No, I'm not surprised that the Seattle Times Editorial Board has endorsed anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant Dino Rossi in the tightest, most consequential Congressional race on the ballot in Washington State. They basically endorsed him in the primary, and they endorsed Republican Congressman Dave Reichert every time he ran for office in Washington's 8th Congressional District, too. I'm not even surprised that their argument in support of his candidacy is so bad. After all, this is the same ed board that chastised Candice Faber while doubling down on their endorsement of her alleged rapist, state senator Joe Fain. (Fain denies the allegations and has called for an investigation.) But I am surprised that I'm still alive after reading such a devastatingly dumb, dishonest, and contradictory endorsement. My GOD.

Let's just go through this one point by point. Here's the Times:

We have frequently expressed grave concerns in editorials about President Donald Trump’s divisiveness and policies on everything from immigration to tariffs to environmental rollbacks. But Congress needs more people like Rossi, a pragmatic lawmaker with a demonstrated record of working across the aisle with Democrats for solutions that work for the greater good.

Oh, I get it. The Times really doesn't like Donald Trump's "divisiveness" and his position on immigration, so they're going to send a Republican to Congress who will help the President's party retain power and carry out his divisive agenda. We've got hundreds of immigrant kids detained in fucking state-run camps down in Texas, and the Times is backing the guy who wants to build a "tall fence with a high gate" at the border, the guy who took weeks to say something—ANYTHING—in response to the President's family separation policy. Though Rossi eventually said "we shouldn't be separating families," he didn't condemn the practice, nor does he want to do anything about it. His position is so radical that he won't even support a stand-alone DREAM Act, a measure that enjoys broad support across the country, even among some House Republicans. All of this is, I would argue, extremely and literally fucking divisive.

The Times then parrots Dino Rossi's bullshit line about his willingness to reach across the aisle and make tough decisions while protecting the vulnerable, using much of the language from his own campaign materials:

As Rossi pointed out in a Wednesday debate, while Schrier criticizes his work in the Legislature, the 2003 budget he wrote in a severe deficit year was similar to one proposed by Democratic Gov. Gary Locke. In negotiations, he helped drive a compromise with the Democratic-controlled House, which protected vulnerable citizens, including people with disabilities.

As I have already mentioned, as others have already been mentioning for years, Rossi's contribution to that budget was the suggestion to kick 46,000 children off of Medicaid, cut prenatal care for undocumented immigrants, and increase college tuition by 9 percent. The overall bill may have protected some of the most vulnerable citizens, but if it did it protected them from Rossi and his harmful proposals.

And I am sick of this fiction that Rossi is somehow a "pragmatic lawmaker" driven to forge "compromises." He's a conniving motherfucker who gave Tim Eyman tips on how to be even more of a conniving motherfucker than he already is. McClatchy:

The Republican state senator [Dino Rossi] approached the anti-tax activist with a suggestion: “Why don’t you threaten to do a referendum on any tax or fee increase that passes this legislative session?’”

Eyman told Rossi it would be impossible to bring all those potential taxes to the ballot.

“He replied, ‘Well, the Democrats don’t know that,’ Eyman said. “And he just started laughing.”

And that's not the only time Rossi has endorsed trolling in the state legislature. As I pointed out months ago, back when Rossi was filling in as state senator for the 45th District, instead of negotiating in good faith with Democrats to pass a budget, Rossi signed on as the prime sponsor of a spending bill that he knew wouldn't pass purely to troll Democrats. He couldn't even reach a bipartisan solution with a teen who came to his office to talk about ways to protect the environment. In that meeting, according to Jamie Margolin, a member of the Junior Statesmen of America, Rossi suggested that fighting climate change would mean taking money away from poor kids, which it wouldn't! He just said that to a kid because he's a condescending "asshole," to use her words.

The editorial board includes two critiques of Kim Schrier, both of which are contradictory and completely inane.

First, they say Schrier wants to "make Medicare a health care plan option for all Americans to buy into—but falls short in explaining how to manage the cost." Manage what cost? Expanding Medicare merely increases efficiency and reduces the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by $158 billion over the course of 10 years. Meanwhile, Rossi doesn't have any health care plan short of repealing Obamacare, and the Republican tax bill he supports and defends blew up the deficit by one trillion dollars at the expense of the poor, but for some reason the Times isn't knocking him for "falling short" in explaining how to manage that cost.

They then implicitly criticize Schrier for embodying "the national effort to take back Congress from the Republicans as a check on the President." This is the same editorial board that demanded its readers "to restore America's honor" by choosing Congressional candidates in Washington "who are most capable and willing to keep the President in check and prevent further harm." To get around this baldly hypocritical statement in the endorsement, they still say they want the President to be checked, but argue that "the fighting and the divisiveness has led to a hopelessly dysfunctional Congress, where people fight over issues, not push for solutions."

Civility! Ah yes, now it all makes sense. Sending Rossi to Congress will help the Republicans maintain their control of all three branches of government. If the Republicans stay in power, then there won't be any more hopeless dysfunction. Without uncivil pediatricians and mothers like Kim Schrier around, Rossi and the rest of the Republicans can all just hold hands and repeal Obamacare, cut Medicare and Social Security, impose draconian immigration policies, squash voting rights, strip minorities of civil liberties, cut funding for Planned Parenthood, and make abortion all but illegal until the Supreme Court finally overturns Roe. That's the future the Times is ushering in by endorsing Dino Rossi. If you don't want to live in that world, vote Schrier.