vote at all.

Ah, the perils of being a single issue voter.  As opposed to the past two decades where they’ve had the choice between one conservative Democrat who is anti-choice and a Conservative Republican who is anti-choice, or a moderate Democrat who is pro-choice and a Conservative Republican who is anti-choice, or… a conservative Republican who is anti-choice and… Gordon Allen Pross who is who knows and who cares?

The conservative Republican wins in every case.

The problem may be brought into focus by Carl Wolfson’s statement…

Because of the Top Two primary in Washington State, voters in the 4th Congressional District will be forced to choose between the following two candidates:
Conservative Republican Clint Didier, who is anti-choice, opposes gun laws, wants to repeal Obamacare, and parrots the right-wing position on immigration, and
Conservative Republican Dan Newhouse, who is anti-choice, opposes gun laws, wants to repeal Obamacare, and parrots the right-wing position on immigration
Voters who don’t identify with these two candidates and their very similar agendas will have no other alternatives on the ballot. This is a district where more than 78,000 people voted for a Democratic candidate in 2012 against an entrenched incumbent.
And yet, under the Top Two elections system, these voters won’t see anyone on the ballot who even remotely represents them. They can choose between someone they fundamentally disagree with, and someone they fundamentally disagree with. Or, more likely, they’ll simply choose not to vote in that race.

It’s worth noting that the actual Democrat in the primary had up an ad where he was shooting guns, the better to emphasize his disassociation with the national Democratic view.
And we do have an interesting debate herein on the effects of this on small “d” democracy.  Do you prefer to have an automatic loser who “remotely” represents your broad spectrum of viewpoints, shading here or there, as some kind of tribune… or… two people who don’t remotely share your views, but one will win, and perhaps — perhaps — they have to be aware of a slice of the electorate that they can appeal to — in Newhouse’s case with some Moderate Republican rhetoric, in Didier’s case with some anti-establishment rhetoric… pick your poison.

Supposing for a moment that you take the Top 2 Primary of Washington and think through the permutations of how a Democrat oughta vote in the heavily Republican 4th District.  I gather, from the suggestion made by the political pundit class, that any number of Democrats there took a deep breath and cast their lot with the “Establishment” pick, Newhouse, for fear that the Tea Party candidate Didier would end up in a match-up with the Democrat and win in the general election.  This would be at the cost of a general election with differing perimeters of Overton Window where the debates held and thus to whatever extent thrown into public discourse in route the Republican’s November win would be off to the right.

Now ponder this.

Didier dismissed Newhouse as a “career politician” and Hastings as a lawmaker beholden to business interests. He said he did not seek or expect Hastings’ support.

“They say you can judge a man by the company he keeps – so I think people can easily figure out if they want a Congressman whose friends and supporters are lobbyists, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Monsanto, DC and other beltway insiders whose money and power have gotten us into the mess we’re in now– or one who is supported by liberty-loving patriots who want to limit federal government powers and restore our freedoms.”

Granted, Newhouse probably remains the lesser of two evils — when push comes to shove he’d decide against throwing the country over the “Fiscal Cliff” — but it’s interesting to see Didier touching the buttons of corporate welfare and… wait, did he really throw in Monsanto?

Is this the end of the line for Gordon Allen Pross?

Besides abolishing taxes, Pross believes in securing America’s border with drones, restoring the American dollar, ending the Federal Reserve banking system, bringing back a military draft and putting an end to “the tyranny” in American government, he said.

Drones?  Like… those things used by Amazon dot com to deliver packages?  Ye Gads!

He called Congress a “pit of vipers” and told the Herald if he were elected he would expose “those people who hold the purse strings to your gold dust.”

Okay.  The one man I want to hear from at this big Congressional candidate forum.

Republican Gordon Allen Pross, who farms outside Ellensburg, said the national debt is actually $218 trillion. The eight-time candidate wants to go to Washington, D.C., to take on tyranny.

