Notes and thoughts on Montana's election results

MH will resume the usual cultural coverage next week, once the election results have been talked about.

Congratulations to the star of the night:

That is to say, Tim Fox, who became the first Republican elected Montana's Attorney General since Marc Racicot in 1988 (and really, since Racicot jumped parties to run as a Republican, we may have to dig back even further to find the last life-long Republican elected to that office.) As I have previously noted, Fox is to be commended for his tenacity in pursuing this position over two consecutive bruising election cycles. Sheer willpower is one of the most important traits that someone involved in politics can have, and Fox has proven he has it.

What goes around, comes around:

While things could still change as voting continues in Yellowstone County, Sen. Gary Branae appears to have been defeated by Elsie Arntzen in SD 27 here in Billings. I'm putting this particular Senate race right up front because some things deserve to be remembered, and the back story is one that probably won't get any mention in the mainstream press.

The Democratic Party richly deserves to lose Branae's seat, on a moral and ethical level. He won that seat quite narrowly in 2008, and only because some of the worst personal (and illegal) campaign attacks that Montana has seen in state legislative races.

His opponent, Jack Sands, who is as fine a man as one is likely to meet, had spent time as a public defender, and as such, had represented some unsavory characters in his day. That's the job of a public defender (I pointed this out when being critical of this particular line of attack on Supreme Court candidate Ed Sheehy this year.)

In the 2008 election, the Montana Democratic Party made extensive phone calls to homes in the district claiming that Sands was mixed up with drug dealing. It's not illegal to lie in political materials, of course -- the illegal part was that the callers wouldn't identify themselves, and the caller ID was routed through Romania (yes, that Romania.) Some detective work tracked it down. The hits kept coming, and Branae's weak-kneed and equivocating "protests" about the calls came very late and very timidly -- and only after the damage was fully done.

Control of the Senate was potentially at stake (Republicans gained control anyway, in spite of the huge Democratic wave in 2008 -- Montana was the only state in which the GOP flipped control of a legislative body that year), but more importantly, Democrats surely wanted to keep a talented, moderate Republican lawyer from getting his first toehold into Montana political life -- wouldn't want him to end up as Attorney General or on the state Supreme Court, would we? There are ways for candidates to get word quickly and unequivocally to state parties, telling them they want negative attacks to stop. The party doesn't have to listen, but if the party knows the candidate is going to make a public stink, they will stop. So Branae has absolutely no excuse for not having stopped these attacks, and the Democrats had no excuse for using such dirty tactics.

It is that sort of highly personal smear that discourages good people from running for office. It is sort of like standing there, slapping a tire iron into one's hand, saying -- "nice little reputation you have there... be a shame if anything were to happen to it. You really sure you want to run for office?" One hopes that Branae goes down to defeat in the final count, and that a take-home lesson will be learned -- it is indeed possible to go much too far in a campaign, and what goes around...

Anyway, it was a bit of delicious schadenfreude to see that Branae appears to be losing to one of the best retail politicians that Yellowstone County Republicans have: Elsie Arntzen.

Steve Daines comes through:

We knew he would, but it is still gratifying to see Steve Daines getting ready to head off to Washington as Montana's next U.S. Congressman. He will do us proud and will stay out of any serious trouble -- personally or politically -- leaving him in good position to make a run at either the governor's seat or a U.S. Senate seat in the future. He will be formidable. Right now, our front-line "bench" consists of Daines and Fox, and both have proven their political chops.

Predictions gone bad:

I only missed two calls in my predictions (unless Sandy Welch gets a recount and prevails against Denise Juneau in the State Superintendent race -- I hope I get to be wrong about that one.) Unfortunately, they were the two most high-profile races in Montana -- the U.S. Senate race and the governor's race. Two factors were key:

1. I overestimated Mitt Romney's margin of victory in Montana. While I didn't expect the kind of 40 point victory he got in Wyoming, I expected it to be closer to 20 than to 10. Instead, Romney barely got a double digit win in Montana. The anti-Obama undertow I had expected thus didn't materialize here in Montana, just as it didn't materialize anywhere else in the country. There were bold predictions that Obama would get less than 30% of the vote in Oklahoma and perhaps Arkansas this year, but he easily broke 30 percent in both places. Just an example. Nationally, Romney came up about 3 million votes less than what John McCain managed against Obama in 2008. Very sorry performance.

2. The Libertarian factor bit hard. Add up the Libertarian vote and the Republican vote in both the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race, and there would have been a narrow but clear victory for the Republican candidates. The Tester supporters knew exactly what they were doing, and how to do it. It was sleazy, but it was brilliantly played. The only thing that could have saved the day would have been a personal barn-storming tour by Ron or Rand Paul, urging Montana Libertarians not to be stupid. There is a saying in surgery -- "the enemy of good is better." In a surgical setting, it means that once you have done something right, you don't try to improve on it by cutting just a little more, throwing in just a few more sutures -- more often than not, you will end up with unintended consequences that you won't be happy with.

Libertarians and Constitution Party people are like that in many ways. What they advocate for can often be arguably better than what Republicans deliver, but what really happens is that one gets neither "better" nor "good," but rather, "bad." You don't often see Green Party people splitting the Democratic vote in close elections. They save their posturing for places where the Democrat is sure to win.

One wishes that conservative purists would learn that same lesson.

By no means would Rick Hill or Denny Rehberg have received all of those votes in a two way election. But they would have received the lion's share, and that might have made the difference.

Anyway, I was wrong about these two races, and I feel bad for both candidates. They gave it their all, and we were lucky to have them running.

Initiatives -- go figure...:

So the same Montana electorate that voted for pro-choice Jon Tester and Steve Bullock passed a parental notification initiative for abortion in minors by an overwhelming margin. They voted to uphold the legislature's restrictions on medical marijuana. They voted for pro-Obamacare Tester and Bullock, but also voted to prohibit an individual mandate in health insurance in Montana. They voted for the party of amnesty, and yet they also voted overwhelmingly to restrict state benefits going to illegal aliens. Of course, they also voted not to give constitutional rights to corporations, which leads to the conclusion that Montanans have a tendency simply to vote in favor of just about any ballot initiative that comes in front of them. Hm. Maybe we should collect signatures for a ballot measure banning the Democratic Party.... Just kidding!

Montana Supreme Court

It appears that Laurie McKinnon will win election to the state Supreme Court, for which I am glad, based on what I know. Just having a former District Court judge on the bench will help, as long as she doesn't drink the judicial Koolaid in Helena. Montana's Supreme Court is consistently at or near the top of the list when it comes to the rate of overturning lower court decisions. I remember chatting once with a former Supreme Court justice who had previously been a district court judge. He noted that the other justices who hadn't been lower court judges frequently need to be reminded that appellate courts cannot make new determinations of fact -- that they can only rule on legal and procedural matters and must accept the factual findings of the lower court as binding.

I hope that McKinnon will have the strength of character to stand up -- persuasively (since she will be only one vote) -- on the Supreme Court on behalf of her former fellow District Court judges.

It is critical not just that we have Supreme Court members who think fairly and sensibly. They must also be leaders and be persuasive. Those who don't lead end up following. Consider the other Supreme Court "race" this year, in which Justice Morris ran unopposed for re-election. There were great hopes for Morris, since he had clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist. His subsequent career on the Montana Supreme Court has, by all reports, indicated that he didn't learn anything substantive from Rehnquist -- or forgot it as soon as he arrived on Montana's high court. If there are any examples of Morris issuing stinging and intellectually persuasive dissents to controversial Montana Supreme Court decisions, I've not heard of them.

