Search Results for: Dave Reichert

And so, when the leadership comes to me and says ‘Dave, we need you to take a vote over here because we want to protect you and keep this majority, I… I do it.

So… um, I guess… that must be what the Seattle Times means when they say Reichert has a “conscience-driven independent streak.” Yeah, that Denny Hastert… he’s a regular Jiminy Cricket.

Over on Postman’s blog, Reichert spokesperson Kimberly Cadena foolishly goes on the attack, accusing Democrats of distorting the congressman’s words:

“It’s shameless that Darcy and the DCCC has taken a portion of Congressman Reichert’s explanation of his stands against leadership out of context.”

Uh-huh.

Well let’s put Reichert’s words in context, okay? I’ve posted a full transcript of his entire speech that day, and here for your convenience is an extended excerpt in which he tries to explain “the big picture,” and how to play the Washington “game.” I know it’s a bit rambling and incoherent, but try to follow along.

I’ll tell you that back in Washington there are lots of games played and I just want to give you, we talk about freedom and we talk about America and we talk about the dream. The dream has to include everybody and there has to be compromise and we can’t have, I’ve been to district meetings in my district where people have said, “why in the world should I vote for you. It’s just like voting for a democrat for crying out loud.” I am going to vote libertarian and I said, “you know what sir, that would be a huge mistake and here’s why.” I’ve tried to explain to this person how things work a little bit back in Washington D.C. and why certain votes have to be taken. Sometimes the leadership comes to me and says “Dave we want you to vote a certain way” and they know I can do that over here. Another district isn’t a problem but over here I have to be very flexible of where I placed my votes. The big picture here is to keep the seat, keep the majority, and keep the country moving forward with republican ideals. Especially on the budget and protecting our troops who’re protecting this country and how that will be responsible with taxpayer dollars. That’s the big picture. Not the vote I place on ANWAR that you may not agree with or the vote that I placed on protecting salmon. You have to be flexible. So when the leadership comes to me and says , Dave you have to vote over here because we want to protect you and keep this majority, I do it. There are sometimes when I say no I won’t. There are sometimes when things come to the floor like Schiavo. I was one of five republicans that voted with the Democrats on Schiavo because that was the right thing to do.

How’s that for context? Not enough? Well view it for yourself.

Let’s just forget for a moment the Gary Ridgeway crack, in which Reichert trivializes the victims (they were only whores, after all) by jokingly comparing Democrats to a serial killer.

For the “big picture” is that Reichert serves a swing district, and in order to protect his seat and their majority, the leadership sometimes instructs him to vote against them. The Schiavo vote, well that’s the exception that proves the rule. That is the context of the excerpt used in the DCCC ad, and that’s entirely how it was understood by his fellow Republicans in the audience. How can I be so sure? That’s what his fellow Republicans have told me.

Back in early June when I first reported on this speech I recounted the incredulous reaction of a prominent GOP elected official who told me “Of course we understand that strategy… but you don’t come right out and say it in public!” And by coincidence we talked about this incident on Podcasting Liberally this week with state Rep. Toby Nixon (R-45), who was also in the audience that day:

“It was shocking,” Nixon said. As he later clarified in the comment thread:

To be clear, by saying “it was shocking” I was expressing the surprise I felt at the time that Rep. Reichert was so open and frank about being approached in this manner, not at the fact that it happened. It is, in fact, quite common for majority party leadership to go to freshman members of their party and provide such guidance, in order to provide cover for those freshmen in their first re-election campaign when they are most vulnerable to challenge. It happens quite frequently in the Washington State House of Representatives, too.

And how cynical is this strategy? Again, Reichert’s own words:

“I know the leadership is already planning to protect me, right. They will develop a bill that increases money for education that I can vote on and say I do support teachers.”

Reichert’s “conscience-driven independence” was a carefully constructed myth, which Reichert himself frankly (and stupidly) debunked before a TV camera. Reichert understood exactly what he was saying. His audience understood exactly what he was saying. One can only assume that even the disenchanted Republican voter that served as a springboard for Reichert’s rambling anecdote understood exactly what Reichert was saying.

The only people who pretend not to understand the context of this quote is Reichert’s spokesperson… and the Seattle Times editorial board.

AD WATCH: He Did It
The DCCC is up with a new ad attacking Rep. Dave Reichert [R]. The ad features footage from a speech Reichert made in 5/06. REICHERT (from 5/06 speech): So when the leadership comes to me and says, ‘Dave, we need you to take a vote over here because we want to protect you and keep this majority, I do it.’ ANNCR: And when they told Dave Reichert to give billions to big oil, he did it. And a vote against cracking down on price gouging, he did it. Three times. Now we know why. Dave Reichert — another vote for Bush’s agenda (Hotline sources, 10/18).

