pudge's Journal: Larsen Puts His Desperation In Video Form

This video from WA-2 Democratic incumbent Rick Larsen is hilariously sad in its level of desperation and deception.

Larsen first implies, incredibly, that just because -- like hundreds of millions of Americans -- Republican challenger John Koster thinks favorably of the Tea Party movement, that therefore he is a racist whackjob.

I wonder if Rick Larsen told the people of the Tea Party events he attended that he thought they were all racist whackjobs. (Larsen right now has a link on his own web page to an article about the event he attended, where, apparently, Larsen didn't have the cajones to tell the attendees how he really felt about them. This reminds me of the time Larsen attacked Sarah Palin for using the word "target" in a political context, while linking to a Seattle Times article on his web site using the same language. You'd think he would be more careful about that sort of rookie mistake.)

Then Larsen -- who is the only candidate in the race who has received a campaign contribution from BP -- actually attacks Koster for doing what Obama did: saying we need more domestic oil drilling, shortly before the BP accident happened. It's a fair comment on Koster's views, but it's also something the head of his own party agreed with at the time, just a few months ago.

And then Larsen turns back to attacking the Tea Party as racist as a means to attack Koster, even going so far as to show a Confederate flag juxtaposed against "Koster's" parade entries: but that flag was one of many different flags that was part of a larger historical flags presentation, and in no way advocates that flag in particular. And despite what the video claimed, it wasn't even Koster's parade entry, it was the county GOP's.

The sad thing is that Larsen is ruining his own good name with his blatantly dishonest attacks. So many people have told me, "Rick Larsen's a good guy, I just disagree with his politics." Implying that Koster is racist just because a tiny minority of people in a nationwide movement are racist is the exact opposite of being a "good guy." It's being a damned liar.

But I guess Larsen has nothing else to say. He can't run on his own record of record debt and deficit; he can't attack Koster for things he has actually done or said in his long career; he can only attack Koster by dishonestly taking pictures out of context and implying he is guilty of crimes committed by people he's never met and has nothing to do with.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.