Clint Didier: 'Rugged individualism' and blunt, angry rhetoric [View All]

[Ian David]

Clint Didier: 'Rugged individualism' and blunt, angry rhetoric
A 51-year-old ex-NFL player, Clint Didier is running an underdog campaign as the tea-party alternative to Republican Dino Rossi. While his blunt, angry rhetoric has been a hit with some conservative activists, he's not viewed as much of a threat by either Rossi or incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray.

By Jim Brunner
Seattle Times political reporter

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He acknowledges the federal government's role, to a point. But he argues that since Columbia Basin farmers are assessed annual per-acre payments for the dam, they are actually subsidizing the cheap electricity the system sends to Western Washington.

Studies have shown the opposite is true. The irrigation network that benefits farmers like Didier has been mostly paid for by federal taxpayers and electricity ratepayers elsewhere. A 1995 paper co-authored by economists at Washington State University estimated that farmers were paying only 1.5 percent of the irrigation system's cost.

Didier says he doesn't support New Deal-type infrastructure programs now, opposing federal stimulus spending. Further, he says most of the social programs launched during the New Deal and later on were mistakes. "It's turning us into a socialist country," he said.

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That means businesses — including farms — should be allowed to fail in the free market and social programs for the poor should be slashed. He'd cut Medicaid, Medicare, welfare and food stamps, too.

More:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012416668_didier22m.html