Montana polling

Not surprisingly, early polling shows Montana to be a red state on the Presidential level. The reason for this is that (how does one put this delicately?) Republicans win when Republicans put up a strong candidate for state-wide office.

This has seemed to be a problem for the Montana GOP in recent years.

Anyway, the extremes of the results aren't surprising.

The only candidates scoring less than 50% on the "would you consider voting for candidate X" scale were Republicans Mitt Romney (can Montana Headlines say "told you so?") and Newt Gingrich (as we have pointed out, the politics of yesterday) -- along with Democrats Al Gore (ditto) and Hillary Clinton (surely no comment needed there.)

McCain, Guiliani, and Thompson top the field in Montana. And gratifyingly, in a state with a significant GOP voter registration edge, the two Democrats tied for the top billing are an African American (Obama) and a Hispanic American (Richardson.)

Yep, those dang Montana racists again.

Only Hillary Clinton was truly in a league of her own (fully 61% of Montanans polled said they would not vote for her.) Even Mitt Romney could beat her in Montana this year.

This again confirms that Sen. Clinton's red state negatives are such that her strategy will need to be one of running the table of the usual blue states plus winning Ohio. Chancy.

What is interesting is the fact that both parties have candidates who can put new states into play -- Richardson, Obama, Guiliani, McCain, and Thompson are all fresh enough to make that happen. Although it doesn't appear likely that Montana will be in play, unless it is a nation-wide blowout. (And there are a couple of Republicans who could engineer just such a blowout.)

When it says Libby, Libby, Libby, on the label, label, label...

Let's not kid anyone. The indictment and conviction of Mr. Libby wasn't much of a trial -- he was basically convicted (as best as one can tell) of lying to journalists about an not-very-secret CIA agent who was so broken up over being "outed" that she cried herself all the way to the bank and onto the front cover of Vanity Fair. It's the sort of thing that wouldn't even have been prosecuted in a real court.

Going after "Scooter" Libby was only ever a desperate substitute for the real prizes -- Karl Rove and Dick Cheney -- two fellas that the Dems could never nail (not so far, anyway.) And even those two gentlemen would only be a substitute for the hated President Bush.

Regular readers of Montana Headlines will know that the Bush administration is hardly a "do no wrong" bunch around here. And we are also of the opinion that as distasteful and probably corrupt as the Clinton administration was, Republicans should have just run out the clock on that bunch rather than going for three on the buzzer with impeachment. Republicans had of course been rightly spoiling for a fight ever since Robert got Borked in the late 1980's in one of the most disgraceful displays of lying partisanship that Washington had ever seen.

But Republicans could hardly have expected that Democrats would see a Clinton impeachment as proper payback even for something that nasty. So the Dems have been out for blood ever since.

If Democrats want to go after the big boys, though, they should go after the big boys. Impeach the President -- and then impeach President Cheney if they like. If they are a bunch of criminals, prove it, and impeach them. Otherwise, enough already, and stop talking smack. We can then get on with getting these last two miserable years over with.

By commuting Libby's sentence, it is as though President Bush is saying to the Democratic Congress -- "come and get us -- you know where we live." He took away their politically safe, symbolic victory, and now they are back where they started. We'll see whether the Dems will just whine about this or whether they will do what they wanted to do in the first place.