{"id":148,"date":"2004-10-24T01:35:55","date_gmt":"2004-10-24T08:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/wp\/?p=148"},"modified":"2004-10-24T01:36:23","modified_gmt":"2004-10-24T08:36:23","slug":"dave-vs-dave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/dave-vs-dave\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave vs. Dave"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I caught on the tube a debate between Dave Reichert, the Republican running for Washington&#8217;s 8th District seat in the United States House of Representitives, and his Democrat opponent, Dave Ross. The seat was formerly held by Republican Jennifer Dunn, a fiscally conservative, socially laisez-faire congresswoman who suited this district and myself fairly well.<\/p>\n<p>Neither candidate had particularly distinguished himself until I actually <a href=\"http:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/wp\/index.php?p=142\">talked to Dave Ross<\/a> about a week ago. About the same time, I had heard (albeit briefly) Ross  dominating John Carlson of KVI 570 (a conservative talk radio station) on John&#8217;s own show. So Ross had gained some points in my book, which he needed because in an information vacuum (which I would have alieviated by election day, regardless) I would have voted for the Republican in this race. But Reichert hadn&#8217;t earned any points with me, and so really it was a toss up with the information I had.<\/p>\n<p>Until tonight.<\/p>\n<p>In the debate, Reichert came across as by far the superior candidate. He responded sensibly and instilled confidence in me that he would be a better representitive me and my views than the other Dave. Ross seemed to want to pick a fight while Reichert wanted to have a civil discourse. Reichert won that face off. And while Ross&#8217; comments got the only chuckles during the debate, that may have ended up hurting him in the end.<\/p>\n<p>The main points that I got out of the debate were the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Republican attack ads against Dave Ross were basically true: he supports federalized universal healthcare, which is perhaps the worst idea in contemporaryAmerican politics\n<\/li>\n<li>Reichert is pretty much party line on the half-arse solutions that seem mostly designed to throw wrenches in the efforts to impose universal health care: HSAs, MSAs, etc, and the constant &#8220;we must lower the cost of healthcare&#8221; line which gets old pretty quickly, considering that it comes from both sides of the aisle<\/li>\n<li>Dave Ross really does seem to be more about talk, and Reichert more about actually doing things, as the latter asserted in his closing statement<\/li>\n<li>Ross is pretty much Party-line semi-anti-Iraq-war: It was the right war for the wrong reasons, we shouldn&#8217;t have done it but now that we did oh boy they need armor&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So they are both pretty straightforward representitives of their parties tweaked for the district slightly. And for a district where all we want is another Jennifer Dunn, Reichert is the closer match, and seems to be better suited for the job too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I caught on the tube a debate between Dave Reichert, the Republican running for Washington&#8217;s 8th District seat in the United States House of Representitives, and his Democrat opponent, Dave Ross. The seat was formerly held by Republican Jennifer Dunn, a fiscally conservative, socially laisez-faire congresswoman who suited this district and myself fairly well. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcanius.silverfir.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}