For those who have been following events in Montana closely, there won't be much "news" in my piece, but it does have what I like to think of as the "Montana Headlines" touch, when it comes to setting the race in historical context (both recent and more remote).
For those who don't have occasion to follow Montana politics, it is a good place to start when it comes to this race.
Here is the link: Enjoy!
Montana's newly elected Congressman had some thoughts that were reported on in a Lee Newspaper article. They boil down to this:
“President Obama’s proposal of raising taxes brings in revenue that will be about 8 percent of the deficit, so that leaves us 92 percent to chew on,” he said in an interview. “We need to start the discussion on where we can find ways not only to slow the growth in federal spending, but actually see some decreases.”
Indeed. And politically, raising taxes on 1-2% of Americans, as President Obama proposes to do, is relatively painless. In the last election, President Obama demonstrated that the very wealthy are at least as likely to vote Democratic as Republican (the states, counties, and Congressional districts with the wealthiest residents actually are more like to vote Democratic -- even when you are promising to take more of their money away from them.) Those who benefit from government spending, on the other hand -- those who work for the government or who receive government payments of some sort -- tend to be very punishing to anyone who presumes to take their goodies away.
Ergo, it is always politically easier to raise taxes (especially on the dastardly rich) than to cut spending. So, when 92% of what needs to be accomplished has to come from spending cuts, and those cuts are politically hazardous, it is the spending cuts that need to be given priority.
Past political experience has shown that politicians consider reductions in the rate of increase of spending to be spending cuts, when they really aren't cuts at all. Past political experience has shown that any cuts (or decreases in the rate of rise) that actually materialize only occur when politicians are forced to make them. Tax increases, furthermore, are always real, whereas spending cuts often prove to be ephemeral. Much ado was made about "austerity" in Great Britain, where what was promised was a ratio of 3 to 1 -- 3 pounds in spending cuts for every pound in tax increases. Subsequent experience has shown that most of the spending cuts were fake, whereas the tax increases were real. And this is with a "Conservative" government in charge.
We can expect the same here in America, where the tax increases that President Obama and the Democrats have been promising us will be very much real. Spending cuts? Without vigilance, they will be no more real than were the spending "cuts" that House Speaker John Boehner extracted from the Democrats in exchange for Republicans voting for an increase in the debt ceiling. (What Boehner obtained as "concessions" were a joke and an insult to any right-thinking American's intelligence.)
In light of all of this, Congressman Daines is exactly right to stand with those who refuse to vote for tax increases, and who insist on seeing real spending cuts (and not just reductions in the rate of increase of spending) before considering any moves that increase revenue.
If President Obama and the Democrats in Washington were serious about reducing the annual deficit (let alone reducing the national debt), they would long ago have been furiously looking for places to cut spending -- but they aren't and never have been. Trust us, if Republicans in Washington were to allow them to raise taxes without insisting on spending cuts, that is exactly what would happen.
Republicans in Washington have often been rightly accused of not being serious about cutting spending. What they have to commend them is that the alternative is so much worse, as we discovered between 2008 and 2010. Many of us rhetorically asked ourselves prior to the 2006 and 2008 elections, "could the Democrats really be any worse than the Republicans when it comes to spending too much?" Alas, we found that the answer to that question is a simple one: "oh yes... and how..."
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:
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.
It was gratifying to read in the Billings Gazette that Steve Daines is headed for a lop-sided victory in the race for Montana’s lone seat in the U.S. Congress. Of course, it wasn’t worded in quite that way. What the Gazette editors actually did was to endorse Daines. For those unfamiliar with how the Gazette operates when it comes to political endorsements, here is a quick summary:
1. The editors endorse Democrats in any competitive race that matters.
2. There will usually be one token Republican whom they endorse, just to give an appearance of fairness. That way, no one can justly say that they never endorse Republicans. They might even endorse two, if one of them involves only token Democratic opposition.
3. If a race is going to be close, the endorsement goes to the Democrat.
4. If a race is going to be a blowout, one way or the other (mainly if a Republican is going to blow out the Democrat), they will usually endorse the Republican -- after all, there is nothing at stake.
5. If a Republican is an incumbent and is likely to win, then that candidate has an especially good chance of getting to be the token Republican.
So far, the Gazette has endorsed the Democrat in Montana's Attorney General race, Secretary of State race, State Auditor race, and State Superintendent race. That’s four out of the 5 state Land Board seats. It is unthinkable that the Gazette would endorse anyone but Steve Bullock for governor, given how close that race is shaping up to be, so that means the Gazette will go five for five for Democrats on Land Board races. To direct a little extra kick in the Republican direction, the Gazette endorsed the Democrat in our region’s PSC race.
The editors chose to endorse Brad Johnson against Linda McCulloch 4 years ago but are endorsing McCulloch this time against Johnson. Fortunately, the Democrats gave them the talking points they needed for their switch. Granted, it wasn’t much of an endorsement for Johnson in 2008 -- here is how I described it 4 years ago:
...the Billings Gazette endorsed Democrats in 5 of the 6 competitive statewide races this election season, and saved its most tepid "well if we have to say it we suppose there's no real reason to vote against him so OK go ahead if you really feel you need to maybe" endorsement for the lone Republican they endorsed -- Brad Johnson... (Incidentally, I enjoyed the discussion after that post, in no small part because a commenter suggested that the Gazette hire me as their token local conservative columnist!)
