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Does AG Rob McKenna endorse Hans Zeiger’s batshit-crazy views?

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Subject: Does Rob McKenna endorse Hans Zeiger?

From: david@horsesass.org

Date: September 13, 2010 1:28:21 PM PDT

To: Janelle Guthrie (ATG)

Cc: Dan Sytman (ATG)

Janelle,

As a long time reader, perhaps you’ve seen my series on 25th LD Republican nominee Hans Zeiger? Over the past couple weeks I’ve reported a lot of startling things about Zeiger’s offensive and disturbing views, but perhaps my most surprising discovery is that Attorney General Rob McKenna headlines the list as Zeiger’s most prominent endorser.

Surely, this must be a mistake. Surely, Mr. McKenna would not endorse a candidate who called the Girl Scouts “a gathering of radical feminists, lesbians, and cookie peddlers,” who described the National Education Association as a “terrorist organization” that “has made greater progress in the tearing down of American institutions and ideals than Iraq or Al Quaeda,” who berates other religions and Christian dominations for “praying to the generic god,” who dismisses Seattle’s St. Mark’s Cathedral as “hardly a Christian church,” and who argues for conservatives to fight against “the problem of Islam” as the organizing principle behind a reunited conservative movement and a resurgent Republican Party.

For surely, wouldn’t the endorsement of Zeiger by Washington state’s most prominent elected Republican appear to some as an endorsement of Zeiger’s hateful and intolerant opinions?

So could you please ask the Attorney General if he has in fact officially endorsed Zeiger, and if so, whether he is prepared to publicly withdraw his endorsement now that he has been made aware of Zeiger’s vast portfolio of disturbing and bigoted commentary? Or, if Mr. McKenna maintains his endorsement, could you please ask him to defend it?

As always, I thank you for your cooperation, and look forward to your reply.

David Goldstein
HorsesAss.org

[cc: my readers]

We get a lot of people with crazy views running for office, but it’s no so often that they’re endorsed by the most prominent Republican elected official in the state. So I just sent this email to the Attorney General’s office to ask whether Rob McKenna really endorsed Hans Zeiger, as Zeiger claims on his website, and if so, whether McKenna would withdraw his endorsement now that he nows how crazy Zeiger is.

I’ll let you know if I get a response, but you might want to contact the AG’s office and ask for yourself.

Comments

  1. 1

    Under the heading “organizations” is listed “Mainstream Republicans of Washington”, so I would have to say yes, McKenna does endorse this fascist nut job.

  4. 4

    But the story of 1938 also shows how hard it is to apply these insights. Even under F.D.R., there was never the political will to do what was needed to end the Great Depression; its eventual resolution came essentially by accident.

    Thought so. Essentially.

  7. 7

    You can learn a lot about someone by whom they endorse.

    Knowing that McKenna endorses Zeiger lets us know that for all the lip service he pays “I’m a bipartisan moderate with respect for the law” he obviously has some major crazy. Having an attorney general with major crazy is not a good situation.

  8. 8

    re 4: Did you know that Milton Friedman considered himself a progressive and worked in FDR’s administration as an economist?

    Friedman is widely misunderstood by his most ardent followers. It was, after all, Friedman who suggested that the government’s proper response to deflation would be to drop money on the cities from helicopters.

  9. 9

    You might think two hours would have been long enough to unplug an endorsement. I suppose McKenna is too busy working on his briefing notes regarding his failure to act as a proper AG in the matter of the Public Lands Commission.

  10. 10

    Methinks this is one e-mail which will NOT get a response. McKenna will pretend he hasn’t received it, just as he pretends that he doesn’t know about this guy’s rantings. As long as it isn’t picked up by any other media, he figures he can safely do so.

  11. 11

    Perhaps you can intimidate our Boy Attorney General into making an express public endorsement of Herr Zeiger. The nuttier* McKenna appears to be, the better I like it.

    * more craven, stupider, sillier, and more mendacious also works.

  12. 12

    They’re not gonna reply to an email sent to an atg.wa.gov address regarding a political endorsement. Government workers can’t do politics while using work resources.

    Goldy, I agree Zeiger’s a nut, but shouldn’t you send the email to whomever McKenna’s political flacks are at their campaign email addresses?

  13. 13

    Bax @12,

    They’re allowed to use government email to respond to political questions from the press.

    Besides, there is no campaign to contact, as he’s not running for anything at the moment. At least, not officially.

  15. 15

    Goldy @ 13

    I think they can use the government e-mail to respond to many types of political-related issues. For example, McKenna could respond to attacks on the performance of his office, or state his position in regard to pending legislation. But I don’t think they can use the e-mail to endorse, promote or oppose candidates for public office, or ballot measures for that matter.

    In any event, Rob McKenna has a campaign website that says he is running again for AG in 2012. You can contact him for political purposes that way. I am at least 98% sure that McKenna has filed the right papers with the PDC to make his 2012 campaign official — and has probably also spent tons of money on it as well.

  16. 16

    Richard @15,

    If a reporter has a political question in the absence of a staffed campaign, he goes through the ATG’s communications staff. There is nothing barring them from responding to a question.

  17. 17

    Here comes the neighborhood:

    Friedman said that he and his wife “regarded the job-creation programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate responses to the critical situation”, but not “the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration”.[14] Foreshadowing his later ideas, he believed price controls interfered with an essential signaling mechanism to help resources be used where they were most valued. Indeed, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was “the wrong cure for the wrong disease”, arguing that the money supply should simply have been expanded, instead of contracted.[15] In the publication Monetary History of the United States by Friedman and Anna Schwartz, they argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, which was the consequence of poor policymaking by the Federal reserve and the continuous crises of the banking system.[16]

    – via Wiki

    I know of no Friedman followers who misunderstand monetary contraction.

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