More on Monday, when we will talk about the Montana PSC situation as part of our energy coverage.

Montana Democrats -- caught between a frack and a hard place

Three recent pieces in the press give an indication of just how and why Montana Democrats are torn over how to approach traditional energy development in Montana.

The first appears to be the account of another local success story in the making. Jan Falstad provides another fine article in the Billings Gazette on Bakken-related business development, this time telling the story of two Montana brothers, Sivert and Richard Mysse, who put their farm-boy know-how to work in developing a new truck for heating fracking fluid. After noticing how many trucks were needed to heat water at a fracking site in the Bakken oil fields, they got the idea of constructing an innovative truck that they say is "twice as big, one-third more efficient, and safer than the competition," according to Falstad’s report. By heating the water for fracking, fewer chemicals are needed, and the entire process is more efficient. The brothers sold some ranch land near Ingomar and used other “creative financing” to build the $2 million truck, and they are now marketing their services in the Bakken.

Whether their enterprise will be a financial windfall for the brothers remains to be seen, but this is the kind of entrepreneurial spirit -- seeing a need and coming up with an innovative way to meet it -- that is inspiring. We suspect that given the demand for services of every kind in the Bakken, they will indeed be successful. Small businesses like this are the lifeblood of a healthy economy. Concerns that employ a half-dozen people here and there add up quickly.

Meanwhile, we have a guest editorial in the Helena Independent-Record decrying the fact that the Montana Land Board voted 3-2 in 2010 to take another step toward finally developing the Otter Creek coal reserves. The lead author of the op-ed is Montana writer Phil Condon, and he was joined by 3 other Montana authors (including William Kittredge,) actress Margot Kidder, and the chair of a Livingston-based liberal women’s activist group.

The authors criticize Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Sec. State McCulloch, and State Auditor Monica Lindeen for “siding with Big Coal.” They state that Attorney General (and Democratic nominee for governor) Steve Bullock and Secretary of Public Instruction (sic) Denise Juneau oppose the permits, which indicates that there will be a change of attitude in the state house if Bullock is elected governor. While we have been critical of what has seemed like 8 years of foot-dragging on the part of Gov. Schweitzer, at least his rhetoric has often been there, favoring coal development of one sort or another. And in this case, his vote seems to be there as well.

I’m not familiar with most of the authors of this editorial, but have enjoyed a couple of William Kittredge’s books (even while failing to share some of his cynical attitudes toward the West in which he grew up.) As public intellectuals, their voice has a certain influence in Montana and they deserve to be heard out, as do all who express their opinions thoughtfully.

In my recent American Spectator piece, I made the observation that many Montanans of a certain bent seem determined to be stuck in the past (hard to believe that I as a pretty old-fashioned conservative am even writing that,) noting that AG Steve Bullock’s arguments in the Citizens United case seem appropriate for 1912, but not really for 2012. The Copper Kings are long dead and they aren’t coming back -- the alphabet soup reasons (EPA, OSHA, DEQ...) why the landscape has dramatically and permanently changed when it comes to “Big Mining” of any sort are well-known to everyone. And yet, predictably, the Condin piece leads off with the “Copper Kings.” Pretending not to know how irrelevant this argument is in 2012 amounts to an inexcusable rhetorical mendacity on the part of skilled and experienced writers who know exactly what they are doing with their words.

The authors’ concerns about contaminating water supplies used by ranchers find great sympathy here at MH. What one would rather see, however, is an attitude that seeks both to strictly protect water supplies while also encouraging mining and development. Instead, the real argument is found deeper into the piece -- coal mining’s purported effect on global warming. Take away the global warming argument, and the pressures to find a “win-win” situation are inescapable. Include it, and any rhetorical weapons -- relevant or not -- are justified in the fight to save the planet, whatever the cost to individuals or to local economies. The intended audience of this article really consists of just three people, just as many of those ranting articles in the media leading up to the Obamacare decision were really only being written for one reader. In the latter case, the pieces were being written for Chief Justice John Roberts. In the former, the piece is being written for the three Democrats who are perceived as favorable to proceeding with the coal leases -- only one would need to flip a vote to stop the development cold in its tracks. But the calculus is more complicated than that for Montana Democratic politicians.

Which brings us to the third article -- a Washington Post piece that centers on Montana’s Democratic Senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, and their support for the Keystone XL pipeline. Sen. Baucus has, according to this report, been particularly open to lobbying for the pipeline. Sen. Tester has been supportive but seems more muted. The financial politics of Senate races play a significant role here, one would think. Baucus, with his role as head of the powerful Finance Committee, has an endless stream of people and entities in the financial sector who are lining up to line his campaign's pockets. Baucus doesn’t have to worry about money -- he just needs to worry about votes, should Montanans (who overwhelmingly support the Keystone XL pipeline) decide they care more about energy development than about what Baucus’s seniority can do for the state.

Sen. Tester, on the other hand, is heavily dependent on the sort of bicoastal left-leaning fundraising that gave him an edge when he took on then Sen. Conrad Burns. At the same time, he also needs those votes. So Sen. Tester seems to be trying to navigate the shoals carefully -- give enough support to the Keystone pipeline to satisfy Montana voters, while being quiet enough about it so as not to dry up his out-of-state funding sources. Whether out-of-state fundraising is playing a role in AG Bullock’s decision not to support Otter Creek is an interesting question for which there is not, as yet, an obvious answer.

One thing would seem likely -- entrepreneurs like the Mysee brothers and their employees will likely cast their votes for those who at the very least are not hostile and obstructive when it comes to traditional energy development -- while Condin, Kittredge, Kidder, et al. could play havoc with Democrats’ ability to raise money from liberal sources should they continue to push the issue.

As the title above says, Montana Democratic politicians in high-dollar races are indeed between a frack and a hard place.

The governor: "Take responsibility when you're wrong..."

The governor's new ad is out, and it is a pretty good one. It is straight from the current Democratic playbook -- the governor on the back of a horse, bawling calves in the background, etc.

The ad is all about symbolism, which is a big part of what an effective television ad is about. Just ask Barack Obama, who has been schooled by the McCain camp on that front recently with an effective, hilarious, mocking viral ad campaign that conveys the sense that Obama is an empty suit with nothing much behind the high-flown messianic rhetoric and worshipful fan-base.

But one should be careful, when massaging the symbolism, not to say inconvenient things that can bite you with sharp-toothed facts, and the governor did just that, when he said that he had "learned as a rancher" a list of good American, apple-pie things that included "taking responsibility when you're wrong."

The irony is that in at least one high-profile example to be found in the real world, the governor continues to refuse to take responsibility for breaking the law by doing Public Service Announcements (PSA's) -- using public funds to produce and distribute them -- while a declared candidate for public office.

There isn't much debate over whether the governor broke both the spirit and the letter of the law that he himself signed. The Democratic legislator who wrote the bill has confirmed that the Republican interpretation (i.e. the plain as the nose on your face interpretation) is what he intended. In other words, the law was intended to prevent public officials from doing exactly what the governor did with his "Ag Month" PSA's -- in this case, the governor even had the chutzpah to include his "Montana is on the Move" official campaign slogan in the "public service" announcement.