Yeah, um… and this is the same guy the Seattle Times congratulated for having a “conscience-driven independent streak”…?

It’s not like Reichert’s admission was a big secret. I blogged on this speech back in June, as did the Stranger’s Eli Sanders. Video of the speech before the “Mainstream Republicans of Washington” has long been available on TVW. And even fellow Republicans who were there in the room that day roll their eyes and openly laugh at Reichert for admitting publicly — and on camera — what they all quietly understood. State Rep. Toby Nixon (R-45) was in the audience for Reichert’s speech, and just listen to this exchange between me and Toby last night on Podcasting Liberally:

“It was shocking,” Toby said — and it was. But apparently not to Times editorial writer Kate Riley, who in lavishing praise on Reichert chose to stubbornly ignore the congressman’s own explanation of his voting record.

It’s a funny world we live in where the media has grown accustomed to blindly repeating our politicians’ lies, and willfully ignoring their truths.

I have been snide. I have been mean. At times, I have been downright disrespectful. But this morning, while reading the Times‘ endorsement of Dave Reichert, I realized that I had been underestimating the editorial board all along. While bloggers like me have struggled to define our growing role in the emerging new media landscape while eking out a little hard-earned credibility, if not an actual living, the comfortably paid editorial writers at the Times have soldiered on with a self-confidence that can only come from self-awareness. As a blogger, raised in the shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, an era when current events conferred on journalists near heroic stature, I have been slow to grasp a simple truth the Times‘ editorialists have apparently long understood: they are no better than us.

So, I am sorry Seattle Times editorial board… I’m sorry for holding you up to higher standards than you deserve, higher standards than you’ve obviously set for yourselves. I’m sorry for expecting more rhetorical honesty than I would from, say, Stefan. I’m sorry for demanding that you refrain from wallowing in your own self-serving agenda any more than I would demand a pig to refrain from wallowing in his own shit. But mostly I’m sorry that at some level, a tiny part of me still wanted to believe that even on your opinion pages you hold yourself to a higher journalistic standard than the lowest, muckraking blogger.

I apologize.

That said, it is now possible for me to embrace the Times endorsement of Reichert as the unmitigated, lying load of bullshit it really is — a turgidly written, rhetorically dishonest piece of sophistry more fitting to the pages of (un)Sound Politics than to that of a major American newspaper. Once again failing to distinguish between being serious and being solemn, this soporific and stiffly written unsigned editorial displays the intellectual rigor mortis that has come to define the dying newspaper industry.

The Times congratulates Reichert for showing “a conscience-driven independent streak” despite the fact that he has publicly admitted that the House leadership tells him when to vote against them, and they laud Reichert for opposing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge even though he voted for drilling in ANWR when his vote counted most. The Times points to his experience as a “first-responder,” ignoring his mismanaged, scandal-ridden tenure as Sheriff and his bungling of the Green River Killer investigation, and they highlight his chairmanship of a homeland-security subcommittee… a chairmanship he most definitely will not retain after the coming Democratic sweep.

They claim that Reichert appreciates “nuance,” a word he’d have to look up in the dictionary to spell, let alone define.

How far is the Times willing to go in defense of their endorsement? They even tried to spin one of Reichert’s biggest gaffes into a strength:

He surprised many recently by saying he’s not convinced about how much global warming is caused by human action. We are convinced it’s a substantial contributing factor.

But Reichert says he’s skeptical, so he’s investigating. That’s a better approach than adopting a ready-made ideology.

Global warming isn’t an “ideology,” it’s the scientific consensus for chrisakes! This is the same sort of facts be damned skepticism that freed Gary Ridgeway to go on killing for another 17 years after Reichert dismissed him as a suspect.

But in fact, even the Times has little to say in favor of Reichert, instead spending the bulk of their double-length editorial attacking his opponent Darcy Burner in a surprisingly vicious and dishonest manner.

The Times criticizes Burner’s lack of public service, as if voters are best served by a Congress filled with professional politicians. They belittle her resume and mindlessly repeat NRCC talking points. But what I find most offensive is their blatantly dishonest, one-sided, through-the-looking-glass portrayal of the 8th district race.

Still more disappointingly, Burner has run a mean-spirited campaign that would make Republican spinmeister Karl Rove proud. In The Seattle Times/KUOW-FM congressional debate last week, she accused Reichert of “lying.” She called him “unprincipled” and “politically crass.”

