Drinking fine Kentucky whiskey and eating thick steaks

Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth recently dismissed the complaint that the Montana state GOP had made against the governor because of the latter's junket to the Kentucky Derby to drink whisky and eat thick steaks courtesy of big Democratic donors -- including corporations. (Montana law bans corporate political contributions.)

As Montana Headlines noted back when the complaint was first filed nearly 2 months ago, while the GOP complaint was technically a valid one to raise, it was weak from a political standpoint:

Some might consider the Republican complaint to be picky. After all, by this point Montanans are hardly going to be surprised to learn that our governor jetted to a big-wig event outside Montana to raise moolah. We now yawn when we hear he's going to be in California in some TV studio or another.

Even if the Kentucky Derby trip turns out to be technically illegal (which it perhaps is, if one follows the details of Montana law and the logic the Republicans are advancing,) in order for there to be political gain for Republicans, Montanans would have to be shocked. And news that the governor was sipping mint juleps on the dime of an organization that takes corporate contributions isn't going to shock many Montanans...

Democrats, naturally, engaged in obligatory hyperbole:

Brian Namey, spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association in Washington, D.C.... called the GOP complaint "a waste of taxpayer money."

Since Namey is such an interested steward of the money confiscated from Montana taxpayers every year, we can probably expect him to issue a similar statement regarding what a waste of taxpayer money it was for the Montana Democratic Party to file a complaint against GiveItBack.com -- (see the second link above.)

Regarding how we think the GOP should handle this kind of political "gotcha" regarding campaign laws, we would repeat what we said in the comments section of our above post, back when the charge was first filed regarding this kind of political "gotcha" --

It's just fine to file a complaint against the Dems when they appear to have broken a campaign law. In fact, it's necessary.

But at the same time, we should treat it like taking out a stinking bag of trash -- it's gotta be done, there's no pleasure in it, and we would prefer that the trash wasn't stinking in the first place.

The Montana GOP, rather than treat this like a big deal -- as though we've really caught the governor in something bad (which no-one is going to get worked up about) -- should just matter-of-factly file a complaint when the Dems get caught in their own laws and rules.

Then, we should remind people that as Republicans we don't think that there should be all of these restrictions on campaign contributions in the first place. But if the Dems want to claim to be the party of the squeaky clean, we'll hold them to it.

And then, we should move on and treat such shenanigans as being as boring as they really are.

The goal at the end of all of this is to get at least 51% of Montanans to vote for our people, and Republicans have always done better at getting that 51% when we act like the adults.

Max Baucus dogpile

You know, it's supposed to be the job of sites like ours to critique Sen. Max Baucus. While we realize that Baucus is hardly beloved on the Montana left for many reasons, not least of which was Baucus's vote for the Bush tax cuts, sometimes it really feels like the right's thunder is getting unfairly stolen.

After having watched Baucus woodenly make his way through an interview with the Helena IR editorial board this week, we are again astounded that Republicans have been losing to this guy for nearly 3 decades.

We realize that Democrats asked themselves the same thing about Conrad Burns for 18 years. And this is indeed a valid comparison, since Max Baucus is pretty much just Conrad Burns without the latter's keen mind and penetrating charisma.

But it really is something to watch the left go at Baucus. The latest stimulator that is drawing the big fish to the surface is a recent article in The Nation. As we have confessed before, we really don't read The Nation as often as we perhaps should, and thus we miss a lot of the good stuff.

Anyway, we learn that Left in the West and Baucus are "definitely from different parts of the 'big tent.'" And at one of our favorite sites, 4&20 Blackbirds, we learn of "a new split forming between grassroots populists and corporate-sponsored DC insiders that doesn’t necessarily follow party lines..." And furthermore we learn that populists on the left may not feel like spending their "weekends trolling the neighborhoods in the pouring rain, in (Baucus's) name..."

Perhaps the most interesting item was that Baucus hit up 50 K-Street lobbyists to raise $100,000 each for his re-election campaign. Think about it -- that would be $5 million before the "Friends of Max Baucus" even get started with the rubber-chicken circuit. Now, we already know that Denny Rehberg -- his most dangerous opponent -- isn't running (even though Gazette polling in December put him and Baucus in a statistical tie in a hypothetical match-up.)

So why the desperate need for that kind of money -- and, no less, through the kind of activity that Montana voters recently found distasteful enough to kick out a 3 term Republican in favor of a Jon Tester?

Perhaps Baucus is afraid of that state House majority leader who carries a union card and wears a hard-hat, after all. Or perhaps he realizes (as did many Republicans during the last election) that the Tester campaign wrote the campaign ads against him: he's been in Washington too long, he's lost touch with Montana, and he took money from Abramoff.

Or is Baucus perhaps less worried about any potential Republican challenger than he is about a challenge of a different kind? Might our state's most popular Democrat quietly get the party's already unhappy activists and populists to pressure Baucus to step down -- letting that populist bolo-wearing guy head to Washington in 2008 rather than having to wait until 2012 or beyond?

All interesting stuff -- Montana Headlines is increasingly convinced that Baucus, far from being one of the Democratic party's safest bets, is more vulnerable in 2008 than he has been in any previous election. On reflection, perhaps Baucus is smarter than he seems -- maybe he does need all that money.

Who's working for whom?

As is so often the case, the Missoula Independent brings a story that we haven't seen elsewhere, namely Gary Marbut's lawsuit against the Montana FWP, attempting to keep that agency from lobbying the state legislature.

Montana Headlines has pointed out before that the playing field in the lobbying business in Montana is already heavily weighted toward government employees and agencies, and that the recent initiative preventing legislators from becoming lobbyists for two years will only tilt things further in that direction.

Marbut's case, as George Ochenski documents, hinges on a state law that seems to prohibit such lobbying. And although he didn't get a restraining order on the FWP, his "claim is still in the game," since the initial District Court ruling had a favorable flavor to it.

Ochenski points out that local government officials recently packed a Helena hearing room to lobby for a local option sales tax, and wonders out loud how many of them had the approval of their taxpayers to use taxpayer money to lobby for more taxes. Good question.

He furthermore raises a very obvious strategy that some enterprising souls may latch onto in this anti-lobbyist climate. If the legislature doesn't do something to regulate government employees who lobby their employer for favorable policies or more money, a ballot initiative may do it for them.

As with the legislator-lobbyist issue, a ballot initiative isn't generally a formula for well-thought-out law. But given that government employees would swarm all over Helena lobbying against any restrictions originating in the legislature, an initiative may be the only solution.