In addition, it is unthinkable that the Gazette would do other than to endorse Jon Tester in the barnburner of a Senate race that we have here in Montana, especially since Democratic control of the U.S. Senate could be at stake.
So, Steve Daines was the last Republican standing, and thus got the Gazette’s endorsement. He, to recap the opening of this piece, was the logical candidate to be the token Republican, since he is likely to win the race handily. The Gazette really wouldn’t be able to change the trajectory of the race by endorsing his opponent, and furthermore since control of the House is comfortably in Republican hands, the only danger that Daines really poses to Democrats in Montana is that he will be virtually impossible to displace and will be a formidable future candidate for the Senate or the governorship.
It had to be painful for the editors to endorse a rising GOP star like Daines, but then, there is plenty of time to take him down in the future -- for now, he gets to be the Gazette’s token Republican for 2012. And it seems clear that he will be the lone Republican endorsed in the 8 major races in which Gazette readers will be voting. (The endorsement for U.S. President could possibly go to Romney -- again, since Romney will carry Montana handily, this would be a harmless GOP endorsement in a non-competitive race for the Gazette.)
Update: This post was written earlier and was scheduled to post in the wee hours this morning. And indeed, when I woke up this morning, there was a Romney endorsement in the Gazette.
Which brings us back to the Rehberg-Tester race. By my count, the Gazette editors have endorsed Rehberg in 5 consecutive Congressional races. Rehberg is furthermore a Billings guy. You’d think that would count for something at a paper called the Billings Gazette, but you should ask former Sen. Conrad Burns how that theory works out in practice once you are in a competitive race against a Democrat.
As we pointed out in a piece 5 years ago, Rehberg has indeed been endorsed repeatedly by the Gazette, but not when the race is competitive. His one competitive House race was in 2000, and that year, the Gazette endorsed his Democratic opponent.
Naturally.
And that is exactly what we should expect again this year.
Update: Read this piece at "The Fix" at the Washington Post, in which Sen. Tester is prominently featured. It seems that Sen. Tester is quite aware of the unpopularity of his vote for Obamacare and is trying carefully to thread the needle.________
It's Wednesday, and time for a little Montana politics to celebrate Independence Day.
There is a lot to dislike about the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare, and since this is a blog that sticks to Montana politics, the urge to wax overly eloquent will be resisted. A couple of things stand out, however:
First, one is liable to get whiplash from following liberal opinion about the Supreme Court. Prior to the ruling, the left was preparing to discount the very legitimacy of the Court -- thinking it was going to rule against the constitutionality of Obamacare. Now, they are back to having the Supreme Court as bosom buddies, and the once-hated Chief Justice Roberts is now an exceedingly wise rock star -- Confucius meets Bono. Go figure.
On a related point, one notices that the left is accusing the right of being whiners and crybabies. Some expressions of outrage have perhaps been unseemly, but how would the left be acting right now had Roberts voted the other way? We got a pretty good preview from the full-court press bombarding the Court from Democrats and the mainstream media prior to the decision. Chief Justice Roberts was about to experience his own high-tech lynching had he decided otherwise, and he knew it.
But really, that isn't the proper analogy, is it? No, the proper analogy would be this: imagine that Justice Roberts voted exactly as he did, but that Justice Sotomayor had a last-minute change of heart, voting with Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy.
That's the real analogy. Think about it -- has there ever been a single major case in which a justice appointed by a Democratic President has broken ranks and cast a deciding vote with a conservative bloc on a hot-button issue? Once? Ever? I’ve been Court-watching for decades and can't think of an example. Were it ever to happen, the wrath from the left against that traitorous Justice would make current conservative hand-wringing pale by comparison. For if there is one thing we know, it is this: Republican-appointed Justices break ranks, evolve, whatever... Democratic appointees never do. Democrats know exactly what they are getting in their Supreme Court picks -- Republicans just have to hope.
George Will , Charles Krauthammer, et al, are wrong that Chief Justice Roberts somehow slyly stole a march on the left by voting as he did (you know, limiting the commerce clause, giving the political fervor to Romney rather than Obama, neutralizing liberal claims of a politicized court, gaining cover for future groundbreaking decisions, yada, yada...) One can't blame them for looking for a silver lining, but it is a joke to consider this as anything but a disaster for traditional conceptions of what the Constitution is supposed to do -- namely to limit the power and reach of the federal government. Roberts has instead given the federal government a roadmap for doing basically anything it wants to do -- just incorporate a tax into anything you want to do, and you'll have his vote and that of the 4 liberal Justices. (Unless he plans to go into even greater contortions next time to undo his thinking.)
