In an effort to give Seventh String Hunt a fighting chance, Montana Democrats are going after Congressman Rehberg’s record in the House. In doing so, they appear to be willing to lie and distort the record at every turn.
Now, Jack at Western Word points out that they are accusing him of not supporting the G.I. Bill even though he’s signed on as a cosponsor.
Of course, it did not take long for Montana Democrats to use veterans, once again, as a political tool. They sent out a “Demo Digest” e-mail telling folks that Rehberg did not support the bill “last year.” According to Senator Webb’s website, the bill in the House, H.R.5740, was only introduced in the House on April 9, 2008. Rehberg signed on as a co-sponsor April 24. Also, according to Senator Jim Webb’s website, the same bill in the senate, S-22, introduced on 01/04/07 was not co-sponsored by Senator Baucus until June 12, 2007, and by Senator Tester until March 22, 2007. So, it took Rehberg only 15 days to sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill, where it took Tester about 77 days and Baucus about 159 days.
Undoubtedly, Max Baucus’ army of campaign workers is digging through the thousands of votes looking for anything they can find to attack Rehberg. The best they can find so far, apparently, is that he doesn’t support the bills he votes for and cosponsors.
Attention Montana Democrats: Please stop lying to the people you hope to represent.
Seventh-string candidate Jim Hunt is earning his billing as an underdog. Lately, he’s been going after Republican Chairman and Rehberg Chief of Staff Erik Iverson.
But Hunt on Tuesday went on the offensive and Iverson was in his sights. Iverson, Rehberg’s chief of staff, came under fire when he was elected chairman of the Montana Republican Party. Hunt said Tuesday he saw no reason for Iverson to be based in Montana when there was a pile of work to be done in Washington, D.C.
I’ve already covered Iverson v. Hunt, Round 1 where Iverson set the record straight on Children’s Health Insurance. Hunt is outmatched against Iverson, let alone Rehberg. But the attack above is baffling.
Is Hunt actually going after Rehberg and Iverson for being based in Montana as opposed to Washington, DC? We know that Rehberg doesn’t even rent an apartment in DC (he sleeps on the couch in his Congressional Office). The fact that his Chief of Staff is based in Montana is a good thing. How better to represent the people of Montana than to live among them? Somehow for Hunt, proximity to the constituents that Rehberg represents is a bad?
Maybe Hunt is learning the wrong lessons from Senator Max Baucus who sold his house in Montana to move out to Washington, DC and doesn’t even own in Montana (unless you count the bedroom he owns in his mom’s house).
Jim Hunt has been in the race for 2 months and he’s already Gone Washington.
Back before Big Sky Cairn was even a twinkle in my eye, when the “Dextrasphere” was still new and growing, conservative blogs in Montana faced a bout of dishonesty amongst their own. A blog called Montana Pundit was correctly accused of plagiarism by Shane Mason. They way conservatives bloggers responded when it became clear that they were being lied to by Hagen was one of the reasons I eventually decided to throw myself in with their lot. The infant Dextrasphere responded by removing the site from their Dextra feed and disavowing the author - even though he was “one of their own.” Integrity, for them, rose above partisan loyalty. The Dextra policed its own and Montana Pundit is now an internet ghost town.
I want to pose a question for the left-leaning blogs in Montana: What role do you believe that integrity plays in blogging and what measures are you willing to take to preserve it? Are you willing to castigate one of your own for lying?
The subject I’m about to breech has already been discussed by Missoulapolis, Rabid Sanity and Electric City Weblog but I’m interested in what, if any, response this situation invokes from the left-leaning blogs. How dearly do you hold the integrity of your associations?
I commented before about how irrelevant Jim Hunt’s first-quarter fundraising was. What I failed to mention was that the small margin of victory Jim Hunt managed to achieve was also in a quarter that saw both major Democrat presidential candidates visit Montana - a banner month for the Party. Given this, Hunt’s numbers look more anemic than ever.
Expect Jim Hunt’s camp to come out ecstatic about out-raising Denny Rehberg in last quarter’s fundraising (is that article title a typo?). Certainly the Democrats will try to spin this as a sign that the tide has turned and Jon Tester Jim Hunt is going to send that bumbling Republican Conrad Burns Denny Rehberg packing in 2008.
Truth be told, though remember Kennedy did pretty well against Rehberg in his first quarter too, but his fundraising dropped off after that. Once your regulars max out - which they are going to do no matter what - every new dollar becomes harder to raise. It’s a bit like selling Cutco Knives - once you burn through the family and close friends - who are more or less obligated to buy a set of knives - the sales get a bit tougher.
We’ll see how Hunt does next quarter. Especially with realists in the Democrat Party saying Denny’s around until he chooses to leave in 2012 and optimists saying he may be defeated as early as 2010. Yeah, people are going to be flocking to give this lost-cause a chunk of their hard-earned money.
I’ll say it now for the record, I think Matt Singer is the most gifted political mind in the Sinestrasphere. His post on the possible Tester vs. Rehberg matchup in 2012 is certainly worth a read, if for no other reason than the double meaning of this line:
Montana Headlines is already previewing what could be the heavyweight match of the decade: a 2012 U.S. Senate battle between Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Dennis Rehberg.