Those charges ring particularly hollow considering one of Burner’s approved campaign ads shamelessly obfuscates the truth about Reichert’s support of veterans funding.

To this there is only one reasonable response: FUCK YOU! As a Democrat I have spent much of the past decade being vilified by the Republicans, being branded as an immoral traitor and a coward, and of being an enemy of the state. I have watched Karl Rove and his cohorts swift-boat a war hero, and morph a patriot who left three limbs on the battlefield into Osama bin Laden.

And the Times has the temerity to tar Burner with the Karl Rove brush? They attack Burner for running a negative campaign when every single mailer and commercial coming out of the NRCC and the Reichert campaign has been an attack ad? This, after Reichert aired an ad that actually fabricated a quote from the Times? Have they no shame? Are they entirely fucking clueless?

I would be more offended… I would be angrier than I am… I would even take back my earlier apology if not for the fact that with this endorsement the Times editorial board has demonstrated once and for all how entirely irrelevant they have become. Sure, they still have a couple hundred thousand readers, but few will manage to wade past the sports section and the comics and the Sunday circulars to get to today’s op/ed page, and fewer still will take this endorsement seriously. The Times incessant shilling for estate tax repeal has so strained its credibility and bored its readers that its endorsements have become more an exercise in narcissism than civic engagement. The vast majority of readers who still bother to read newspaper editorials understand that the opinions expressed by the Times editors are no more well thought out, no more legitimate than, well… mine. And they’re damn less entertaining. Sure, newspapers still have more influence than bloggers, but it’s waning, and they know it.

Which I think helps explain the nasty tone and dishonest logic of this particular editorial, for in attacking Burner they are also attacking us bloggers and the Netroots Movement that helped propel her from a virtual unknown into one of the most hotly contested races in the nation. The Times‘ influence or lack thereof can be measured against their established record of endorsing losing candidates and causes. But a Burner victory would be seen as a huge victory for the netroots, and a clear sign of the growing influence of the barbarian blogger hoards amassing outside the gates of the traditional media.

In this light we can see the Times endorsement for what it really is. It’s not just a defense of the kind of status quo politics they find comforting. It’s not just a defense of a politician they can trust to fight for their pet issue of repealing the estate tax. In some way, at some level, this endorsement can be seen as a defense of the Times editorial board itself.

In such a close election, perhaps what little influence the Times editorial board still has with voters could be enough to swing the victory to Reichert. But if so, it will be a Pyrrhic victory, for by so distorting both the candidates and the tenor of this race to suit their own narrow objectives they have proven themselves to be no more credible and no more relevant than your average, run-of-the-mill blogger like me. And at least I’m not boring.

Republicans are also increasingly nervous about the seat held by Rep. David G. Reichert (R-Wash.). Darcy Burner, a former Microsoft executive, has pounded Reichert for voting with the GOP majority in Washington, hoping to capitalize on widespread frustration there. In a sign of nervousness, the NRCC recently increased its spending on television ads in the district.

Burner wants help from the DCCC. “Anytime you spend millions of dollars communicating with voters, it is going to have an impact,” Burner said.

Burner is definitely getting some help from the DCCC, but she can’t be guaranteed all she needs. Two years ago Dave Ross was comfortably up in the polls a couple weeks before the election, and just as the DCCC confidently pulled out, the NRCC aggressively moved in, plastering the airwaves with attack ads. Ross simply didn’t have the resources to respond.

The best way to avoid a repeat of 2004 is to directly give Burner the help she needs. That means you.

Democrat Darcy Burner’s challenge to freshman Republican Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s 8th District has become one of the year’s key battleground races

You can smell the desperation coming from the Reichert camp, but that’s not all that stinks. Darryl over at Hominid Views does a great job picking apart the lies in Reichert’s ad, and in the process he stumbles across a really huge political no-no.

Take a look at this screen shot from Reichert’s ad:

“Burner’s charges hurt by ‘inaccuracies'”

Now go try and Google that quote. You won’t find it online. You won’t find it in the print edition either. It doesn’t exist.

Sure, there is a fairly even-handed article by Jonathan Martin in the 9/24/06 edition of the Seattle Times, critiquing ads by both the candidates. And it does contain the word “inaccuracies,” as in:

Ads against both candidates contain inaccuracies.

But you won’t find the words “charges” or “hurt,” in or out of sequence, let alone the quoted phrase. Reichert just plum made it up.

