pudge's Journal: Larsen Attacks Koster For Not Being As Bad As Larsen

In attacking Sarah Palin's endorsment of challenger John Koster (R), incumbent WA-2 Congressman Rick Larsen (D) said, "A Palin endorsement means John Koster is opening his campaign war chest to a potential landslide of out-of-state contributions; contributions that will fund his campaign to eliminate the help seniors are getting to pay for prescription drugs, privatize Social Security, and protect the lax regulations that led to the BP oil spill." (emphasis added)

Those sure sound like awful things, even if his misrepresentations of Koster's campaign were true. But as Jerry Cornfield at The Herald points out, 65 percent of Larsen's contributions come from PACs, most of which are out of state, and has received several thousand from oil companies. Only three percent of Koster's money has come from PACs (in fact, Koster's raised more money from individual contributions than Larsen, since his announcement in January), and of that PAC money, none of it is associated with the oil industry.

I guess Larsen is just trying to use fiery rhetoric to prevent Koster from becoming more like Larsen himself.

Larsen also accused Palin of doing something wrong by using the extremely common "target" rhetoric regarding political races: "She even uses crosshairs in her literature, upping the rhetoric and literally taking aim."

Wow! She EVEN used CROSSHAIRS! LITERALLY taking aim! Shocking, especially since on Larsen's campaign web site, he links to a Seattle P-I article titled "Larsen: Big turnout for House target," without implying there's anything wrong with the former newspaper's use of the word.

I demand that Rick Larsen condemn the Seattle P-I for upping the rhetoric with its use of a word that has been commonly used in political races since before anyone of us was born! And then I demand that Rick Larsen condemn himself for putting such vile rhetoric on his campaign home page. Despicable.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.