You buy them books, and they chew on the covers

Maybe some people find the GOP e-mail "Kennedy Chronicles" to be witty and engaging. We'd enjoy hearing from them, if they're out there. We're going to be critical of that state GOP e-mail -- but we would insert the caveat that bloggers are just bored guys sitting typing in their pajamas who don't do any real political work, while the folks who put out the "Kennedy Chronicles" are paid professional politicos. So consider the source and remember that this is amateur political commentary.

Anyway, the tactic really has the Dems running scared.

The "Chronicles" attempt to portray Kennedy as a "Perennial Candidate." Which he sort of is. But then so are Denny Rehberg and Max Baucus and nearly every politician. I guess the point is that Kennedy lost one of his races (Sec. State in 2004) and had another aborted because now Gov. Schweitzer beat him to the punch in 2004 on the Dem side. But then, Rehberg lost one, too (his unsuccessful run against Baucus for Senate some years back.)

We're shocked that a politician would use one elective office as a launching pad for a higher office. Shocked. Never heard of such a thing.

Rehberg is our guy in this race. He gets our support at every turn, and we fully expect him to win handily himself and to work to elect other Montana Republicans. Not only is it critical that we keep a common-sense conservative like Rehberg in the House, but we are also profoundly grateful that our highest ranking Republican elected official actually seems to care about strengthening and developing the state-wide GOP organization at the grassroots level.

That's a pretty new experience for Montana Republicans.

A lot of good hard work is being done up at the GOP HQ, but goofy stuff like this isn't the best way to inspire confidence and enthusiasm in us who help pay the bills up there.

The Chronicles are just plain silly. As we have said before, Republicans tend to win when we correctly convey to voters that we are the party of grownups. This sort of thing, on the other hand, is more like a sophomoric frat-house prank, and thus more appropriate for use by our loyal opposition -- or at least it would be if it were more nasty and effective. Things like the Chronicles may actually have the potential to make Kennedy seem like something that he is not -- a credible threat to Rehberg in 2008.

The sad part of it is that tucked into the last episode of the Kennedy Chronicles e-mail was a link to a Gazette letter that actually conveyed a point that if true should have some legs.

It seems that when another Yellowstone County Commissioner named Conrad Burns was running for the U.S. Senate, Democrats demanded that he return that portion of his salary that represented the time he spent away from his commissioner job campaigning. Amazingly enough, apparently Burns actually did return the money.

And yet, Commissioner Kennedy apparently didn't return any of his salary in 2004, even though he spent much of the cycle campaigning state-wide for Secretary of State. And there is no evidence that he has taken the initiative to announce that he is returning any of his salary for the time that he is now spending campaigning for the U.S. House seat he seeks.

It would seem that when Democrats make "rules" for Republicans to follow, they shouldn't have to be reminded by Republicans to follow those rules themselves.

This is the sort of thing that Montana voters would be interested in hearing. Too bad it's being lost in a cloud of silliness -- for now, anyway.

And too bad that it took a letter to the editor to point it out. One would think that a Gazette reporter would have noticed that one Yellowstone County Commissioner returned salaray for time spent campaigning, while another didn't. Sounds like an interesting story that hasn't happened -- yet.