Dori Monson reacts to the midterm election results

If you were watching the election coverage Tuesday night, the media was depressed, even though the Democratic party they have been supporting for months picked up the House. But the dream of all the networks was that there would be a blue tsunami, where the Democrats would take over everything. Last night they were disappointed, as Democrats did not gain as big of a majority in the House as they had hoped; they had thought it would be a much bigger blowout.

In the Senate, the power increased for the party that controls the White House, which is almost unheard of in a midterm election, the kind of election that is usually a referendum on the president.

Here locally, in the Dino Rossi/Kim Schrier race for the 8th Congressional District, it was interesting to see the county-by-county election breakdown. In the areas of the district that fall in Eastern Washington, like Chelan County and Douglas County, Dino is holding as much as 62 percent of the vote.

Here in King County, it is exactly the opposite, flipped in Schrier’s favor — the people in the rural areas once again feel like they’re being overwhelmed by the urban residents. I’ve heard from listeners in those rural areas who feel like they don’t have a chance, because the things that they support get completely stomped on by big-city voters.

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Looking at the initiatives on the ballot, I was really glad that that bogus carbon fee, I-1631, did not pass. As we spelled out so carefully for you, it would have done nothing for the planet. It would have been billions of tax dollars transferred from our households to government control. It was nonspecific in terms of what the government control would even be. And it was being done so that Jay Inslee could run for president in two years and tell everyone that his state was the first to pass a carbon tax. It was for nothing but that.

That’s not a good enough reason to take billions of hard-earned dollars from voters. Early returns show a decisive victory — 56.4 percent to 44.6 percent. Only King, San Juan, and Jefferson Counties voted in favor of the tax; everyone else saw through that sham of an initiative.

The gun initiative, 1639, is currently passing overwhelmingly, 60 percent to 40 percent. That one will be challenged in court because it absolutely goes against our state constitution, which is very strong in terms of gun rights. This initiative says that if you have your gun in your nightstand, you lock your house, and a criminal kicks in your door, grabs your gun, and uses it in a crime, then you, the gun owner, will face criminal charges.

Here is what I find baffling about the Left. In Washington, D.C., they are trying to lower the voting age to 16. In our state, through this initiative, we have now raised the age to buy semi-automatic rifles to 21. The argument is that teenagers’ brains are not sufficiently developed to use and own these powerful guns. If that is the case, why do you want to give the vote to people whose brains are even less-developed than the 18 and 19-year-olds voting? This really shows the tremendous hypocrisy of the left.

The initiative that I find the most disgusting of all is I-940, which advocates said would make it easier to criminally prosecute police officers. The person cited the most often throughout that campaign was Charleena Lyles, who reported a fake break-in to lure cops to her apartment, and then confronted them with a knife. Now, could the cops have done something besides shoot her? Possibly. But they were exonerated.

What I-940 will do is make it easier to criminally prosecute cops like that. With this initiative, we become one of the most anti-cop states in the country. We need more cops. We have police departments that are unable to fill open jobs because our local government demonizes cops. We have criminals taking over the streets and we desperately need our cops. Additionally, one of the scariest provisions of I-940 is the citizen oversight panel, which could include undocumented immigrants, children, and previously incarcerated criminals.

Finally, there is 1634, which says that local jurisdictions can’t pass grocery taxes like Seattle has done with the soda tax. I’m glad it passed. Do I support I-1634 because I am just anti-tax? Yes, in part. But a study out today says that red meats can contribute to cancer and heart disease, and now a proposal in England would add a 74 percent tax to meats like sausages.

More and more, we’re going to see an attempt by the left to use taxes to punish you. The soda tax goes after minorities and the poor the most, since that is who disproportionately drinks soda. The poor and minority communities have to pay a tax because the social justice warriors decide that their food habits are not politically correct.

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