Ongoing coverage is on YouTube for those who want to listen to all the details of the special hearings now ongoing. One thing is clear -- the governor is refusing to accept responsibility for something he and his employees did that was wrong. As we have noted before, it would have been simple for the governor to say -- oops, we goofed and weren't watching the calendar closely enough. The matter would have blown over in days. It is precisely the governor's intransigence in admitting a relatively minor mistake that has turned this into much bigger matter of whether the governor considers himself to be accountable before the law or not.

We again note that the governor has made no more such PSA's -- if he were so certain that the intent of the legislation was not to ban the activity, why isn't he continuing to "serve the people of Montana" by making lots more PSA's?

We would also note that as Sec. State Brad Johnson told us in his Montana Headlines interview, it is perfectly possible for a government department to put out PSA's without using the name, face, or voice of the person in the department who is running for office.

The governor could have had the head of the Dept. of Agriculture or a volunteer announcer do the ads, could have left out the governor's campaign slogan "Montana is on the Move," and everyone would have been happy and unquestionably within the law.

If Sec. State Brad Johnson has no problems understanding and following the law -- and still manages to do the part of his job that requires putting out necessary PSA's -- why is is so difficult for the governor to do so?

The joke goes that one of the most dangerous places to be standing in Montana is between this governor and a television camera. Now, we have to add a radio microphone to the list of danger spots, it would appear.

Charles Johnson on the Dem convention

For some entertaining reading, try this week's "Horse Sense" column by Lee reporter Charles Johnson. As always, it is an understated piece of art, just telling the facts without any commentary -- often more damning to the officious, the sneaky, and the silly than is the editorializing that passes for journalism in much of the main-stream media today.

We read about Democratic Congressional candidate John Driscoll saying "You're looking at a guy that will absolutely end coal burning. I'd shut it down in a heartbeat" and suggesting that there are other uses for the coal. Sure. But how many parents still put coal in the Christmas stockings of their naughty children? The market may be limited for uses that don't involve burning it. It didn't go well with the lip-service that other Democrats, such as the governor, were trying to pay to the coal industry. At least Driscoll is honest about his obstructionism.

We have the chairman of the Montana Democratic Party -- Dennis McDonald -- a California trial lawyer who moved to Montana and bought some cows. Perhaps whoever sold him the cows had a sense of humor, and threw in a gigantic cowboy hat with the deal, just to see if McDonald would wear it. And he does, everywhere he goes.

Without commentary and with a straight face, Johnson reports that McDonald made bold to ridicule "pretend cowboys" in the Republican party, comparing them unfavorably with our Democratic governor, "the real cowboy, the third-generation cattle producer from Geyser." McDonald singled out Denny Rehberg (a "goat-herder") and Taylor Brown (a "disk jockey for the Northern Ag Network.) Did someone forget, by the way, to tell McDonald that this is not a good year for Democrats to be making fun of goat herders? Maybe he didn't get the memo -- but we suspect he will, since a certain Presidential campaign seems not to have a sense of humor.

Last we checked, Denny Rehberg is at least as much a rancher as McDonald is, and he grew up in an Montana agricultural family. Taylor Brown was working cattle on the family ranch in Montana at an age when McDonald was probably goofing off in California. Taylor was working to serve the Montana ag community when McDonald was making a living by filing lawsuits in California (and pocketing more than a third of the plaintiffs' awards.)

But of course, the real irony (which Johnson leaves out on the table, unspoken, for everyone to contemplate) is the idea of Dennis McDonald being some sort of arbiter of who is and isn't a "real cowboy."

Moving on from fake cowboys like Dennis McDonald, there were other goodies, like McDonald citing Linda McCulloch's presence on a powder-puff football team as a job qualification for Secretary of State. And the governor making sure that the governor's office staff turned out for the convention to boost its meager attendance. And the fact that few Democratic state legislators bothered to show up.

Perhaps most amusing was the fact that Democratic AG Mike McGrath, who is running for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, sanctimoniously said that it "violated the judicial ethics code for judicial candidates to attend political party conventions." His opponent, Ron Waterman (also a Democrat,) showed up and spoke at the Democratic convention, just as he had at the Republican convention (where he was warmly received, by the way.)

The amusement comes from the fact that the McGrath campaign had a huge banner sign up for him at the Democratic convention. Funny thing -- McGrath didn't have any presence at the Republican convention. It seems that Ron Waterman is the only one who is in a position to treat this non-partisan Supreme Court race with the dignity and, well, non-partisanship that it deserves.

More on the governor's public service announcements

As we noted before elsewhere, it would have been a simple thing for the administration to say that the governor's public service announcements (PSA's) that appeared after the primary were the result of some sort of careless clerical error over dates. Looking at the timing of it, that would have been a plausible defense, and upon which we would hope that the response of the Montana GOP would have been to say "shame on you," and then drop it.

It would have been painful to drop it, since the PSA's were pretty blatant (they prominently featured the governor's voice saying that "Montana's on the move" -- which is his campaign slogan.) But it would have been right to drop it and just tuck it away as one more example of carelessness, born perhaps of overconfidence.

But instead, the governor's office and campaign has continued to try to insist that nothing was done wrong, since the state didn't pay for the radio air time (does the state commonly pay for public service announcements anyway?)

Leaving aside the fact that state employee time and equipment were used to make the ads, we wonder -- if the PSA's were so legal and everything, why hasn't the governor continued to do more of them? Will we continue to see them through the campaign season? But of course, Democrats know that the whole point to the law that the governor himself signed was precisely to keep elected officials running for re-election or for another office from using PSA's to raise their name recognition and favorable image during election season. And the governor is an elected official running for re-election who appeared in a public service announcement during campaign season.

Often, Montana Headlines is in the position of saying that the GOP state party office has over-reacted to this or that misdeed by the Democratic party or Democratic candidates. We believe that a disproportionate response can become a sort of "crying wolf" that makes the public less likely to listen to us in the future when we have more serious assertions to make.

The Montana GOP is right not to let go of this one, though -- precisely because the administration has not been forthcoming about what should have been a pretty straightforward response from the governor of "my bad -- won't happen again." Again, it is the obfuscating response that is far more disturbing than are the ads themselves.

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Update: Read the MT GOP's brief here. The governor has made a "motion to dismiss or for summary judgment," or put differently, a "please make this go away without my having to admit I did anything wrong" request. The MT GOP is correctly making a strong case that this would be the wrong thing for the commissioner of political practices to do.

The brief does have its amusing moments (such as when it refers to the governor's "maniacal insistence" that the case be dismissed summarily without the usual due processes of discovery and presenting evidence. And what exactly is "diaphanous conduct?" That one is a head-scratcher, unless it is legalese of some sort. But this is a typical Montana Headlines digression into wordsmithing.

The document is commendable for its clarity, restraint, and measured tone. The bottom line is that the governor put a campaign slogan into a PSA, and that the ad violates both the spirit and the letter of a law that the governor himself signed into law. We'll see what happens, but this round goes to the state GOP as far as we're concerned around MH.

Obama making serious play for Montana

In a note that should make Sen. McCain's campaign sit up and take notice, Sen. Obama appointed a high-profile campaign director for Montana and a number of other states that have recently been Republican strongholds in the Presidential election.

