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Liberals are attacking the platform adopted by the WA GOP Convention in Spokane over the weekend. Some of their attack is based on misrepresentations and some is based on values that differ greatly from the people who actually adopted the platform, the WA GOP grassroots voters.

The WA GOP Convention

I’ve been trying to get a better feel for all that went on over the weekend. I wasn’t there since I didn’t even submit my name for consideration as a delegate in the Pierce County convention. I figured I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything there so it would be a waste of my time and money. From all reports, as I expected, it was politics as usual, something that usually turns the grassroots off and drives them away from the party (like it’s doing to me).
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It was frustration with the Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) that first prompted me to refer to myself as a ‘Republican by default’ several years ago. It stemmed from all the trips to the voting booth where I couldn’t find a candidate that I could vote for so I ended up voting against the other candidate. I still voted Republican, but only because the other guy was worse.

That same feeling returned when I showed up at the caucuses in February of this year. Fred Thompson had already withdrawn and Mitt Romney withdrew shortly before we the event. The base of the party wasn’t having a party. We were stuck with a candidate who had kicked us to the curb several times in the last six years as he journeyed leftward, probably the result of his previous defeat in the battle for the party’s presidential nomination.
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There’s another conservative in Western Washington who has entered the blogosphere.

Living in this area with a vocal liberal minority can be tough on conservatives. Liberals have trouble understanding that conservatives are not the drooling idiots portrayed by liberals on television. Those are a figment of the imaginations of intolerant leftists who would rather shout-down their opposition than offer a reasoned response.

So when a conservative stands up and offers a reasoned argument on a local issue, several liberals will seem to go into some sort of spasmodic rage. I know they can’t help it. Even college educated liberals have never had to face any opposition to their ideals. Facing a conservative must be something akin to first contact with an alien species.

So I’d like to welcome Red Country - Washington State to the battlefield of ideas in Puget Sound. I’ve added the site to my blogroll so you can find it anytime.

MoveRed.org, a group of young Seattle Republicans (sponsored by KCGOP) captured these dramatic, life-changing events in Bellevue, WA at the offices of Sen. Patty Murray.

Funny Video: MoveOn.org vs. Senator Patty Murray

If you watch closely you might see the senator’s security detail rushing her to safety. Surrounded by her guards you can only see her white sneakers scurrying away. (Just kidding. I’m sure she was at some other protest or an important subcommittee meeting with her mentor, former KKK leader Sheets Byrd.  Or maybe she was touring one of Osama Bin Laden’s hospitals or daycare facilities.)

The Puget Sound Regional Council today released what they called a study. I guess in some definitions it would qualify as a study, but in the truest sense, it’s a piece of agitprop. Their goal was obviously to find out if drivers would actually pay more money, but they veiled it in other terms. Anything to avoid doing their job of building roads.

The problem with congestion pricing:

Starting with the basic premise of the study, asking the question, “would drivers change their driving habits if they were charged congestion pricing”. What happened to the question of ’should they have to change their driving habits’? They have paid for the roads, they shouldn’t have to pay for them all over again.

Next, congestion pricing is a punitive fee placed on taxpayers for a failure in government. Neither the drivers nor the taxpayers are at fault for congestion. The responsibility rests solely on the shoulders of government for failing to meet the demand. Taxpayers trusted these people to provide adequate means of transportation, but the people they trusted used the money for pet projects instead of paying for the roads that the money was intended to cover. Here’s some comments on that from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation:

Secretary Paula Hammond displayed a trend graph of the last 25 years, which showed population, licensed drivers, employment, and vehicle miles traveled rising between 50% and 100%, while new lane miles barely increased 10%.

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Frank Rogers, a long-time Pierce County Republican and active member, has written an open letter to the state party chair, Luke Esser, regarding the handling of a vote at the convention last week.

I’ve been mulling over some concerns about that vote for the last week and couldn’t settle on how (or whether) to blog about it. Since this post is available, I guess I have a way to talk about it. What held me back from commenting was that I’m not well versed on parliamentary procedures at this point, so I wasn’t sure what to focus on. This open letter helped me find a way to address it.

After reading the letter I spoke with the convention parliamentarian (Alex Hays, see our discussion about another matter at the convention in the comments here.) His points about the County Executive endorsement vote were basically:
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Terry Bergeson, WA State Superintendent of Public Instruction, spoke at the Pierce County GOP Convention on Saturday. Now we find out that she approved an effort to bring children from public schools in 25 counties to see the Dalai Lama. When asked whether she would do the same for the Pope, her response was:

[Essex] PORTER: Would the Superintendent of Public Instruction urge schools to bring kids to the Pope?

[Terry] BERGESON: Well, I probably couldn’t get away with that as the Pope, Essex. But the Dalai Lama is a man of the whole world.

Radio talk show host Dori Monson talked with Bergeson about the issue. Give it a listen. She tries to make a distinction between the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Buddhists, and the Pope, spiritual leader of Roman Catholics. But as she does she describes Dalai Lama’s efforts as religious in nature, bringing our hearts, minds and spirits together to bring more compassion.
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In an opinion piece in USA Today the writer blames the Republican Party’s association with conservative Christians (one of the main reasons) for the GOP losing young voters. And, of course, liberal Republicans buy the lie.

It’s beginning to sound like a broken record. Oh, I’m sorry, the ‘youth’ won’t know what a record is.

Remember that this is an opinion piece, not a study or a survey. And it’s posted on a liberal, dead-tree rag’s Web site as they try to reach a younger crowd that never had ink-stained fingers from trying to understand the world around them.

What are the other reasons given in the piece?

Young people react to the success or failure of the first politicians they know. The twentysomethings of the 1980s, for example, associated the Democratic Party with the malaise of Jimmy Carter — and the GOP with the triumphs of Ronald Reagan.

Apparently, the writer thinks that ‘young people’ are too stupid to think for themselves. They’re just dumb animals with limited higher brain functions. All they can do is follow their first emotional reaction.
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Evergreen College has a long history of promoting protests as part of their liberal indoctrination programs (they call them ‘classes’). Over time that pesky law of unintended consequences has brought the chickens home to roost.
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As usual, the Tacoma News Tribune comes out on the side of tax and spend politicians in University Place with this headline: City cuts traffic fees, but developers still complain.

Toward the bottom of the article the writer states the real issue:

The city continues to struggle to get its Town Center project up and running.

The background:
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