Those who have criticized my relentless attacks on Susan Hutchison as a Bible-thumpin’, evolution-denyin’, partisan right-wing Republican, have generally missed the point.
I do not argue that any of her beliefs or affiliations, however extreme, should disqualify Hutchison from holding public office. “No religious test shall ever be required…” and all that. That’s a good thing.
I just insist that Hutchison be honest about it, and barring that, that the press hold her accountable.
Take for example the video above, in which I compare and contrast Hutchison’s effort to minimize her contribution to Mike Huckabee, with her obvious infatuation with the most prominently Evangelical of the 2008 presidential candidates. When asked about her $500 contribution to Huckabee during a KCTS debate, Hutchison could’ve just said that she supported his candidacy, and explained the reasons why. But she didn’t.
Instead, she attempted to explain it away:
Well, when I was a journalist, as you know, we don’t contribute to political campaigns. And so when I ended my career, I started to respond to all of those messages that we got in the mail, or phone calls.
And one of them was from a friend of mine who said, “Let’s go hear Mike Huckabee speak… he’s a popular governor from Arkansas,” and at that point nobody had really heard much about him. And she said “He’s got innovative ideas.” And this friend of mine has done a lot of politicking, and so I said, “Okay, I’ll go with you to that lunch,” and I wrote the check. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the lunch, and so, that is the extent of my check writing for Mike Huckabee.
To anybody who watched the KCTS debate, the impression she gave was clear. 1) Journalists “don’t contribute to political campaigns,” so Hutchison was new to the world of partisan politics. 2) Like most everyone else, she hadn’t heard much about Huckabee at the time. And 3) she wrote the check merely at the request of a friend who spoke highly of Huckabee, and invited her to hear him speak. When Hutchison says “that is the extent of my checking writing for Mike Huckabee,” she clearly intends to leave the impression that this was the extent of her involvement with Huckabee as well.
But all three of these impressions simply aren’t true.
First of all, KIRO-TV ended Hutchison’s “journalism” career way back in 2002, while the Huckabee luncheon wasn’t until November 15, 2007. That’s a full five years of responding to all those messages and phone calls, so she couldn’t possibly have been the partisan political novice she makes herself out to be at the time.
In fact, according to PDC and FEC reports, Hutchison started giving to political campaigns as early as September of 2003, with a $500 contribution toward the reelection of President George W. Bush; by 2005, she had become a regular contributor to Republican candidates and causes. Indeed, by the time Hutchison wrote her $500 check to Huckabee, she had already written 23 checks totaling $12,500, to 16 different campaigns and committees… Republican all.
So the image of Hutchison as a naive check-writing newbie? That’s misimpression number one, especially considering her entire career since leaving KIRO had been writing checks on behalf of billionaire Charles Simonyi.
As for the impression Hutchison leaves that she didn’t know much about Huckabee at the time, well the video clips above speak for themselves, but here’s the timeline. The Huckabee luncheon was on Nov. 15, 2007, and her check is recorded on Nov. 19. Yet on Sept. 27, 2007, nearly two months earlier, Hutchison can be seen lauding Huckabee before a packed house at the conservative Washington Policy Center’s annual dinner, an event she’s been emceeing for years:
“As you know, if you’ve been here before, our speakers inform, inspire and predict the future. Anyone who was here last year is not surprised that Mike Huckabee is performing well in the presidential race for the Republican primary.”
Hutchison is talking about the 2006 annual dinner, at which Mike Huckabee was the featured speaker, and she, as usual, was the master of ceremonies. So… even though she implies that she didn’t know much about Huckabee in November of 2007 at the time she wrote him a $500.00 check, she had in fact personally met the man, and had been “informed and inspired” by him, a full year earlier, in 2006… a speech she fondly recalled in September of 2007 at the following year’s dinner.
That’s just plain deceptive.
And finally, that politically involved friend Hutchison refers to… the one who invited her to hear Huckabee speak, and who allegedly gushed about his “innovative ideas”…? That was almost surely Sarah Rindlaub, “one of Hutchison’s closest political allies,” a Washington Policy Center board member.
And the lunch itself? An Evangelicals for Huckabee endorsement event, sponsored by Joe Fuiten and twenty other conservative pastors.
Again, Hutchison has the right to associate with and contribute to anybody she wants, but the public has just as much a right to know about it. And therein lies my biggest complaint with the way Hutchison has run her campaign, and the way the press has covered it.
Knowing the facts, anybody watching Hutchison’s efforts to minimize her support for Huckabee simply wouldn’t find her credible. Yet most voters don’t know the facts, and for that I hold our local media complicit.
UPDATE:
TVW is playing its games again, filing takedown notices with YouTube for what clearly amounts to fair use. So I’ve reposted via Vimeo. So there.
UPDATE, UPDATE:
TVW has apparently had my video pulled from Vimeo, so I’ve replaced the embed with one from LiveLeak. I’m willing to play this game as long as they are.
The local media is an oxymoron- although to give credit where it is due, the Times artciles on WAMU are finally hitting a mark. But of course, the barndoor is locked and the horses got out and are all dead.
