News McGavick Snows PI
This morning’s PI article comparing the respective Iraq war positions of Democratic Sen. Cantwell and her GOP challenger, Mike McGavick, lets McGavick get away with a total whopper. The credulous PI says McGavick “runs against the GOP grain by welcoming vigorous debate [about the war]…” They go on: “That view differs from Bush, who [has] likened disagreement with the policy in Iraq to not supporting the troops.”
The PI bases this analysis on the following quote that McGavick gave them: “Debating where we are and where we are going is always healthy.”
That might be what McGAvick wants liberal PI readers in Seattle to hear (and the reporters at the PI seem happy to let him get away with it), but I was with McGavick on the campaign trail this summer in Moses Lake, WA.—which is about 2-and-a-half-hours east of Seattle in GOP territory—and he said something completely different to the red meat (actually, doritos and chili) audience there.
Here’s a snippet from the article I wrote from Moses Lake
“We have learned things—since being there—that turned out not to be true,” McGavick admits after a lone Democratic community-college student sitting in back brings up the war. “But it’s inappropriate to have those debates until our troops are out of harm’s way. I would not take up the Congress’s time right now debating those things. I can learn about them later.”
The college student’s question was prompted by an article that ran in the Lewiston Tribune just a few days before McGAvick showed up in Moses Lake.
Lewiston Morning Tribune, July 20, 2006, By DEAN A. FERGUSON of the Tribune. McGavick: It’s wrong to debate war. McGavick is a fierce supporter of the “War on Terror.” Just as previous generations fought fascism and communism, this generation must battle terrorists, he said. “The paramount job of the federal government is to keep us safe and secure,” he said. In an earlier stop at the Lewiston Tribune, he said it is wrong to debate the war. Despite a “large” list of mistakes, the war debate needs to happen when the war ends. “We’ve got lots of time and we’ve got lots to learn,” McGavick said.
Here’s a Slog post I had done at the time on McGavick’s Lewiston position.
give 'em a break, it's not fair for us to expect the msm to check their facts ...