Big Sky Cairn

Rep Sonju from Kalispell had this editorial in the Missoulian about energy policy. It’s clear-thinking like this that makes Republicans so much better on energy policy than environmentalist-beholden Democrats - and it’s the main reason I’m so excited about soon-to-be Governor Roy Brown. He’s got a resume in the energy industry and he’s not in the pocket of the tree-hugger lobby that have been fighting for higher energy prices for decades.

Instead of short-sighted tax-policy fixes, Congress should instead be looking to a comprehensive energy policy. That policy absolutely needs to have alternative energy as a major part of the mix. It also needs to encourage ongoing conservation efforts. But the only near-term component of that comprehensive policy that can alleviate the current high energy costs is to increase the supply of readily-available energy n the proposed punitive tax-code changes actually would work against that. The obvious solution to our energy problems is to increase the ability of American companies to produce more energy.

The problem is, a lot of conservatives are acting like spoiled children who didn’t get to play with their favorite toy and so don’t want to play with any toy at all. In 2006, Montana voters foolishly replaced Burns with Tester - and in doing so handed the reigns of the United States Senate to Harry Reid and the drill-nothing Democrats. The Democrat Majority may be around for awhile, and if so, you can count on more of the bad policies that Sonju describes - increasing taxes while decreasing domestic supplies.

On the other hand, I think energy policy is quickly vaulting to the forefront of political relevance - up there with security - and unless the Democrats start separating themselves from the powerful environmental lobby, they could find themselves back in the minority in 2010.

With money tight, and everything costing more these days, I think November might find a lot of people voting on energy prices. And if that’s the case, more solutions is a lot better than the limited solutions approved by tree-huggers. Drill, drill, drill!

During the 2004 Governor’s race, my lefty friends took great pride in the fact that John Bohlinger, Schweitzer’s chosen Lieutenant, was a Republican. They lauded his five terms as a Republican state legislator. They emphasized his ties to the business community and his conservative positions on taxes and the economy. And did they mention he was a Republican?

In their minds, Bohlinger’s conservative street-cred should have been enough to ensure my vote. They believed his place on the ticket proved that Schweitzer was a bi-partisan moderate whose administration would transcend party politics and unify the state. “Brian doesn’t believe in red or blue,” one of his staffer’s told me over an M&M garbage omelette, “he just believes in Montana.”

Well, isn’t that just precious?

Schweitzer’s decision to choose Bohlinger was pure political genius. He had lost his 2000 Senate race by a small margin, and most agreed that choosing a Republican LT would move enough undecideds into the yes column to ensure a victory.  The problem would be finding a Republican who would switch sides.

Bohlinger’s career in the state legislature was admirable, but not stellar.  His name recognition wasn’t terribly high, and certainly there were Democrats who had similar if not better connections to Montana’s business community.  So despite all the rhetoric, John Bohlinger’s only unique qualifications were his party affiliation and his sweet bow ties.  Perhaps, that’s why he lists his party affiliation and not his legislative experience first on his bio.

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Republicans nominate Kelleher to challenge Baucus. Democrats nominate Driscoll to challenge Rehberg. Montana lives up to its reputation as a political black box, and many - myself included - wake up this morning wondering what just happened. So what happened?

Our friend Montana Headlines theorizes that it’s name recognition in a crowded field that pushed these candidates over the top. Jay Stevens sees protest votes. Both, I think, have a point and can explain Kelleher’s win pretty well. I want to take their thoughts and integrate them into a larger scenario. Here’s what I think happened yesterday.

I think we saw the consequence of split ticket voting on strict party line ballots.

First, Montana voters are notoriously independent, and split-ticket voting (voting simultaneously for candidates from multiple parties) is quite prevalent. It’s why, for example, Republican Conrad Burns lost on the same ticket that Republican Denny Rehberg won on in 2006. As a state, we famously buck national trends and party distinctions.