Too easy. Let’s just say that Senator Tester is a “heavyweight” in only one meaning of the word and leave it at that.
What’s more interesting is that like Art Noonan and senior Democrat Strategists, Matt Singer’s commentary seems to assume that Congressman Denny Rehberg will be a viable political candidate - a “heavyweight” - in 2012. Read between the lines and Matt Singer is acknowledging that it’s unlikely he’ll lose in 2008 or 2010. To be fair, he first refers to this match-up as “a good chance” but later refers to it in the simple future tense using “will” which removes the previously applied conditional.
Poor Jim Hunt. What’s next? A Rehberg endorsement from his Mom?
On a related note, I wonder if, by 2012, Tester will have secured that seat on the Appropriations Committee that Montana was promised… Somehow I doubt it; not a lot of first-term Senators on that Committee and like I said, Tester isn’t exactly a political heavyweight. He’s already served his purpose - no need to pander to Montana anymore.
I’ve commented on this before - the inacurate portrayal of voting records by Montana Democrats in an attempt to tie Congressman Denny Rehberg to President George W. Bush.
The Gazette has made this point (again).
U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., is getting political flak this election year over his voting record, criticized by Democrats as a yes man for President Bush and Republican policies in general.
A look at 16 key U.S. House votes in 2007 shows Rehberg siding with the president and fellow Republicans on two-thirds of those votes - and generally against them on the other third.
And this…
Rehberg said criticizing him as a Bush yes man appears to be a national “cookie-cutter campaign” drawn up by Democratic strategists in Washington, D.C., and recommended to Democratic challengers nationwide.
“He’s trying to fool Montana voters, and they’re not going to be fooled,” Rehberg said of Hunt. “These kind of charges just don’t work.”
I commented on this story before. There’s a lot of good stuff there. I mean a lot. Go read it. Even if you already read it. It’s sort of like Moby Dick - a new meaning at every reading. Inspiring.
Anyway, it’s also interesting because the part of the story that makes it fair journalism - the entire section dedicated to Montana Democrat’s spinmeistering. From it, we can catch a glimpse at what The Democrat Machine has in store for 2008 (and beyond?).
Rehberg’s biggest vulnerability, Democrats say, is his pro-war, pro-Bush record and lack of legislative initiative. He’s voted in lock step with the Bush Administration and fellow Republicans 92 percent of the time, according to the Washington Post, including votes on major issues like the federal budget, tax cuts, and the Iraq War.
This meme is likely to manifest itself quite a bit because if the man is popular you just have tie him to someone that’s not popular. That’s the politics of personal destruction that the Montana Democrats perfected with Burns in 2006, and they’re polishing up their picks to take out another bull.
Trouble is, the varas aren’t sticking, and the bull as strong as it ever was as their neophyte mariachi enters the arena.
I had some misgivings about Rob Harper and the Missoula Independent after a pretty unfair hit-piece about Erik Iverson. But the recent story, Can this man be beaten? is actually very fair which of course makes it seem tremendously bias to people used to left-wing bias in Montana reporting. Pogie’s outrage would be a lot more convincing, of course, if it wasn’t Democrats saying that Rehberg was so darn strong.
Kudos to Rob for having the guts to tell a story that even Montana Democrats know. Denny Rehberg is tough to beat and Jim Hunt isn’t the one to beat him. So while Noonan is thinking 2010, other Senior Democratic strategists don’t think they’ll have a chance at the House seat until 2012.
With pre-imminent name recognition, impeccable political savvy, and a formidable grassroots organization that’s 25 years in the making, Rehberg has evolved into a political machine so robust the Democrats rightly wonder if they’ve got any chance of beating him now, or any time in the near future. Some say a Demo overthrow might just have to wait until 2012.
Seems like something else is going on in 2012. Oh yeah, this guy will be running for his second term. I can’t help but think that Tester’s seat will be pretty attractive right around then for a guy that could probably have beaten Baucus this year if he’d thrown in his hat.
So that House seat is Denny’s until he abdicates or moves on to something bigger. And that according to Democrats. One would almost feel sorry for Jim Hunt if he wasn’t - you know - a personal injury trial lawyer.
So anyway, read the entire article. And see what some of the other Dextra bloggers had to say about it here, here and here.
Via Matt Singer, Tester has decided to forgo the normal policy of not taking sides in his own party’s primary and instead endorse Jim Hunt (who isn’t expected to beat Rehberg until 2010).
I love how Tester waxes eloquent about being an underdog. If memory serves, he was also a pretty significant underdog in his own primary against John Morrison. Lucky for him, his party didn’t jump on the front-runner’s bandwagon in the first two weeks and he was able to win the nomination and eventually the seat. I guess Tester probably realizes that 7th choice is better than 8th or 9th… although if you do the math the difference is pretty small.
As the mistakes keep mounting, Tester has one-and-out written all over him.
