Wednesday, October 11th, 2006...4:09 pm
Russ Who? I Don’t Know Any Russ. Why Ever Would You Ask?
J. D. Hayworth today recinded his endorsement of Russell Pearce due to his forwarding a racist article from a neo-nazi website to supporters. Observers believe that this is the beginning of a sort of “quarantine” of Pearce within the Republican party.
To which I say, why only now? It is not like this guy has been attending B’nai Brith luncheons and singing “We Shall Overcome” at Martin Luther King Jr. Day rallies. This guy’s flirtations with racism has been well known around West Washington for some time now.
Despite his reputation and public statements, he has been given a great deal of power by his colleagues in the house. Sometimes, his fellow legislators would pepper their floor speeches with praise for him.
The Speaker even made a special arrangement for Pearce. For years Pearce had been chairman of the appropriations committee. When complaints surfaced about Pearce’s management of the committee, the Speaker gave Pearce his own seperate committee, Appropriations P. The “P,” by the way, is for “Pearce.” Instead of removing Pearce from a position of responsibility, they gave him his own committee and named it after him. I think this is called enabling.
The excuse that one can hear from other Republicans is that Pearce is just too powerful. Well, where did he get that power from? His Republican colleagues.
This guy is on the verge of becoming a national embarassment. Every legislature has one of these figures, but ours runs a committee and has a great deal of power over legislation. I’m not even asking why the moderates let this happen. I want to know why any concientious conservative let this happen.
For all my problems with Joe Arpaio, he seems to be the only Republican official who was willing to fire Pearce before he let him become an embarassment.
6 Comments
October 11th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Word is that Pearce asked J.D. to stop supporting him because Russell did not want to be tainted by Hayworth’s fascination with Henry Ford’s “Americanization” program.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
TEDSKI–Our legislature has only ONE of these????
October 12th, 2006 at 8:06 am
Methinks of Gould as CC Burro speaks…
October 12th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
…or Nichols or Farnsworth or Anderson or Knaperek or Quelland or…
October 12th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
The list is endless (that’s a metaphor) — the junior flight is lining up in LD 28, waiting for launch.
October 14th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Actually Gov. Jane Hull once fired Pearce as head of MVD. Do you remember why?
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