Meet Republican Dave Reichert, freshmen congressman/bootlicker for WA-08:
Dave Reichert: Bush's right hand rubber stamp man (© Mike Kane/P-I)
Dave is a Bush man.
A
CQPolitics.com article from last Thursday indicated that
"according to a Congressional Quarterly vote study, Reichert voted with Bush 86 percent of the time in 2005 when the president took a position. The House Republican average was 81 percent."
The
DCCC indicates that
Dave Reichert has voted with indicted former GOP Leader Tom DeLay 91% of the time
and that
Dave Reichert has voted the party line on 88% of the tough votes, putting party leadership ahead of the American people when it mattered most.
My own
in-depth analysis at
On The Road To 2008 of Dave Reichert's voting record indicates that while he votes 88% of the time with the majority Republican position on all votes, if you look at the key votes on the passage of bills where the Republican majority position differed from the Democratic majority position, Reichert actually votes
94% of the time with the Republicans.
Despite all this Reichert is trying to sell himself to voters as a moderate and an independent thinker, yet he has never been known as much of a thinker, let alone an independent one. Like Bush, while he may dress smart, he's not graced with much brainpower. (It is sad that he ever got elected to represent an area that supposedly has the highest concentration of brainpower in the U.S.) With regards to his loyalty to the GOP and Bush administration he has in fact bluntly stated:
"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."
No doubt about it Dave Reichert is a rubber stamp for the Bush White House, and a dangerous one at that. As an empty shell he is a pawn for Karl Rove and Bush to do with as they wish.
You may say that the blind support for Bush by Dave Reichert and his fellow GOP congressmen and congresswomen is hardly anything new, and that Democratic support for Clinton and Republican support for George H. Bush was equally high. However, you'd be wrong on that count. This DCCC chart of congressional record analyses from CQ shows that Bush 43 is getting nearly 20% more rubber stamp approval of his agenda than did Bush 41, and a fair amount more than Clinton did from a Democratic House.
So how does Bush reward those that back him so regularly? With a fundraising visit.
According to reports, Bush and Rove's private fundraiser on Friday for Reichert brought in over $800,000 from 400 donors. About half that money was raised by about 40 donors who paid $10,000 for the "privilege" to have their photo taken with Bush.
As one letter writer to the Seattle Times put it:
"Would any of these donors like to give my son $10,000 so he can finish his senior year of college? That would be an investment that would pay dividends."
As obscene as a $10K photo-op with
The Decider in Chief is, it is still going to help Reichert fund his re-election campaign and his Democratic challenger,
Darcy Burner, is going to have to try and match that with her own fundraising efforts.
Reichert has also happily taken money from Bob Ney, Tom DeLay's ARMPAC, GOP Whip Roy Blunt's "Rely on Your Beliefs" PAC, and House Majority Leader John Boehner's "Freedom Project" PAC.
The photograph of Reichert with Bush that I led off this entry with is truly priceless. When Dick Cheney visited this area in April to fund raise, the Reichert campaign was able to avoid the embarrassment of a Reichert photo with Big Dick. Photographers never had an opportunity to capture the two together. This photo, and others like it, are destined to become important props in the Burner campaign's effort to show that Bush and Reichert are closely connected, and that a vote for Reichert is a vote for Bush. Democrats understand that it is important to associate vulnerable incumbent GOP congressmen like Reichert to the George Bush fiasco. As Washington State Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz said:
"I think the 8th District race will be a referendum on George W. Bush, and I think it's a big mistake for Dave Reichert to have the president come in."
We're already seeing the effect. Bush's
approval rating in the WA-08 district is at 26% and Reichert, who was elected with 52% of the vote in 2004, is at 39%. This is in a district that has
never had a Democratic representative in Congress!
The stage is most definitely set for that to change this year.