Granted, it is possible that Obama simply has money to burn, and is willing to expend it in ways that make the McCain campaign work for states that they should be able to take for granted.

And Obama's campaign seems to be showing the important insight that there are benefits to ones party of running stronger than expected even in states one is destined to lose. Parties in states that have long been ignored are going to get some attention, and may make gains in down-ticket races due to Obama putting resources into those states.

Will the McCain campaign and the RNC answer in kind in Montana, or will they make the mistake of ignoring Montana Republicans in an hour of great need? We shall see, but suffice it to say that if the McCain campaign and the national Republican Party don't expend some resources in Montana, not only will McCain run the risk of losing the state in the fall (or have to expend precious last-minute resources to stave off an Obama surge,) but Montana Republicans could lose in what should otherwise be a very competitive year for regaining control of the state Senate and winning down-ticket races like Tim Fox's race for AG or Duane Grime's bid for State Auditor.

Few Republicans seem to be holding their breath, expecting that any help is coming from the national party. Instead, there seems to be the knowledge that we are on our own, and a determination that Montana can be successful in the fall elections with only ourselves to depend on -- and our own Congressman Denny Rehberg seems to understand this better than anyone. Which isn't an entirely bad thing at all. If there isn't any help coming, the sooner one realizes it, but more prepared one is to defend oneself.

An opening salvo from Montana Dems in the war of words

More on the Democrats who attempted to crash the GOP state convention armed with video cameras: they apparently tried more than once, and wondered why they weren't welcomed with open arms. Is it possible that they were trying to cause a scene and get attention? Naw...

Dem party bosses didn't apparently send their sharpest operatives, though. The first would-be party crasher employed by the state party didn't feel up to the task, and even came back with reinforcements in order to overwhelm the GOP with superior intellectual firepower:

“I think this is systematic of Montana Republicans excluding Republicans from the process if you don’t subscribe to their views,” (Kevin) O’Brien said.

Call us sensitive and insecure, but statements like that are just plain "systematic" of how much smarter Dems are when compared to Neanderthal Republicans like us. It just makes us feel uncomfortable to be reminded of our intellectual inferiority.

O'Brien's role with the state Democratic Party is as its communications director (quick, somebody buy that man a dictionary!)

Leaving aside the matter of whether any Republicans were "excluded from the process" -- we've heard nothing to that effect, but maybe the Dems know something we Republicans don't -- we can't resist parsing this out a bit further (it's a quiet Saturday evening, and Republicans don't have much else to do.) Is O'Brien letting slip that he is a Republican who was being excluded from the Republican proceedings? Don't they check references and have people sign loyalty oaths around Dem party central anymore before hiring people?

This same skilled communications director offered another musing to Chuck Johnson, who as always, does a masterful job of just reporting the facts and quotations as they are given to him:

"What’s the old saying? Might beats right.”

Hm. That "old saying" should be pretty well-known to a expert communications director: "might makes right." Unless we're mistaken, the English variant on the concept of vae victus seems to have a rather different meaning from "might beats right," if that actually were an old saying (which it isn't.)

Sort of brings back memories of Al Gore helpfully telling us in a debate with George W. Bush that he wanted to make us an e pluribus unum -- which he helpfully (in that inimitable schoolmarm voice) explained meant, "out of one, many." Little Freudian slip, there.

But back to O'Brien's comments and a little more deep subconscious analysis of his words. He is (did we mention?) the skilled communications director for the party of the intelligent and educated (that's not us Republicans -- as we must with a mixture of shame and humility admit.)

Is he sending out a subliminal message via historical allusion that he expects Montana Republicans to defeat Democrats this fall in a manner that will be reminiscent of the sack of Rome? Someone alert GOP central, there is panic in the Democratic ranks...

Reading such things makes us wonder if perhaps we doltish Montana conservatives perhaps have a fighting chance in the war of words and intellect after all -- hope springs eternal.

That's another "old saying," by the way. (cf. Alexander Pope.) There's probably a copy of "An Essay on Man" floating around somewhere in a university town like Missoula.

More Montana Democrats throw Obama under the bus

In a Big Sky Cairn post, we recently pointed out that the governor was pretty anxious to throw his party's presumptive Presidential nominee under the bus.

To mix metaphors, the wheels are at the moment coming off Sen. Obama's own bus, thanks to his comments about bitter rural voters in Pennsylvania clinging to guns and religion because of hard economic times.

Now, folks from fly-over land do disproportionately cling to guns and religion -- the thing is, those of us who own more than our share of Bibles and rifles do so whether the economy is in a boom or a bust.

Obama's comment is hardly a surprise. If you are from a conservative rural background, just go off to the big city, add a few letters behind your name, make a little stack of money, learn to talk all polite-like and correct, and accept invitations to gatherings where the smart Democratic set mingles.

You'll hear that sort of thing, and more. Now, maybe we're just being a wee bit cynical, but we would imagine that perhaps... just maybe... derogatory things about gun-loving, Bible-toting hicks have been said by Sen. Clinton a time or two. Naw -- what are we thinking? She's one of us, now.

As part of burnishing her new NASCAR-mom image, Sen. Clinton's website features a press release from some Montana Democrats hastening to distance themselves from Obama. Led by former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams and Senate Maj. leader Carol Williams, this group of Clinton supporters had this to say:

We wish to express our sincere disappointment with comments made by Sen. Barack Obama at a private San Francisco fundraiser last week - comments which demean the heritage and values of working Montanans.


And even more cutting was this:

After seven years of a president who refused to talk to us, the last thing we need is a presidential candidate who talks down to us.

Well, one thing we won't need to worry about is Sen. Clinton talking down to us. What a relief! And then there's this, just in case someone might confuse them with ignorant gun-loving religion-tolerating people (i.e. Republicans.) --

We are intelligent, optimistic people who believe in a better America.

Of course, unless the superdelegates (like, say, Pat Williams) give the nomination to Clinton in spite of Obama's insurmountable lead in delegates and votes, these intelligent, optimistic people are trashing their own future nominee. In doing so, though, they are just following their governor's lead.

Sen. Clinton may be gleeful, but she should note that these Democrats criticized Sen. Obama, but did so without mentioning her own name. This would seem to indicate that they, like the governor, believe that neither Democrat has a shot at winning Montana, and that their choice would seem to be over whom they more want to distance themselves from in the fall.


Addendum: More Montana Headlines commentary on Big Sky Cairn: George Will and Liberal Condescension.

Promoting dialogue with Native Americans; Burns replaces Bohlinger on McCain campaign (finally); Iverson debates McDonald

Chairman James Steele, Jr. of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal council gave a engaging address to gathered Republicans in Billings. Listening, it was hard not to get the sense that something historic was beginning.

He pointed out that in his search looking for Native Americans who have served in Congress, he found three names -- all of whom were Republicans, ranging from Herbert Hoover's Vice-President to Sen. Conrad Burns's Senate colleague Ben Nighthorse Campbell from Colorado. He reminded the gathered Republicans that it was a Congressman from our party who introduced the bill that gave U.S. citizenship to Native Americans.

Not painting any rosy scenarios, Chairman Steele pointed out that the Montana Republican Party has a lot of ground to make up. But it is clear that we are entering a new era of Republicans engaging in dialogue with Indian Country in Montana.