“I need to get that ball rolling up there because we haven’t had any leadership up there for 100 years,” Pross said.

Sure… and then there’s…

The audience laughed when Eltopia farmer and former pro football tight end Clint Didier, who recently made headlines by having a drawing for three guns, randomly drew a question about gun background checks. He said anyone but convicted felons should be allowed to buy guns, and later took on Common Core standards in education.

“Common Core is a direct result of our involvement with the United Nations,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I want the United States out of the UN and the UN out of the United States … You look at our founding fathers they were much more educated than we are today. We are losing ground because government is involved.”

Hm.

I’m having trouble unscrambling the components of this ad.  So, Democratic prospect Estakio Beltran shoots at an elephant shaped pinata, as “what happens to an elephant who stand around doing nothing for too long”, and then he rides off on a donkey to Washington DC.

It’s labeled here as throwing “a hail Mary“.  Maybe that’s the word we may as well use for advertisements whose main purpose is to get national publicity for low funded candidacies.

As in… what does this ad even signify?

(1).  He’s asserting his gun rights bonafides against the national Democratic Party’s agenda for his rural Central Washington district.
(2).  There’s something maybe gleefully politically incorrect about using the pinata as an icon… maybe?

Trying to get to that whole Herman Cain attempt at a racial “I’m playing the part of some of your racial stereotypes just for the Hell of it” thing… See the National Review commentary.
An hispanic man shooting a piñata. That made me laugh. A lot.
And riding a burro donkey. All that’s missing is a bottle of tequila.

See therefor, almsot getting at one issue the NR might go to if Beltran were actually successful with this ad:  While the media’s reaction to the offensive video is predictable, there’s little doubt that if a Republican candidate made a similar ad they’d be accused of promoting violence against Democrats.  Interestingly, they don’t make the case on cultural and racial lines.
Because…
(3).  Huh.  This inane Capitol-cowboy equation of political struggle with armed conflict puts Beltran not in the company of compassionate statesmen, but in the company of Sarah “Reload” Palin, a Georgia anti-Obama redneck with a cannon, this Alabama Republican dude with his gun BBQ smoker, and the lady who brags about how well she can de-nut a pig.
On the Palin ad I always half wanted to defend it from the insinuation associating it with the Gabrielle Giffords shooter anyways, so…

Ugh.

So… who’s going to make the top 2 in the big Washington State 4th Congressional district race to take over from the retiring Richard “The Doc” Hastings?

Apparently, the Republican Establishment pick is Dan Newhouse, so he is expected to get in there.  The second pick comes down to … apparently one of these candidates…

Former professional football player and candidate and “far righter” Clint Didier (one of “those guys“.)
State Senator Janéa Holmquist, established politician who also happens to be the one woman on the ballot.
Kennewick attorney George Cicotte, because of whatever… he’s Mormon and from the Tri-Cities, says the article, so that’s two voting blocs he might gnab.
Estakio Beltran, because he’s the Democratic Establishment pick.

May I offer a surprise dark horse possibility?  Gavin Siem.  For the simple fact that he is the first name on the ballot of 12 candidates.

Thoughts on this?   Leaving aside the issue of politicians’ hypocrisy and whatnot…

U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings’ Central Washington district received the most federal money from the 2009 stimulus act, snagging more than 500 times as much per resident than the bottom-ranked district of former Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York.
That’s the conclusion by three economists released Thursday by The Brookings Institution who tracked how $308 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was dispersed around the nation.
But the paper says Hastings’ 4th District includes Spokane. Spokane is actually represented by Hastings’ fellow Republican, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
Ethan Kaplan, a economist at the University of Maryland and one of the paper’s three authors, said Friday the mistake was only a descriptive error and did not alter the study’s findings.

It’s like, I say when I’m from Eastern Washington, and everyone always says “Spokane?”  And the goddamned Brookings Institution does the same damned thing!