Lying Through Your Teeth: Rob McKenna edition

I'm beginning to get the sense that Rob McKenna is not the political wunderkind that Washington political reporters have been waiting for. He's made a continued campaign to highlight his own discrepancies on issues. He has consistently done one thing and said another on women's health, biased ballot initiative language, and protection against health insurance company abuse. McKenna is making a pattern of saying one thing and doing the opposite.

This has been an open secret of the Inslee-McKenna campaign so far, but it's rare to see an acknowledgement of the McKenna duplicity in print. I was shocked to see this in the Spokesman-Review, the flagship East of the Cascades paper.

McKenna did support a maneuver by all 22 Republicans and three breakaway Democrats late in the regular session that pushed through an alternative budget. Murray questioned how McKenna, who has called for increased spending on education, could support a budget that cut public schools and colleges.

McKenna later said he “wasn't thrilled” with the education cuts in that alternative budget, which later was revised in the House. At a campaign press conference during the third week of the special session, he said if he'd been involved in discussions over that alternative Senate budget “I would've gone to them and said 'Let's not make the education cuts.'”

 The thing about "I would have" quotes is that they are proof that McKenna is saying one thing and doing another. He "would have" supported a budget that didn't cut the education budget, but he did support a budget that cut $74 million in education funding next year. It appears that McKenna's staffers was actively involved in whipping votes for the Republican education-gutting budget. He

When it comes to the Washington marriage equality ballot initiative, Rob McKenna was responsible for drafting the language of the initiative that would appear in front of voters. Rob McKenna inserted right-wing talking points into the ballot title. A state judge had to straighten out the mess McKenna made. I bet the judge feels better knowing that McKenna "would have" not used "anti-gay" language if only Rob Mckenna had any common sense.

And then there's the Affordable Care Act, which McKenna decided to sue along with the other Republican Attorneys General, and then claimed that he supports the popular provisions in the law. A gap of that size between behavior and self-proclaimed values borders on a psychological disorder.

This is beginning to show up around the fringes of the Washington establishment media. This Spokesman-Review piece appeared first in a blog post. McKenna has been getting off easy from state media, but that tide may be turning.