P-I slams Dino Rossi

Today the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is sending a message to Dino Rossi in what has to be one of the newspaper's best editorials - ever:

Take note of the trouncing your party took in this state on Election Day. Not only did voters shift dramatically the balance of power in both houses of the Legislature, but the ballot initiative you came out to promote -- I-933 -- was roundly defeated.

Perhaps your leadership reputation would have been better burnished had you spoken out last year in opposition to Initiative 912, the failed attempt to cut transportation funding. But you were busy trying to sell a book about leadership rather than exercising it.

A lot has changed in two years, and there's nothing to make things look rosy for Republicans two years out, either.

There is no longer any rational questioning of Gov. Chris Gregoire's legitimacy. Democratic legislative majorities have swelled.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McGavick's 39 percent share of the vote against a vulnerable Maria Cantwell fell short of George Nethercutt's 43 percent share against Sen. Patty Murray in 2004, and Helen Craswell's 41 percent cut against Gary Locke in the 1996 governor's race and even John Carlson's 40 percent against Locke in 2000.

So, carefully temper any dreams of comeback in '08 with the realities of '06.

In 2008, we will reelect Governor Christine Gregoire and keep her in Olympia working for the people of Washington State. We've already defeated Dino Rossi once, and we can do it again - this time, by a a decisive and incontestable margin.