Secessionist sympathizer?
Secessionist sympathizer? Washington State Senate

Our buddy from Spokane Valley, Washington State Representative Matt Shea, wants to talk about seceding from western Washington again. And look who he's having over for dinner.

According to the Daily Sun, next Saturday in Wenatchee, Shea is giving a presentation at the Douglas County Republican Central Committee’s Lincoln Day Dinner called “Liberty, the 51st State!” During the talk, he's sure to extol the virtues of splitting our beloved Evergreen State at the mountain line and calling the left half "Washington" and the right half "Liberty."

As my colleague Sean Nelson pointed out, right after Donald Trump was elected President, Shea and a couple of other Republicans co-sponsored a bill to create the state of Liberty so the Republican party could add two more Senators to its ranks and a few extra members of the House. State legislators have been trying to land this trick for over 100 years and they haven't been able to do so, but they keep trying because what's the definition of insanity again?

Anyway, a room full of real Americans paying $60 for dinner will likely clap along and dream of the day when they'll be "liberated" from a world where King County pays for most of their shit, and Dino Rossi, the sole Republican running for Congress in Washington's 8th Congressional District, will be out glad-handing among them.

Rossi is the scheduled to open for Shea's keynote speech, as is Congressman Dan Newhouse, who represents the 4th CD.

Rossi speaking and glad-handing at such an event is funny given the fact that he constantly describes himself as a lawmaker with “a proven track record of accomplishing bipartisan solutions.” Does Rossi think splitting the state in two will bring the state together? Does he think he's going to get some great "bipartisan solutions" by palling around with Shea, a Bundy-loving lawyer who compared Planned Parenthood to the Nazis and who, according to my colleague Heidi Groover, "made up quotes from the Founding Fathers in a pro-gun bill he introduced in Olympia?"

But the more important question is this: Washington's 8th district straddles the Cascade Mountains, stretching east to west from Auburn to Wenatchee and north to south from Chelan to Ellensburg. Which side of that district does Rossi want to represent?

I can't tell you, because he won't respond to my request for comment.