Second, the highest billed ticket in this primary was the Presidential contest between Obama and Clinton. Given the unpopularity of President Bush and the skepticism many Montana Republicans feel toward McCain, there is a sense of discouraged inevitability among many Republicans that the winner of the Democratic Primary will be the next President. Since the Republican ticket was already set, I think many Montanans who lean Republican may have voted on the Democrat ticket in order to voice their opinion on this important question. Some probably voted for Hillary to continue the in-fighting on the left (Operation Chaos). Some probably voted for Obama because they really like him and will vote for him in the General Election. Most, I’m guessing, voted for Obama because he’s a much better option in their minds than Clinton and they don’t want to be stuck with another Clinton Administration. It was the importance of this race, and the fact that there weren’t any other hotly contested primaries among Republicans that made voting on the Democrat Ticket attractive.

Third, the Republicans who voted for the Democrat Presidential Candidate were locked into voting Democrat for the remainder of the ballot. Congressman Rehberg is still popular in Montana, especially among Republicans who may have selected what they considered to be the weaker of the two significant candidates in order to help ensure his seat was unthreatened.

Fourth, the Republican exodus to the Democrat ballot (again, not for insidious Operation Chaos reasons) left the Republican ticket vulnerable to greater influence from a smaller number of people with an axe to grind (see Jay Stevens’ analysis). Coupled with a crowded field in which no candidate was able to get in front of the pack (see Montana Headlines’ take above) an overall minority of voters (36%) was able to nominate the winning candidate as the majority of voters (64%) split their votes among the remaining candidates.

And pre-emptively, no, I don’t have any hard proof. Like most Montanans I know, I’m still scratching my head. This is my guess.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of Project Vote Smart, a non-partisan clearinghouse for political candidates’ views and positions on issues. This nationally recognized and appreciated source is based right here in Philipsburg, Montana.

According to a 2007 Pew Research Institute Study (cited in Congressman Rehberg’s Op-Ed at MTPolitics), more and more people are using the internet to research where candidates stand on the issues that are important to them. Viewing issue statements on official or political websites run by the candidates is useful to a certain extent, acknowledging that no intelligent candidate is going to include controversial positions and that they’ll always shade things to favor their views. That’s where a non-partisan clearinghouse of issues like Project Vote Smart plays a unique and important role in our democracy. They ask all candidates the same questions and standardize their responses for fair comparisons on the issues that matter. It’s a monumental undertaking:

Picture this: thousands of citizens (conservative and liberal alike) working together, spending endless hours researching the backgrounds and records of thousands of political candidates and elected officials to discover their voting records, campaign contributions, public statements, biographical data (including their work history) and evaluations of them generated by over 100 competing special interest groups. Every election these volunteers test each candidate’s willingness to provide citizens with their positions on the issues they will most likely face if elected through the Political Courage Test. (emphasis added)

Congressman Denny Rehberg and Gubernatorial Candidate Roy Brown - both Republicans - completed the Political Courage Test. They answered the survey and put their views out there in the public sphere. They have nothing to hide.

Max Baucus, Brian Schweitzer and Jim Hunt - the big ticket Democrats in 2008 - chose to ignore the survey. Montana Democrats have claimed over and over again that this election should be about issues. They have have made a habit of misrepresenting Republican views these issues. So why are they so afraid of telling Montanans where they stand on those issues that they claim are so vital? This is especially insulting since Project Vote Smart is based in Montana so the Political Courage Test is literally coming from the constituents these candidates hope to represent.

Why does it matter? Project Vote Smart has this to say:

At a time when Americans are increasingly frustrated with the attack advertising and empty rhetoric of many campaigns, the need for this relevant information has never been greater. The public integrity of candidates and the quality of their campaigns can be viewed, in part, as a measurement of their willingness to provide their prospective employers (voters) with this information during a campaign, the point when voters need the most help and when the candidates are asking for their vote.

Join me in urging Senator Baucus, Governor Schweitzer and Seventh String Hunt to answer the questions posed to them by Montanans about where they stand on the issues that matter. There’s just no excuse for not putting their views out there for public discussion.

Republican Denny Rehberg sleeps on his couch, holds campaign events at bars with animal heads on the wall and raises his money in Montana.

