Welcome to Seattle's new conservative examiner

March 3, 9:19 AMSnohomish County Progressive ExaminerChad Shue

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Good readers,

I hope you will join me in welcoming a new conservative voice to our Seattle Examiner family. Bryan Myrick has recently come onboard as the new Seattle Conservative Examiner. His Examiner bio reads:

"Bryan is a lifelong resident of the Seattle area, has a degree in Communications and Political Science from the University of Washington and enjoys engaging people of all political stripes in conversations on the issues."

Bryan Myrick - Conservative Voice

While it is not my plan to monitor and report on Bryan's column with any regularity, you can be sure that there will be times when we will find ourselves examining the same issues through differing lenses. I look forward to an intelligent exchange and, perhaps, even some enlightening entries on the conservative mind-set.

In his most recent piece entitled "No legislation without deliberation: Republicans can learn from the nationwide Tea Party movement" , Bryan writes about the apparently new conservative notion of "grassroots" rallies; ironically called "Tea Parties." He writes on the day that the Seattle "Tea Party" was to take place:

"All good children come home to share victories achieved abroad. This afternoon’s Tea Party protest in Seattle is just such a homecoming. Reminiscent of another Seattle creation – “The Wave” – the Tea Party movement began as a gut-level reaction by a mom-blogger, known as “Liberty Belle”; a need to get up and yell. Channeling her outrage into assembling an effective Presidents’ Day rally earlier this month was that critical individual act that is at the core of most successful movements for change. Although the purpose of that first demonstration was to protest the stimulus package that had moved through Congress, the bill that had not yet been signed into law by President Obama, Liberty Belle’s banner would be replicated in Denver to coincide with Obama’s signing of the bill into law. That was only the beginning."

Now apparently the Mad Hatters at these Tea Parties are upset that the legislative process is moving ahead without their input:

"...What started in its infancy as a ragged coalition of libertarians and Republicans (not noted for getting along very well), waving signs, eating symbolic roast pork and donning false pig snouts, has coalesced into a more sharply-focused declaration of outrage not about the product coming out of Washington, D.C., but about the process. While the President and his administration don on a worried clown face and tap the panic button with the neurotic compulsion of a video poker junkie, and the Democrat Congress takes full advantage of the diversion to pick the pockets of future taxpayers, the brick has been tied to the accelerator pedal of the legislative process. There have been other times in which process has superseded product as a motivation to take to the streets. The Tea Party movement has rescued a fading vestigial echo of pre-Revolutionary outrage, the acutely distilled frustration that surfaces when the social contract between government and governed is breached."

He then adds (I suppose for emphasis):

"Even if we agree that our nation’s economic state is the equivalent of a house engulfed in flame, legislators and voters need to decide with the input of constituents and experts if what they are pointing at their home is a fire hose or a flamethrower."

I guess Bryan and the rest of the cast of Alice in Wonderland have just chosen to ignore the past six months and that little thing called the presidential election. By all accounts, the final results of the November election were dramatically impacted by the national debate over the state of our failing economy and the candidates' plans to change the country's course. Obama AND HIS ECONOMIC PLAN won! The fact the the ever shrinking conservative voice in Congress only wishes to play the obstructionist to this inevitable change is not by any stretch the same as being left out of the process. Or maybe it wasn't tea they were serving at these parties after all; just more conservative kool aid.

Peace,
Chad Shue