But back to Suzie Q, I will just remind you what we all now know about her- she is a serial liar and she was fired for incompetence. And, she is a hard right conservative of the ilk who have ruined our nation. We can do without her. Lets send her back to being an MC at second rate prayer breakfasts.
You’re reaching Goldy…
Why not get one of those voice stress analyzers, show up at a presser, tell Susan I am the media and look for stress in her responses? Then you could speak factually!
See ya.
Palin – Hutchison – Separated at Birth?
Puddy @2,
She’s lying, Puddy. And you don’t care. Because she’s on your side.
She’s still living in the “old media”, where a politician could come up with a cover story which explains away just about anything by putting a spin on it. Back then, you could say anything you wanted in front of a friendly audience because video was scarce and usually in the hands of your friends, anyway. Likewise, media types would think twice about airing old video, because the candidate might freeze the reports out if they win anyway.
It’s all changed now – SmokingGun.com has copies of police reports and mug shot photos, every public speech has video and is usually posted publically and quickly accessable through a routine search engine query.
That’s why lots of Republicans in 2008 tried to ban cameras from their events – they wanted to tell one message to their base, but tell an entirely different message to the voters at large. But it didn’t work out too well for them, anyway.
I’m not sure if this will catch up with Hutchinson in time to cost her the election, but I’m betting that if she is elected, she will continue to make these gaffs on a regular basis, and the media (TV, Radio) is going to run with those gaffs every time.
Huckabee supports the so-called “Fair Tax” (anything but) that would transplant the regressivity of Washington’s sales-tax-based revenue system to the entire nation.
Apparently wingnuts like the unfairness of our system, which makes poor people pay 5 1/2 times as much of their income to taxes as the affluent pay, that they want to impose it on all 300 million Americans.
One of the most striking features of the (Un)Fair Tax is that its proponents are DISHONEST about what taxpayers would actually pay. They claim the federal sales tax that would replace a host of existing taxes (including income tax, inheritance tax, excise taxes, etc.) would be 21%.
But according to their own proposal, you would pay $30 on a $100 purchase. That’s 30%, not 21%. Here’s how they twist the math: They divide $30 by $130 instead of $100 to come up with 21%.
Of course, if these liars aren’t even honest about the math, you can’t expect them to be honest about other calculations either. They claim the 30% tax would be “revenue neutral” but experts disagree, saying it would take a sales tax rate of 40% to 60% to replace the revenues that would be lost from all the taxes the trogs want to repeal.
This is right up Suzie’s alley. She’s one of the most dishonest candidates our state has ever seen. So she’d fit right in with the pathological liars who make up the (Un)Fair Tax crowd.
Someone should ask her if she (hearts) the Fair Tax. Naturally, you shouldn’t believe anything she says on the subject.
I wonder how many King County voters would support her if they knew she was in favor of a 70% sales tax? ((Un)Fair Tax + state & local sales taxes)
After watching the debate last night it is obvious that she has absolutely no clue about the responsibilities of the office she’s campaigning for. She flat out refused to answer most of the questions directly, she obfuscated, evaded, and flat out lied several times and it was evident in Raibles and the audience reactions that they were seeing this.
She rambled on about several subjects that weren’t even in the questions, therefore refusing to address the questions themselves. This is an old salesman trick, its common amoungst stupid people that really don’t know what they’re talking about, but they need to talk anyway, especially when they are thrown the gentlest of curveballs in a question that they haven’t been carefully rehearsed on or studied in.
It is comparable to the pompous rich guy that insists that the construction workers that are building his house don’t have a clue about what they are doing, even though they’ve got 40 years culmative experience in the work and he has never lifted a hammer or a shovel in his life or even spent any time observing the construction process.
She is a borderline personality, will say anything that mitigates the immediate pressure on her intellect, even to the point of self-deception or the sort of deliberate obtusiveness seen in people like Sarah Palin or Donald Rumsfeld. She is, deceptive, evasive, petty, superficial in the extreme and her motives for running for the office are not personal in that she is obviously working for someone else, for that someones agenda. Those being The BIAW and the extremist corporatist right wing. Without those entities coaching her and paying her to run, she would be doing nails in a salon or sitting in her front window, tut-tutting the neighbors for letting their lawns get too long in the summer and gossiping to the other shallow twits in her church about them. She has no mind of her own, she is a complete flaming dipshit.
500 bucks for a lunch? My, those TV journalists do live well, don’t they? I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than $12.50 for a lunch, and that was in a tourist trap of a town where I was attending a bar association conference and had to either pay $12.50 or go hungry.
I wonder if she’ll spend our taxpayer money like she spends her lunch money. I’ve noticed that Republicans are free spenders with OPM.*
* other people’s money, i.e., ours.
I can already see County Exec Suzie cutting library hours because the executive lunch kitty needs replenishing.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ife26.html
For the faithful, who believe in omens, look who won:
http://www.drf.com/drfPDFChart.....&RN=7
Hutchinson is a liar – she lied about her vacation and that got her fired. Now she is lying about her political affiliations and she is caught in a web of her own lies.
