In news that is almost as astonishing as the Davison plea, the Gazette's streak of publishing letters to the editor smearing Rick Jore ended today.
From December 16th through 19th, the Gazette published "Rick Jore is a Neanderthal" letters for 4 straight days and in 5 out of the previous 7 issues. If we include the Gazette editors' own "thumbs down" on the 11th, that makes an incredible six opinion page attacks on Jore over the course of only 9 days.
A quick and unscientific Montana Headlines survey found no other topic that merited even two letters in that same time period.
The burning question is: how long can the Gazette editors resist returning to what appears to be their method of choice to attack Jore and the House Republican leadership? It is a safe tactic, since Jore hasn't yet done anything for which he can be criticized in "hard news" pages.
Readers should watch with bated breath to learn the answer.
More to the point, Jore has become intensely interesting to everyone. If House Speaker Scott Sales has any doubt about whether he made the right choice to head the Education Committee, the negative attention in the Gazette opinion pages should remove it. Anyone who gets that kind of press has got to be good for Republican interests and bad for Democrat interests.