Iverson could have invited a prominent Republican to give a red-meat rallying speech to the Winter Kickoff. That he did not, and instead invited his (and now our) friend Chairman Steele to keynote the meeting, is a testimony not only to Iverson's vision, but also to his serene confidence in a Montana Republican Party that needs no further energizing.

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Some of the biggest cheers of the night at the final night of the Winter Kickoff came when Erik Iverson announced that Sen. John McCain's campaign had requested some equal time, introducing Sen. Conrad Burns as the new chairman of Sen. John McCain's campaign here in Montana. We appreciate the prompt response to the Montana Headlines appeal for a new McCain chairman.

There is a God.

Congratulations to Sen. McCain. We of course still want Lt. Gov. Bohlinger on the team, working to get Republicans elected, and as Chairman Iverson remarked tonight, while the Lt. Gov. couldn't make it to the Winter Kickoff to be with us this weekend, he will be invited to the summer convention and afforded the opportunity to speak and answer questions.

We'll look forward to it.

________________________________


Look tomorrow on KTVQ for a televised debate between Montana GOP chairman Erik Iverson and Democratic chairman Dennis McDonald. McDonald apparently heard that Republicans were in Billings having a good time and decided he wanted to get on Billings TV, so when Iverson caught wind of that, he challenged McDonald to a head-to-head interview.

It should appear on the KTVQ website soon.

Attendees were treated to a clip of the interview in which McDonald lamely tries to defend his previous press-release accusations that a Roy Brown contributor was a tax evader (false) and that Denny Rehberg's state director, Randy Vogel, was under federal investigation for involvement with Jack Abramoff (embarrassingly false -- even liberal bloggers apologized for buying into that one and ended up complimenting Vogel's handling of the situation.)

McDonald's response was blustering sound and fury, signifying nothing. And he maintained that both accusations were true at the time he made them. If McDonald thinks that his obfuscating non-answer will fly with Montana voters, he is gravely mistaken. This guy was a top-notch trial lawyer? Iverson had him for lunch.

Amusingly, McDonald showed up at the interview wearing a giant white cowboy hat.

Aptly, Erik Iverson pointed out to the assembled crowd that McDonald is a trial lawyer from southern California. Iverson, on the other hand, is a 5th generation Montanan who grew up on a ranch in the Sweetgrass Hills.

"If my grandmother were to catch me wearing a hat indoors anywhere -- let alone in a television studio," Iverson noted, "she would have bent me over her knee, even to this day."

It was the quotation of the night, and one that got a roar of laughter and applause from the gathered crowd at dinner, heavily leavened with good, solid, Republican ranchers. All of them were wearing their boots -- and all had a conspicuous absence of head-gear.

Playing rancher is a bit trickier than it looks.

Touché, Iverson.

Rep. Jones of Bigfork -- not running again

There's often more than meets the eye when someone declares that they feel "pushed out" of a political party. We certainly don't pretend to be knowledgeable about any of the inside baseball that may be involved in Rep. Bill Jones's decision not to run again.

But in the constant pendulum swings that make up partisan politics and the inevitable coalition-building that comes along with it, first one part and then another of the coalition feels taken for granted or muscled out.

One hears stories from the older days about the then mainstream Republican leadership trying to get rid of the "extremists" on the right. Then one heard it from more liberal and moderate Republicans who felt squeezed out from those on the right.

Today, both Ron Paul's supporters on a sort of indefinable "right" and more liberal Republicans in Montana are suspicious about whether they have a place at the table in the Montana GOP. Of course, if one chooses to listen to the shrillest voices in the party and believe them to be representative (which they usually are not,) more than likely few people would feel like they could be a part of any political party.

This problem is not unique to the Republicans -- one day the far left progressives are "taking over" and calling the shots in the Democratic party, and the next, you're reading that they are feeling betrayed by that party.

Building a party has never been easy, and not everyone is up to the challenge and frustrations of being an active part of one. Rep. Jones of Bigfork is handling the conflict the honest way and is to be commended -- he is declining to run again and is going to take time for reflection, possibly running as an independent in a future election.

Given the recent examples of John Bohlinger and Sam Kitzenberg, who chose to stab the GOP in the back on the way out the door rather than simply decline to run again under the GOP banner when they felt they no longer belonged, Rep. Jones is a tower of intellectual honesty. We wish him well.

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.

Those nasty, thieving Montana Republicans (Don't believe us? Just ask Matt Gouras at the AP)

Republicans aren't satisfied with grinding children under their heels. In this state we even stoop to beating up on a defenseless woman.

Today's Lee newspapers throughout the state carry a nice little piece that tells the story of how mean Republicans have stolen Linda McCulloch's domain name.

We have a big smiling picture of Ms. McCulloch (after all, she and her party are above all of this,) with the caption telling that "her domain name, www.lindamcculloch.com, was bought by Republicans, using a ploy some people are calling ‘political cyberfraud.’"

We're curious, for starters, how Gouras come to write this piece in the first place? Was it because of his tireless scouring of the web for such things, or did he get contacted by state Democrats about doing a puff-piece on Linda McCulloch? A back-story would be interesting.

And then we have Ms. McCulloch herself doing the "woe is me" routine, showing how mean the Republicans are, likening them to criminals:

"In this day and age of identity theft, taking somebody's name and using it without their permission seems kind of like going into their house without permission," McCulloch said.

Did the state GOP buy up the MuCulloch domain name and put their own information about her on it? Certainly they did.

But how did this article on this subject come to be written in the mainstream Montana media in October? And why does it take until the very end of the article for it to be mentioned that www.BobKeenan.com was taken by Democrats?

And why doesn't the article say that the Democratic party grabbed Keenan's domain name way back in July, when the first rumblings were being made about a possible Keenan run against Max Baucus?

Given the depths to which the Baucus campaign stooped during the last campaign, against Mike Taylor, this website was little more than a political warning of what Keenan and his family could expect should he dare to enter the race. Not that Dems are any more worried about Baucus losing in 2008 than they were in 2002 -- personal assassination of a trailing Republican Senate candidate is simply worth it if it allows them to redirect the Baucus war chest toward state legislative races.

Gouras must be a reporter who isn't paying attention, since the state's premier left-wing blog was bragging about Dems taking the Keenan domain name several months ago. One would think that the Keenan domain-name grab would have been even more newsworthy, since the Dems took out a domain name to put up a website trashing a private citizen who neither was in public office nor had declared candidacy for a public office.

Getting McCulloch's domain name appears to have been part 2 of a tit-for-tat that was initiated by the Democrats. But you wouldn't get that from Gouras's article.

So why does the GOP get the bad press, then: the headline, the first 3/4 of the article, the photo, and the photo caption? Reading the comments in the Gazette online edition, it seems that the take-home message for most readers was indeed that Republicans were the bad guys.

How much work would it have taken for Gouras to establish a timeline? Was there bias involved on his part, or was it just plain lazy and careless reporting by a paid professional who should know better?

Whatever the answers, it simply confirms us as Republicans in our conviction that every election we run is not just run against Democrats, but rather against a Democratic opposition that is aided by a press that is indifferent to the appearance of bias at best, and outright slanted against us at worst.

There really isn't a lot of practical difference between the two choices, at least as far as the guys on the receiving end are concerned. The fact that the press doesn't intend to be unfair is reassuring for the consciences of editors and reporters, but that is small comfort for those of us who have to live with the results at the ballot box.