No one who hides their political views from the electorate should be voted into office – period.
#5 seems to have it about right.
Giving $500 to someone that you don’t know squat about doesn’t sound very journalistic to me. But then Huch was a teleprompter reader, not a journalist.
Suzie and Chuck Norris – that’ll be a tag team to watch during Huckabee’s next losing death march.
That ship’ll sink way faster than the last one did.
Too bad – Huckabee actually has something of a sense of humor when he’s not spouting the latest batshit insane rhetoric that appeals to the likes of the trolls here.
YLB’s job search continues…..at HA.
@15,
Correct as always!
Nice catch, Goldy. Hutchison plainly has an aversion to the truth.
Puddy, did Hutchison lie about her knowledge of Mike Huckabee?
(a) Yes, or
(b) No.
@17
It doesn’t matter, spuddy and the other Goopers would rather have a known conservative pathological liar than anyone with real education or non-corporatist leanings in office, even if it means being totally stripped of any ability to petition government or be protected from criminal organizations in the guise of business. They only believe in the force of money, not the will of citizens or the rule of law.
Libraries, publicly funded policing, education and health protections that conflict with the desires of the money makers is anathema to the corporatist/neofascist agenda which the spuddypud and the other fascists are so enamored of.
There’s an irony here in that as a candidate, Mike was perfectly up-front about what he was about. That, in and of itself, was like a breath of fresh air in a political milieu that in recent years has been permeated with the stench of dishonesty–many of us, who didn’t necessarily agree with him, found him charming and appreciated his candor.
That being said, since he’s gone to work for Fox he seems to have fallen in step with its cartoonish attitude and become a sort of a Sean Hannity with manners–but then again he’s “workin’ for the man” now, and may see an obligation to do what he’s being paid for.
Heh.. Just dropped my ballot in the mail..
One more vote AGAINST Suzie.
She is continually lying. It’s really sad. She fought so hard to keep the records from her KIRO dismissal covered up.
Whatever you think of Dow, this is not someone who will bring openness to county government, in fact, I would think that it would be quite the oposite.
18
What odds do you place on Puddy responding to the simple yes or no question posed?
You’re correct about Puddy and his ideological pals–a pathological liar is a fine candidate as long as she toes the wingnut line.
@ 22
Minimum 600-1, and there’s a reason why the Bush family has been called the “texas mafia” for over 70 years, it is exactly what they are. They’re entire family wealth is based in criminal enterprises and manufactured warfare.
Spuddypud would have a Stalin or a Mussolini running things, so long as he wasn’t interfered with when he opens that baby brothel in Belltown. After all, those fellers would be his best customers. Any psychopathic personality is perfectly acceptable in public office, so long as they call themselves conservative christians.
http://www.tvw.org/media/media.....038;bhcp=1
Here is Susan and Huckabee together talking about him losing weight.
Any King County resident who has ever been offended by the right wing idiots on local political comment threads just translate that feeling into a vote AGAINST Suzie Hutchison.
If you don’t say NO to outfits like BIAW and their lackeys like Hutchison, they’ll end up running things.
So what’s up with the like between Simonyi and Suzie?
Looking at his website and wikipedia entry – he’s all about funding cultural and educational activities – Inst. for Advanced Study, chairs at Oxford and Stanford stand out. The one at Oxford was even held by Richard Dawkins!
So what’s he doing palling around with Suzie, who might be in the OK with him on other political topics, seems quite opposed to education, particularly the stint at the Discovery Institute. And she seems not just an employee – at the Simonyi fund website – they each have their own page under the section “Founders”
What gives?
oops – that should be “link” not “like”
sorry
Wanna see two trolls sucking each other’s cocks? Go to #15 & #16 above.
Roger sez:
I sorta thought that was one troll, under different handles, sucking his own.
@28 Don’t you mean “teabagging” each other?
@29 If it is, he should be brought to a lab for scientific study, because no other human can do that.
Dogs can do it, though. They’re flexible enough to lick their own dicks, and I’ve seen lots of ’em do it. Dogs are disgusting! Why did Nature make dogs in the first place?
Roger Rabbit –
Why do dogs lick their nuts? You know that old saying, “because they can” ;)
We are so fucked here in the U.S., there is no two party system, they’re both the same. All that happens is both parties stir up the “Herd” so they can pass more laws and spending bills to fuck us over even more.
This clueless bitch sadly is more than likely going to win, but her opponent is also a worthless piece of shit.
5 It is fantastic how politicians are really in the limelight now with the internet and all of it’s video capability. Then you think only Republicans are scared of the cameras. Try watching Fox News and see your favorites talk out of both sides of their mouths. Yeah, they say Fox News lies and lies and yet they show the very video you speak of on a daily basis. They are number 1 by a huge margin for that reason.
check out Paul Abrams at the Huffington Post yesterday: New right wing “Dirty Tricks” Campaign Tactic Being Tested in Washington State.
Mark pukes
Eh. No thanks. I prefer watching the news.