Dino and dead horses

Sometimes it's fun and instructive to slice and dice a story to make a point. Take, for instance, this report about Dino Rossi's stop in Vancouver to promote his "Idea Savings and Loan" or whatever he calls it. The story closes this way:

Asked after Thursday's session why he would put forth so much effort to gauge public opinion if he weren't planning to run, Rossi chose to talk about Gregoire instead.

"All I have to do is say what I'm going to do and the governor does it," he said with a smirk. For example, he recently scheduled talks to business groups in Sammamish and Kitsap County. The governor showed up in both places the following week, he said.

"Imitation is the greatest form of flattery," Rossi said. "Original thought is out the window."

And (slice!) let's take a look at a graph earlier in the piece:

Rossi called for getting rid of the estate tax, passed by Democrats in 2005. "It chases people of means out of our state," he said, and with them go good jobs.

Yeah, um okay. Does the term "dead horse" mean anything to these people? It's funny how the "will of the people" can never be "violated" when it comes to say, unconstitutional budget caps, but it would be just dandy if a way was found to thwart the will of the people on the estate tax.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Rossi will run again, although the article notes that some in the GOP are getting a little nervous about whether he actually will run. Oh well. That's the Republicans' problem, a sentence I seem to get to type more and more often these days.

Is Ellen Craswell still around?