But while we should never stop patiently pointing out the bias in this sort of piece, no matter how tiresome it gets, the flip side is that Republicans should place alongside their "Rather Biased" bumper stickers ones that say "No Whining."

Pointing out bias and correcting the record helps with the voting public. Thinking that doing so will stop biased reporting in the media, however, is a pipe-dream. It won't.

If we want to win elections, we need to counter the one-two punch of Democratic advertising and the Montana media with our own message taken directly to the voters.

We need to carry it to enough people to make up for outsourced opposition research and advertising like this particular AP article (again, whether it was meant as such or not is irrelevant from a practical standpoint.)

No one is going to help us but ourselves. Sounds like a conservative attitude, doesn't it?

"Actually a bit worse" than Tom DeLay on the prescription drug vote

Democrats are quickly settling in to being a heavy-handed majority in the House -- the very thing they decried about the GOP House leadership, often with ample justification.

The most recent event was a real winner. Rather than go through the gory details, we will refer the interested reader to David Freddoso's account posted on National Review Online.

At issue was a vote to "expand welfare services for illegal immigrants. The drama surrounded the common tactic of having members of Party A vote for Party B's measure in order to lull Party B's leadership into a sense of complacency -- and then change their votes at the last minute, forcing Party B to scramble for last-second vote-changes from their own membership.

It would be nice to imagine that legislators can just vote their conscience. In fact, there is a complex calculus of party solidarity, political calculations, electoral fears or ambitions, and yes, personal conscience, that legislators go through to arrive at each vote.

Back to this event: the Democratic leadership, thinking their measure was going to pass with a comfort zone, let some of their members who are vulnerable on the issue of illegal immigration vote with the Republicans.

But then, the Republicans had a number of members change their votes at the last minute back to "their side," leaving the final tally of votes with the Republicans actually winning the vote.

Freddoso:

The Democrats' actions last night are comparable to what Tom DeLay did to keep the vote open and pass the prescription drug bill back in 2003, but actually a bit worse. It was shady enough back then for the Republican leadership to "persuade" members to change their votes while keeping the vote open over the course of three hours.

To change the actual vote total takes that a step further.

For YouTube addicts, here was the loud reaction from the floor when the Democrats tried lamely to explain how and why they overturned a closed vote -- you'd have thought you were listening to the noisy British parliament in session.

And then here are Roy Blunt's scathing comments.

Given that Montana Democrats are warming up their attack engines on Denny Rehberg based on his purported party-line voting, this is a good reminder that Democrats are no less expected to toe a party line than are Republicans. In fact, if one compared ADA and ACU ratings, it is pretty clear that Democrats require a far greater uniformity in voting than do Republicans.

We will vist a related subject tomorrow in yet another discussion about our Senator Jon Tester vis a vis earmark reform (or rather, the lack thereof.)

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond...

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

More Bohlinger convention goofiness: This time, our faux-Republican Lt. Gov's antics surround the Montana Democratic convention, where he will be appearing with his running-mate, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Bohlinger, reached as he was preparing to return to Montana from the National Lieutenant Governors Association meeting in Williamsburg, Va., said, "I didn't know that I'd been invited. I haven't had any plans of attending. You know, I am a Republican. I really appreciate the invitation."

Yeah, right. Quite a surprise.

Denny Rehberg votes against permanent bases in Iraq: The U.S. House bill also states that the U.S. is not to exert control over the oil industry in Iraq. Rehberg and most Republicans voted for this broadly bipartisan bill, as was appropriate.

Truth in editorializing at the Gazette: Pat Bellinghausen tells more about the process of writing editorials at the Billings Gazette. Given that unsigned "Gazette Opinion" editorials have a particular impact, coming across as the magisterial voice of an institution rather than the opinion of a particular writer, it is good to tell readers that she is primarily responsible for writing those editorials.

She also invites readers to contact her if there are columnists that they would or would not like to continue to see in the Gazette. Best nationally syndicated columnist printed in the Gazette right now: R.J. Samuelson. Worst: Ellen Goodman.

On the purely conservative side, we could probably do better than Cal Thomas -- it would be nice to see an opponent of the Iraq war from the right, with the two most prominent being Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak. Both are engaging writers and are good at stirring up controversy with both the right and the left (Novak is even still a registered Democrat.)

"Hillary the underestimated": Or so Rich Lowry of the National Review (one of the more mature of the former NR youngsters) calls her. Money quotation:

"Clinton has run a nearly flawless campaign and has done more than any other Democrat to show she’s ready to be president..."

Not a few thoughtful conservatives have come to the conclusion that if we have to have one of the top three Dems, Clinton would probably be preferable.

She knows how to triangulate -- which means that she will come up with policies more conservative than would either Edwards or Obama.

And her performance shows that maybe she wasn't just baking chocolate chip cookies and doing needlepoint during her years as first lady.

Her most recent coup has been to demonstrate that she knows how to handle the liberal netroots. She doesn't let them intimidate her and doesn't particularly care if they like her. But she has skilfully avoided having them turn on her and make a cause out of defeating her -- and that is really all she needs to do.

She knows in a general election campaign, she can count on their support for her being an automatic and unconditional "night of the long knives" against any Republican, and she also knows that cozying up to the netroots will cost her with the general electorate.

Smart lady.

The governor's "blue-collar getaway": He purchased the $2 million Georgetown Lake lot because it was a "blue-collar place," but according to a shocking story in the Great Falls Tribune:

"the Schweitzers' 4,000-square-foot cedar-and-sandstone mansion on a point jutting into the lake is anything but blue collar."

And there are some things that we just didn't need to know:

Four bedrooms plus an office. Six baths (a couple of them, Schweitzer took pains to show off, with urinals. "There's not going to be any discussion about toilet seats").

This is, of course, just the sort of things that sends Republicans. But, while Montana voters may take note and dock Schweitzer a few points for the sheer silliness of his "blue-collar neighborhood" claim, the GOP would do well not to try to make a direct campaign issue out of Schweitzer's new mansion. After all, we believe that people should have the right to make what they can and spend what they are able.

And what should the governor have done? Should he have failed to take advantage of the property exchange "tax loophole" that keeps him from having to pay capital gains on the ranch he sold?

The governor is in many ways his own worst enemy when it comes to this sort of thing -- and then the GOP comes riding to his rescue every time by attacking him loudly, making it look petty, and cancelling out any benefit that there might have been from his gaucherie.

Whoever runs against the governor needs to do it on policy and performance alone. And there's more than enough of that to debate.

Addendum:

Thanks to the anonymous commenter below, our attention was drawn to this letter (scroll down) in the Helena IR, which contains what may be the only "news report" about our Sen. Jon Tester voting against the so-called "John Doe" amendment -- a measure that would protect citizens from being sued for reporting activity that is suspicious for being possibly terrorist-related.

What was this highly dangerous amendment (SA 2340 -- submitted by that arch-conservative racist Republican Senator, Susan Collins of Maine) that Sen. Tester couldn't bring himself to vote for? Here's the meat of it:

(1) IN GENERAL.--Any person who, in good faith and based on objectively reasonable suspicion, makes, or causes to be made, a voluntary report of covered activity to an authorized official shall be immune from civil liability under Federal, State, and local law for such report.