Let's be generous to Chief Justice Roberts and assume that he is playing at a high-level chess game, of which this move is 6 steps ahead on a long-term strategy. If so, Roberts is trying to be too clever by half, and it won't work. Leaving aside the fact that his legal contortions are underwhelming, he is forgetting the real point to being a Supreme Court Justice: to protect and defend the Constitution. He didn't do that, and let's not pretend that he did, even if we can come up with some theoretical short-term advantages to be gained from all of this.
The true silver lining, such as it is, is this (and here, we return at long last to Montana politics): the Supreme Court didn't mandate Obamacare. Hence this decision in no way ranks with the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time -- this ruling doesn't create law out of whole cloth in the manner of many earlier Court decisions, but rather allowed a law passed by Congress and signed by the President to stand.
Which means that the law can be (and must be) repealed and/or gutted by the same democratic process. Chief Justice Roberts said, in effect, "you elected these jokers, you get to clean up the mess or live with the consequences." For Montanans, that means a number of things:
1. Montana needs to do its part in retaking control of the U.S. Senate, firing Sen. Tester, who voted for this monstrosity and would be a reliable vote to uphold it. He would be a vote against conservative judges and justices or for liberal ones (depending on the outcome of the Presidential election.) There are a number of paths to taking control of the Senate, but most involve Congressman Rehberg winning this race. We just need to get it done.
2. We need to elect Steve Daines as Montana's U.S. Congresman. While control of the House is not in immediate jeopardy, every hand is needed on deck to keep the GOP majority a comfortable one with plenty of breathing room. He will vote to repeal Obamacare, and his opponent would vote to keep it.
3. We need to elect Rick Hill as governor. States will have some discretion in implementing provisions of Obamacare, and we need someone who will stand strong with a conservative Republican legislature. We know from the fact that AG Steve Bullock refused to participate in the lawsuit against Obamacare that he supports it. We just don't need any more of that in the governor's office.
4. We need to elect Tim Fox as Montana Attorney General. Republicans and conservative-leaning independents in this state have for too long had a tendency to treat the AG office as a "gimme" for the Democrats, who always want it more badly than we do. There may not be more lawsuits challenging this or that aspect of Obamacare (and other items of federal overreach,) but if they do happen, I want Montana's AG being a part of it. (Living mentally in the 19th century and pretending that the Copper Kings are still running Montana doesn't count.)
In short, we just have to win this fall, here in Montana and all across the country. Elections have consequences.
This isn't to say that Democrats are universally willing to set aside careers in the private sector to run for office, but it is to say that someone genuinely committed to the general priorities of the left will have formed habits of mind that think of government service as a high calling, if not the highest of callings. That just isn't true of most people who are genuinely committed to the general priorities of the right, especially absent some sort of family tradition of political involvement and public service.
While both parties regularly succeed in putting up candidates who have two of the three, sometimes getting them elected when the political tides are ebbing or flowing in the right direction, it is nice when the stars align and we get what appears to be the total package. Such seems to be the case for Montana Republicans in our U.S. Congressional race, where we have Steve Daines as what the Billings Gazette calls "the prohibitive favorite" in the upcoming three-way GOP primary. There is plenty of time between now and the fall to address the issues in this campaign, so for now just a few political comments.
Montana Republicans got to know Daines during the last gubernatorial campaign, when he was State Sen. Roy Brown's running mate in what both had to know would be a long-shot campaign to unseat Gov. Schweitzer. While the ticket went down to defeat, they ran a hard-working campaign that kept the Schweitzer campaign and the Montana Democratic Party busy enough to prevent them from dumping all of their resources into state legislative races. The end result was that the GOP re-captured the State Senate, and held the Democrats to a tie in the House -- given the national flood in 2008 that swept Democrats into every office from President down to the proverbial county dog-catcher, all Republicans were swimming upstream, and indeed, the Montana Senate was, as we recall, the only state legislative body in the entire country to change hands from Democrat to Republican that year, while every other state either saw Republicans losing control of legislative bodies or simply clinging to an existing majority.
Daines and Roy Brown deserve a great deal of credit for that accomplishment by Montana Republicans. They were linemen, throwing hard blocks that allowed the running back to sneak through for a first down. It is therefore not surprising that, unlike our wide-open governor's race, no-one of stature in the Montana GOP jumped into the race to challenge Daines for the seat being vacated by Congressman Rehberg. Daines got a nice fundraising jump by initially declaring for the U.S. Senate race against Sen. Tester, then stepping aside when Rehberg announced his intent to run -- this was a politically sophisticated move that bodes well for Daines's ability to navigate political waters. It would be naive to suggest that anyone stayed out of the race through respectful deference to Daines, but the Republican bench is not particularly deep with people with recent experience in running a high-profile state-wide campaign. Daines had that experience -- plus the right stuff, and one suspects that other would-be Congressmen decided to take a pass on trying to take him on in a primary.
Presumably if there were any skeletons in the closet, the thorough Schweitzer campaign would have rattled them out 4 years ago, so what remains at this point is for Daines to campaign tirelessly through to the November election, the results of which, one hopes, will give him the opportunity to prove to Montanans that he has the right stuff where it matters most -- representing our state with distinction in Washington.
