Westneat: No weeks of shame anymore

Last week, voters there recalled him for it. Which is just what he claims was needed to boost his campaign.

“This recall has not hindered me, but energized me to continue to choose the people of Washington state over politics,” he said.

“That he’s now going around boasting about being recalled is amazing, but not surprising,” said Sara Watson, a mom of three in Richland who helped with the recall effort. “I think he wanted something on his résumé, some way of martyring himself, so he could say ‘They’re out to get me.’ ”

This is becoming quite the phenomenon in GOP politics. To gain some credence as a true fighter with the party base, you have to first suffer some liberal-induced indignity. Like, say, being indicted.

Will this work for Bird? It might, as grievance about the system is at the core of both his message and what’s animating the party these days. His motto — which you can buy on a T-shirt for $27.99 and which, you’ve got to admit, is one of the zingiest political slogans of our time — is “Give Olympia the Bird.”

“The political pundits are correct, I am not a seasoned career politician,” he said about his anti-mask stunt that cost him his post. “Therefore, putting those I serve over the security of my elected position was an easy decision.”

The flaw with this reasoning is that “those I serve” are the voters of the Richland district, who just axed him. Of course that was the precipitating event for Trump’s great martyrdom, too — that the voters of America fired him, which he refused to accept. Trump’s knack for mining this contrived persecution, by cadging great gobs of money from the people to pay his lifestyle expenses and legal bills, has only accelerated.

Republicans say that Bird is being displaced by former U.S. Rep Dave Reichert as their leading contender for governor, in both money-raising and endorsements. But has Reichert been wronged enough to be right?

“Semi is definitely trying to follow the Trump playbook, of ‘Oh look at me, I’m being persecuted,’ ” said Watson, of the Richland recall movement. “But as you know, we have a lot of Republicans over here. This recall of him couldn’t have passed without Republican votes.”

True, but the last time I wrote about the persecution complex on the right, it was regarding state Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen. In 2021, Walsh had pinned a yellow Star of David on himself, evoking the Nazis, and said “We’re all Jews” now in an insulting protest against the state’s COVID rules.

Here’s what I summed up back then: “Politics sure doesn’t follow the old guidelines anymore. Normally this would have been a week of shame for Jim Walsh. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, instead, local Republicans may have just discovered their next rock star.”

As they used to say on the internet, you’ll never guess what happened next! Walsh indeed has become a star, fueled by his seemingly limitless gusto for posting juvenile putdowns in moronic back-and-forth online disputes. It’s gone so well that he’s now the heavy favorite to become the next chairman of the entire state Republican Party, in an internal vote next weekend in Olympia.

There are no weeks of shame anymore, as both Walsh and Bird are showing. There are only more opportunities for fundraising, and for flipping off the libs.