{"id":1077,"date":"2008-11-02T17:07:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T00:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/?p=1077"},"modified":"2008-11-02T17:20:17","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T00:20:17","slug":"smith-vs-merkley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rynosoft.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/smith-vs-merkley","title":{"rendered":"Smith vs. Merkley"},"content":{"rendered":"

We received our ballots in the mail over a week ago but I still haven’t opened mine. The primary reason for this is that I’m not sure how to vote for the U.S. Senate race between Gordon Smith<\/a> and Jeff Merkley<\/a>. I’m not a huge fan of Smith (and I seem to remember some pretty nasty campaign tactics when he ran against Ron Wyden<\/a> in his first Senate race) but I have a huge respect for his early opposition to the Iraq War. Oregon Senators have been centrists as long as I have lived here and most consider Smith to fit that description. I don’t know much about Merkley other than the first Senate debate I watched between him and Smith. Merkley came across as a hack Democrat who fits all the liberal stereotypes and is\u00c2\u00a0riding on the coattails of Barack Obama. From what I understand, both have waged an incredibly negative television campaign but I have been spared from that by the grace of Tivo.<\/p>\n

So here’s my dilemna: I believe that Smith is probably the superior candidate to Merkley and will likely continue to represent Oregon as well as he has done in the past. However, one of the major stumbling blocks for the Democrats in the Senate has been the lack of a\u00c2\u00a0filibuster<\/a>-proof majority. Thus, Merkley is somewhat attractive if only because he’s a Democrat whose election could help eliminate the Republican filibuster.<\/p>\n

So I’m stuck right now. What do you think, reader? Should I vote for who I think is most competent or should I be looking at the larger picture?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should I vote for who I think is most competent or should I be looking at the larger picture?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[1204,94,97,752,1201,1562,1202,1200,1203],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-centrists","tag-democrats","tag-election","tag-liberals","tag-merkley","tag-politics","tag-senate","tag-smith","tag-wyden"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t