Notice from the screen shot that Reichert was careful to place the word ‘inaccuracies’ in single quotes, which I suppose was some sort of sneaky effort to defend himself against charges like the one I’m raising. But by surrounding the entire phrase in double-quotes, the ad clearly implies that the phrase was an exact quote from the Seattle Times. And as far as we can tell, it wasn’t.

It is one thing for Reichert and his cronies to make up lies about Darcy Burner — we all expected him to do that. But you just don’t make up quotes and put them into the mouths of newspaper reporters and editorial boards. There are very few rules that govern the ethics of political advertising, but this is one a candidate should never violate.

Reichert has embarrassed himself. He has embarrassed the Times. And I fully expect the Times to demand that he pull or fix the ad.

And come election day, I hope voters remember what Reichert says at the end of the ad: “I’m Dave Reichert, and I approve this message.”

UPDATE:
The Times‘ David Postman reports that Reichert will fix his ad. He quotes Reichert campaign spokesperson Kimberly Cadena:

The Reichert campaign made a mistake with the punctuation in its ad. We are fixing the punctuation to accurately describe what was in the Seattle Times article.

Oh… it was just a punctuation mistake. So, I suppose that means they’re just going to pull the quotation marks off the larger, fictional quote, and put them around the word “inaccuracies,” thus transforming a total fabrication into something that’s merely intentionally misleading.

I mean, let’s get real. Single word quotations are the stuff that ad copy for bad movies are made of. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty apt analogy for Dave Reichert.

http://www.house.gov/reichert/photogallery/Honeywell.CEO.shtml

But, oh no… when I went back to the link today, the page was gone!

For some strange reason, the Reichert camp would apparently prefer that the public not see photos of the smiling congressman rubbing shoulders with a respected colleague known pedophile. Hmm. I wonder why?

Good thing then that Reichert’s staff is about as competent as the House Republican leadership, for while they deleted the index page they forgot to delete the actual JPEGs from their server. Fortunately, I still had the URLs cached in my browser, so here for the public record are links (here and here) to the two pictures Reichert doesn’t want the public to see.

Or, if you want to save time, here’s the moneyshot:

UPDATE:
Apparently, it wasn’t just the URLs that were stored in my browser’s cache, but the JPEGs themselves. So my apologies to Rep. Reichert’s staff — you did a great job of scrubbing the congressman’s website of these embarrassing photos. You just did it about 12 hours too late.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded the photos to my server (here and here) for your viewing pleasure.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
An enterprising commenter offers the Google cache of Rep. Reichert’s deleted web page.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Reichert is vulnerable. His favorable ratings are below 50 percent, and he actually suffers a 6 point deficit in job approval.

And that’s not the worst of it. In a generic congressional match-up, 8th CD voters favor Democrats over Republicans 44% to 34%. Meanwhile, President Bush’s ratings have dropped through the floor, with a 36% to 59% favorable/unfavorable rating, and a stunningly low 28% to 71% job approval rating. This is simply a terrible climate for a Republican incumbent… especially one who has had high-profile visits from President Bush and Karl Rove.

As for Burner, she clearly still has a lot of work to do, but she has tremendous upside. Burner enjoys a 2.5 to 1 favorable ratio, but her name ID still stands below 50 percent. According to the pollsters:

“Burner has significant opportunities to grow in her name identification among younger voters (especially women), parents, the less well-educated, and residents of Pierce County and Legislative Districts 25/33/45 and 41. Introducing her to these voters with a positive message will help boost her performance. Indeed, almost 70% of Congressional undecideds know little about her.”

No doubt the righty trolls will dismissively pooh-pooh this poll, just as they did the previous one, but at some point they’re going to have to move off of the “Darcy isn’t a credible candidate” meme and start arguing this race based on Reichert’s record and the issues. For one thing should be abundantly clear to all but the most partisan Republican boosters: Burner can win this race.

But notice the emphasis on the word “can”. “Can” and “will” are not the same thing, and Burner can’t beat Reichert without your help. The NRCC has already started pulling money out of some hopeless races, but that’s not going to happen in WA-08, for the Republicans have no chance of holding control of the House if they can’t hold seats in suburban districts like Reichert’s. Districts like WA-08 will likely be ground zero in the GOP’s battle to retain their majority, so expect a firestorm of TV ads to blitz the airwaves, attacking Burner and defending Reichert. Burner can survive, but only if she has the resources to respond.

So if you haven’t yet given, or you haven’t given all you can give, now is the time to make a contribution to Darcy Burner and Peter Goldmark. If we can’t take back with House with great candidates like these, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.