And, with all due respect to those who are worried that this could be used as a pretext to hassle people without fear of consequence, we would suggest actually reading the next part of the amendment (we assume that the House language was pretty much identical):

(2) FALSE REPORTS.--Paragraph (1) shall not apply to any report that the person knew to be false at the time that person made that report.

The roll-call vote can be found here -- note that the measure failed by 3 votes to hit the 60 vote mark. Every Republican voted for the measure.

Democrats who are facing elections where they need more than the MoveOn.org crowd to get elected (Sen. Clinton in the Presidential race, Sens. Baucus and Landrieu in their re-election bids in "red states," -- also North Dakota's two Democratic Senators, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, etc.) tended to vote for the measure, while those independent "mavericks" like Jon Tester and James Webb who don't face re-election until 2012 voted against it along with the main body of the liberal Dems.

It is interesting that given how much play this amendment got nationally, that the Montana press seems to have been silent on how our Senators voted.

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.

"It gets old in a hurry"

The Helena IR has an opinion piece that points out the groundlessness of the Democratic party's complaint to the Political Practices Commissioner about GiveItBack.com and its founder, Steve Daines.

Montana Headlines has commented before on the inanity of the charges that the two state party leaders routinely direct at each other -- or more precisely, the faux outrage and hysterics that generally accompany such complaints.

From the editorial:

Both parties seem to enjoy raising issues like this. But Democrats going after Daines is no more useful to the state's political discourse than Republicans thinking up bad names to call the governor. It all gets old in a hurry.

Familiar pattern from the state Democratic party -- and yet other eerie similarities

It's perhaps not accurate to call a series of two events a pattern -- a trend perhaps?

Not long ago, the state Democratic party manufactured a "scandal" involving one of Denny Rehberg's staffers (proven to be completely groundless.) They just happened to time their press-release for same day when news came out that the Montana Democratic Party was being socked with a hefty fine by the F.E.C. for campaign-finance violations during the Burns-Tester U.S. Senate race.

Today, dueling headlines in the Gazette indicate something similar at work. The state Republican party had been raising questions about the governor's recent junket to the Kentucky Derby for a Democratic fundraiser, and yesterday they filed a formal complaint with Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth.

The process had been in the works for several weeks, and it is interesting that the Democratic party just happened to file a complaint against Republican business executive Steve Daines of "GiveItBack.com" fame on the same day as the Republican complaint was filed. Their timing is uncanny.

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 julips on the dime of an organization that takes corporate contributions isn't going to shock many Montanans -- unless they've already decided that they don't much care for the governor's style.

But if the Republican complaint can be faulted for being technically valid but perhaps politically useless -- the Democratic complaint is merely laughable. Exactly how is Commissioner Unsworth going to be expected to find Daines guilty of running his website as a "'phony front group' for a possible gubernatorial campaign" if Daines hasn't declared that he is running for governor? And even if Daines ends up running for governor, how is anyone going to prove that he had decided for certain to run for governor at the time he started the "GiveItBack" campaign?

The Democratic complaint is frivolous, and Unsworth said as much immediately -- whereas the Republican complaint is going to take some investigation, even though an outcome in the Republicans' favor is by no means certain. It is hard to see the Daines complaint and its timing as being anything but a calculated distraction on the part of the state Democratic party.

There are a couple more observations worth making about Democratic hyperventilation over Steve Daines and his unsuccessful public service campaign to try to get more money rebated to Montana taxpayers.

The first observation is that for some reason that we can't figure out, Daines has Democrats worried. Why would the governor have appeared recently with a sign behind him saying "We Gave It Back?"

Everyone knows good and well that the surplus wasn't given back -- and Democrats are proud of the fact that they spent nearly all that money on "essential services" rather than giving it back in tax credits or cuts. For them, it was a major political victory won by a no-compromise stance that the money wasn't given back -- a victory they should be proud of. So why the sign saying "We Gave It Back?"

The second observation is that the Democratic hyperventilation about Daines has seemed eerily familiar to Montana Headlines. It was difficult to put a finger on it, but then it all became clear: it reminded us of Republican reactions to a certain mint farmer some years back -- a guy with no political experience and who used non-traditional means of getting headlines. Republicans could never make any of their accusations or ridicule stick, and their attempts to do so were, if anything, counterproductive. We all know how the story ends.

So in that sense, the fact that Democrats are frantically going after Daines -- with nothing -- may perhaps bode well for the Republican party's prospects in the 2008 elections.

Sunday roundup and branding -- the Gazette, and beyond

Image Courtesy of www.old-picture.com

A step toward sanity in France: While not pretending to understand the intricacies of French politics, and while it has no direct impact on Montana, it is hard to imagine that a defeat for socialists won't do some sort of cosmic good.

Billings Gazette goes over-easy in its "thumbs-down" on Vogel-gate: ...and scrambles things up. While not to be found on-line for some reason, the Billings Gazette does give a thumbs down the Democratic Party's recent press release about Rep. Denny Rehberg's office.

But then it goes on to muddy the waters by saying that both parties "sought to make political gains over this nonstory," talking about the GOP's response. Well, yes -- but the Gazette's language implies some sort of moral equivalence in this episode.

Slandering Rehberg's aide in an over-the-top press release wouldn't have been a nonstory had the misleading accusations successfully hit the papers on the date in question, as Democrats wanted it to. It is a reasonable opinion to hold that Republicans over-reacted in calling for the resignation of the Democratic Party chairman in Montana -- a minor criticism.

It is not a particularly reasonable assessment of the episode to hold that the Democratic Party chairman just made an honest mistake, or to imply that in this particular matter, both parties are somehow equally culpable.

The Gazette had no problem making it clear in a recent major editorial that while they mouthed the "there's blame on both sides" line in the late legislative morass, they held the Republican party leadership guilty of the crime.

Why the editors couldn't, in a single low-profile paragraph, bring themselves to state clearly that the Democratic Party was wrong and the Republican party innocent on this matter is beyond understanding. It must just be too painful for someone.

SD2 mill levy may actually pass: School funding has to be a subject that is more confusing in Montana than almost any other area of government spending -- or at least Montana Headlines confesses an ignorance of the arcane art of understanding the formula by which we pay for education.

The state pays 80% of the cost of running public schools, and local communities have to come up with 20% (or not -- it's up to them.) This is a real anomaly in the region, with most states having local communities and states dividing the costs closer to 50/50.

Montana Headlines certainly believes that there is a lot of waste in how schools spend money, and our views on education in general are positively paleolithic, believing that the job of any school -- public, private, or home -- is to end up graduating students who are fully literate in the English language, who can do adequate math, and who know enough about our country's history, culture, and government to be non-dangerous voters. Anything else is a "nice to have" that should come only after it is proven that a school is accomplishing the above.

We see a district top-heavy with administrators, teachers forced to teach at the lowest common denominator, students sometimes being ill-served when they are passed for "social reasons," and we see meaningless busy-work projects being assigned to students who desperately need to be taught how to read with comprehension, spell properly, and write coherently before they graduate -- and the clock is ticking.

We see with crystal clarity the fact that it is the education establishment's desire to foist full-day kindergarten on the district that is driving in large part the need to re-open Beartooth Elementary in the Heights and that full-day kindergarten is going to exacerbate our crowding issues.

