GOP HYPOCRITE/CHILD MOLESTER IN SPOKANE REFUSES TO RESIGN

To be a Republican in the George Bush GOP, one has to have moved quite far to the right-- not just far to the right of Lincoln, but far to the right of Eisenhower and even Goldwater! Where once the Republican Party stood primarily for Greed and Selfishness and used Yahoo-Nationalism to appeal to voters, today the Greed and Selfishness wing of the party takes a back seat to the religionist loons who are all about Hatred, Bigotry, Fear and that bad old American tradition of Know-Nothingness. Litmus tests for a Republican politician who wants to rise in the party ranks have to do with being against a woman's right to choice and against equality for gay men and women. The Greed and Selfishness wing is happy the religionist whackos are against environmental protections (which the Greed and Selfishness guys say hurt Big Business-- cleaning up after yourself costs money and lowers profits; and the religionist kooks are against anything that their crooked so-called "preachers" tell them will put off God coming for the Rapture), and against government regulations of unbridled corporatism. Anyway, in the state of Washington, one guy who has always embodied both wings of the new GOP was James West. As a state legislator and later the state Senate's Majority Leader-- a kind of junior Tom DeLay-- West has been a vicious, aggressive in-fighter for the most extreme Republican "values." He wasn't just a supporter of anti-gay legislation, for example, he actively, passionately pushed it. His extreme right-wing agenda didn't always resonate well in basically moderate Washington state but he had the support of voters in a backward Eastern part of the state. And, in 2003 West was elected mayor of Spokane.

Charges soon started swirling about the homophobic mayor being a child molester, someone who preyed on boy scouts. The Spokane Spokesman-Review did a long and careful investigation and was able to show that West was meeting underage boys on line and using the promise of city jobs to lure them into having sex with him. Usually when Republican pols get caught like this, they slink off into the night and are rarely heard from again. West, on the other hand, has claimed that he's into sex with men but denies he's a paedophile and refuses to resign. The City Council, overwhelmingly made up of conservatives like himself, has unanimously voted to ask for his resignation. Citizens are circulating recall petitions and even the right-wing shills at the Chamber of Commerce have gotten shaky in their support. A poll of Spokane residents shows over 60% of the people there think he should resign. The head of his party, George W. Bush, has no comment.