Doc Hastings poked his head into the national news just yesterday, delivering the not-terribly awaited Mark Foley report.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard two radio hosts describe what he had to say.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Emerson (a purveyor of Politics as Spectator Sports and not much else), who grew up in Kennewick and to his credit has never heard of the man, called him the most bland Congressman he’s ever heard.\u00c2\u00a0 Rachel Maddow described him as milquetoast.<\/p>\n
It was a predictable anti-climax.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody has lost interest, and the political points to be made had been made — the most implicated politicians had suffered political damage to their careers if nothing else.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t quite say that it should be anyway else, but I can’t quite say otherwise.<\/p>\n
Another unexceptional northwest politician, Gordon Smith, has also attracted attention by making a forth-right statement against the war.<\/p>\n
I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more. I believe we need to figure out not just how to leave Iraq but how to fight the War on Terror and to do it right.<\/i><\/p>\n
He then went on to say we either need to “Cut and Run” or “Cut and Walk”.\u00c2\u00a0 The problem with Gordon Smith coming out and saying such things is it is impossible for me not to see it as anything other than sticking his finger out and blowing with the wind.\u00c2\u00a0 I recognize that sometimes a politician has a legitimate change of heart or reacts to the reality of the situation in a not so cynical reasoning, but I just don’t see it with Gordon Smith.\u00c2\u00a0 Had he been up for office in 2006 and probably 2004, he would have lost.\u00c2\u00a0 Oregon essentially elected to round up all of its Republicans and toss them in the Pacific Ocean.\u00c2\u00a0 And so there it is: the 2008 elections.\u00c2\u00a0 He managed the trick of staving off his challenger in 2002 by raising money by the boatload, and riding a Republican friendly environment.\u00c2\u00a0 It is kind of interesting how successfully re-elected and re-re-elected Senators versus defeated Senators often are tied to just what years they had to deal with the elections and the pesky voters.<\/p>\n
So it is that the national media covers the words of Gordon Smith, something that’s not worth doing otherwise.\u00c2\u00a0 Good job, Mr. Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Doc Hastings poked his head into the national news just yesterday, delivering the not-terribly awaited Mark Foley report.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard two radio hosts describe what he had to say.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Emerson (a purveyor of Politics as Spectator Sports and not much else), who grew up in Kennewick and to his credit has never heard of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}