We still are of the conviction that school districts would be better off spending that money raising the pay of teachers we already have or expanding space needed for students that we already have, and we are of the conviction that if full-day kindergarten funding is appropriated, districts should just be given the money no matter what, deciding for themselves if full-day kindergarten is what they most need to spend that money on.

We see an outdated salary matrix that is excessively weighted against new teachers (making new hires difficult) and that falsely assumes that an extra degree means better teaching quality. And yes, it is hard to "Vote Yes for Kids," knowing that more money alone isn't going to change any of those fundamental problems.

But for crying out loud, one doesn't have to embrace the totality of modern educational philosophy to understand that we have to have enough classroom space in Billings to hold our students -- that our high schools are overcrowded, that eventually more elementary and middle schools will be needed, and that population growth is only going to make these problems worse.

And to top it all off, we conservatives are supposed to believe in local control -- and local responsibility comes from local funding. One would think that Republicans in this state would be voting for every local school funding increase that comes along, and fighting for a combination of lower state income taxes and a lower proportion of school funding coming from the state. There does have to be equalizing money to help smaller, rural, and poorer districts, but by and large, we should want our schools to be paid for by our own local tax dollars.

For all of the negativity that comes out above, we also are acutely aware of the fact that Montana's students are high performers nationally. Our schools are managing to do a better job than most states in terms of what they are accomplishing. We remain concerned, however, that Montana's educational establishment wants us to emulate states that spend far more to accomplish far less -- as though the number of dollars spent per student actually measured something meaningful.

With that said, Montana Headlines will be voting "Yes for Kids."

City Lights: Kemmick was on a roll today with one of his rollicking satires -- and then he slipped up and started giving a hard-news description of a real-life mega-church. But to his credit, he got up, dusted himself off, and ended with a unbeatable flourish.

Rep. Rehberg, grand juries, and aides -- dig a little deeper

Jay at 4&20 Blackbirds is to be commended for not leaping to conclusions regarding a recent press release sent out by the Montana Democratic Party -- a message that strongly implied that Rep. Denny Rehberg's state director, Randy Vogel, was under federal investigation. That paradigm of an environmental ranger, Larry Kralj, is doubly to be commended for immediately calling Vogel "a decent guy," and expressing disbelief in any wrongdoing on his part -- without even waiting to see what happened first.

Shane Mason over at Montana Netroots gets an honorable mention for later calling the matter a "non-issue," and for expressing regret on another blog for repeating the allegations on Netroots.

Mason initially characterized the matter as follows:

"While the office of Denny Rehberg has left Montanans in the dark on the nature of the issue, Chairman of the Montana Democratic Party, Dennis McDonald responded..."

For those who missed it the first time, Montana Democratic Party Chairman Dennis McDonald's subtle innuendo is worth repeating:

This is disturbing news for the people of Montana. Where does this federal grand jury subpoena lead? To convicted lobbyist ‘Casino’ Jack Abramoff, who played such a big part in Sen. Burns’ defeat? Or to Kevin Ring, Team Abramoff partner who Rep. Rehberg recommended to Carter County, Montana? Or to former Republican candidate for Governor, Pat Davison, who will be sentenced shortly for fraud and felony? Or does this lead to INSA, the Missoula-based organization tied closely to Rehberg and Burns, and which is now being investigated by the FBI? ...

It looks like the Republican Culture of Corruption may still be with us here in Montana, despite the defeat of Sen. Conrad Burns last year...

(It looks like "Culture of Corruption" is now a proper noun, deserving capitalization.)

What was characterized as Rehberg leaving "Montanans in the dark on the nature of the issue" turned out to be an old-fashioned matter of following procedures designed to protect the confidentiality of constituents -- in this case, one who is in a dispute with the IRS.

Subsequent information showed, as Rep. Rehberg correctly pointed out, that everything anyone needed to know about the subpoena could have been obtained through a simple phone call to Vogel (or for that matter, to one of Speaker Pelosi's aides or to the Justice Department, if a Republican Congressman's office couldn't be trusted to tell the truth.)

All in all, it can be agreed that the Montana liberal blogosphere behaved with a restraint and willingness to correct the record quickly that their party's leaders apparently still need to learn.

______________________________

The real story, though, was right there in front of everyone's eyes in the original Netroots post, where one could clearly see the date of the communication from Randy Vogel to Speaker Nancy Pelosi reporting the subpoena: March 19, 2007. Vogel's letter to Pelosi was published in the Congressional Record on March 21, 2007.

Now, Montana Headlines could go through the motions of asking rhetorical questions like "what did Dennis McDonald know, and when did he know it?" But we won't insult anyone's intelligence -- or rush to judgment.

It is, of course, possible that the Montana Democratic Party sent out their news release about this subpoena the second that they got the information into their hands.

And it is possible that McDonald and the Montana Democratic Party knew absolutely nothing about this communication from March 21 until May 2 -- a mysteriously missing 43 days.

And it is possible that the Montana Democratic Party knew absolutely nothing about what the subpoena was related to, and didn't make any discrete inquiries through Congressional sources to see if there was something damning behind the subpoena.

And it is possible that the date on which they released this piece of information... that they had just received 43 days after it was published in the Congressional Record... and that they hadn't checked into at all in spite of there being two Montana Democratic Senators in Washington --

-- it is possible that this date just happened to coincide with the date that the FEC gave its long-awaited ruling fining the Montana Democratic Party $15,000 for neglecting to disclose $106,000 it spent on 2005 attack ads against Sen. Conrad Burns. (A fine that was, as The Western Word astutely points out, for an ad campaign at a critical time for Burns, and which turned out to be a very good $15,000 investment on the part of the Montana Democratic Party.)

It is possible that they weren't sitting on this press release about Randy Vogel for a month and a half. It is possible that they weren't waiting, intending to try to get it into the press on the same day that the FEC fine of the Montana Democratic Party was reported -- all in an attempt to counteract the negative publicity. (That this didn't happen is likely due only to alert press relations on the part of Rehberg's staff.)

All of this is possible. We won't rush to judgment.

But even if we give the benefit of the doubt, and assume that all of the "possibles" above are really what happened, the fact remains that Dennis McDonald was willing to rush to judgment on Randy Vogel. This is not the first time that the Montana Democratic Party has been willing to twist a story in a hyperventilating attempt to get at Denny Rehberg by tarnishing the reputation of this long-time honorable public servant.

Reckless mud-slinging at an elected public official is bad enough. Reckless mud-slinging at a staffer who is just doing his job is quite another.

So while it is admittedly more the kind of thing we associate with righteously indignant Democrats, it is hardly over-reaction on the part of Montana Republicans to call for the resignation of the source of this irresponsible attack -- McDonald.

Montana Dems are the "missing link"

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper spoke at the Montana Democratic Party's annual Mansfield-Metcalf Dinner on Saturday, calling Montana Democrats the "missing link."

Chalk one up for Tribune writer Gwen Florio, who hastened to make sure that astute readers wouldn't think that Hickenlooper meant that Montana Democrats were knuckle-dragging creatures half-way between apes and men. We wouldn't want Republicans to lose their Neanderthal status. We're kind of getting used to it and would feel a little hurt to share the limelight with our friends on the left.

Anyway, here's more from the Great Falls Tribune report:

"Western Democrats are pro-business and pro-environment. They believe in the power of collaboration and accessibility," he said. That outlook will help move the national Democratic party more toward the middle, he added.

Well, we can only hope.