Pacific Views

Rubber Stamp Reichert

Dave Reichert admitted in a speech that he votes exactly like the Republican House leadership tells him to. Now his campaign is saying that those remarks were taken out of context in a DCCC ad running in the WA-08 congressional race. Riiiight.

How out of context could this statement possibly be?

... 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. ...

Dave Reichert does as he's told. He even votes against the Republican majority when he'd rather not, when it's a throwaway vote to protect him from his own constituency realizing that he doesn't share their values. So what are his values, anyway?

Reichert voted in favor of killing habeas corpus and torturing detainees, through the offices of the military commissions act. He has voted against reducing our dependence on oil every chance he got. He won't say where he stood on a voice vote that passed a law authorizing the strip searching of school children by school officials. He's authorized negative and misleading push-polling against Darcy Burner, in contradiction of which I can say authoritatively that Burner favors using plans for Iraq that originate with the military. He's released ads misrepresenting Burner's tax positions, which would actually decrease the burden on middle and lower income families.

The 8th District deserves better representation than Dave Reichert's rubber stamp.

Posted by natasha at October 19, 2006 07:23 PM | WA Politics | Technorati links |