Olympian publisher John Winn Miller claimed that journalists are skeptical of everyone.  (Shouldn't that be "skeptical toward"?)  That claim reminded me of the stories I saw on legislator Rodney Tom's party switch.  All of them were similar; all appeared to be rewrites of the same press release.   None of them showed the least bit of skepticism.  (Perhaps the Olympian did cover this story with some skepticism.  If so, I hope someone at the Olympian will send us a link to those skeptical stories.

All three stories that I saw made two points:  Rodney Tom believed that the Republican party had shifted too far to the right, and he no longer fit in the party.  As Stefan showed, Rodney Tom's voting record fit much better with the rest of the Republicans in the legislature than with the Democrats.

What about the first claim, that the Republican party has drifted to the right?  On that I would say that it depends on your time frame.  The party is more conservative now than it was when Dan Evans was governor.  But in recent years, if anything, the party has become more centrist.  Consider the past three Republican candidates for governor: Ellen Craswell (1996), John Carlson (2000), and Dino Rossi (2004).  If Rodney Tom thinks that going from Craswell to Rossi is becoming more conservative, then he has a rather curious definition of conservative.

What about the party as a whole?  I returned to Washington not that long ago, so my understanding of recent Washington poltical history is sketchy.  (And those who were following it more closely than I was should go ahead and correct any mistakes and fill in any gaps.)  Briefly, the Democratic party took control of the state in 1992 and enacted a sharply leftwing agenda.  The Republicans surged back in 1994.  The surge brought many conservatives into the legislature and into the party structure.  Since then, some have left of their own accord and others have been dismissed by the voters.  The party is now led by conservatives from the suburbs, men and women for whom economic issues are more important than cultural issues or religious divides.

In contrast, the Democratic party has not changed its views much (though Gregoire is more moderate than former governor Mike Lowry), but it has learned to be less open about those views.  A friend of Castro's Cuba might be made Democratic party chairman, but the party would not run him for statewide office.

To summarize, the Republican party has, if anything, become less conservative in recent years, while the Democratic party has become less open about its views.

So why did Rodney Tom say what he did?  He may believe it; politicians do sometimes tell the truth, perhaps more often than most people think.  But a skeptical reporter would at least want to ask Tom a few questions.  For instance: Do you think you could hold your district as a Republican?  (The last election was close enough so that he may have had doubts.)  Do you think that Republicans will take back control of the state house any time soon?  (He may simply prefer to be in the majority.)  Did you discuss this switch with Democratic leaders?  (That's the sneaky way of asking whether he was promised anything for the switch, directly or indirectly.)   Do you think Dwight Pelz or Diane Tebelius is more moderate?  (Perhaps Tom has a truly strange view of the political spectrum.)  And, of course, anyone who had read Stefan's post would want to ask Tom why he was switching when he had voted far more often with the Republicans than with the Democrats.

You don't have to be exceptionally skeptical to think of those questions — but you do have to be more skeptical than our local journalists.  Rodney Tom's switch needs a better explanation than the one he gave.  I hope at least one of our local journalists will try to provide it.