Democrat Max Baucus lives in Georgetown, spends thousands of dollars at swank DC restaurants, drives a new BMW and raises his money everywhere but Montana.

Democrat Jim Hunt… well he wants to live in Washington, DC and doesn’t really raise much money from anywhere.

Why isn’t the media talking about where the millions of dollars that Baucus is going to dump into Montana races comes from?  Since that Missoulian article (linked above), we haven’t heard a thing about where Baucus is raising his money.  Since it’s going to have a pretty big impact on the political face of Montana, I think it’s a story worth telling.

When I recently went to the library to do some research into the climate fears of past decades, I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. Part of me was looking for historic validation of my skepticism. What I found - and poorly transcribed for you - fit the bill. I precedent. It wasn’t proof against catastrophic man-made global climate change - I don’t think such proof can exist for an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Instead, it was a comfort-zone for healthy skepticism rooted in history. If warnings of doom are not unique to this “crisis” - and past warnings of doom proved exaggerated - there is justification for doubt.

In a recent op-ed, Bozeman Senator Joe Balyeat put it much better than I did.

Those who are slow to embrace global warming doomsayers aren’t ignorant, they’re just skeptical. Consider my personal history. In the mid-1970s, in the course of a two-and-a-half-year, straight-A sprint through college, one class assignment was to write a paper and speech on Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb.” At the time, my religious, short-term, pessimistic world view fit in nicely with Ehrlich’s stark prediction of global calamity due to overpopulation. So I easily garnered an “A” for the paper, adding true-believer devotion to such Ehrlich predictions as these: England will not exist in the year 2000. Sixty-five million Americans will starve to death in the 1980s. By 1999 America’s population will drop to 22.6 million. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death, and Earth’s 5 billion population will starve back to 2 billion by 2025.

All of these predictions, of course, proved embarrassingly false, and I now live with a personal skepticism grounded in my own prior discredited beliefs.

I’ve since written two books documenting the errors of religious cult doomsday-ism. While most political liberals would applaud my efforts to expose the excesses of religious doomsayers, these same people excoriate my “stupidity” when I argue that similar healthy skepticism should also be applied to secular doomsayers; particularly when secular doomsayers can eventually perhaps add the power of intrusive government coercion to their social agenda.

If I’m skeptical even with respect to my own personal decisions, imagine how much more skeptical I am as a public official, when making decisions binding not just me, not just all my fellow Montanans, but future generations of Montanans as well. Before I subject them to massive new regulatory burdens and costly new government “solutions,” excuse me for being a little bit slow to drink the “global warming” Koolaid.

To those who’ve already imbibed the apocalyptic arguments, my question is this: What is your agenda, condescension or consensus? You can’t have both. If your goal is merely to have a partisan political hammer to pound against me, then keep pounding on the “global warming” theory. But if you truly want bipartisan cooperation to achieve a better future for us and our descendents, let me suggest an alternative message: sustainable energy use.

Some will challenge the comparisons between religion and science. Science, they will argue, operates on a different level from religion - to which I respond the frailty in either system is the human application. To them, I pose this question: what makes this crisis different from fears of an eminent ice age or Malthus-level overpopulation? Science has always given us catastrophic scenarios of doom - and to date, none have been true. What makes this one any different?

Kudos to Balyeat for having the guts to take a stand.

Seriously, props to Jay Stevens for the national attention. It must be exhilarating to get that kind of recognition. I mean, to have Howard Dean - Mr. Montana himself - recognize the hard work of being a lefty blogger along with 49 other official state blogs (sucks to be in states 51-57 I guess) has got to be exciting. I’m sure Dean is a regular reader - you can tell from the way his statement doesn’t seem scripted at all. I wonder if it was the 49th or the 50th one he did that day.

I mean getting a shout out of national significance - from an important place like Washington, DC, the home of Senator Max Baucus, Mr. BMW himself, is a remarkable accomplishment, so well done.

Of course, to share in your celebration we’ll all forget that we know that national Democrat Leaders will say anything to dupe Montanans into supporting them.

I guess we’ll just have to settle for the insignificant opinions of actual Montanans like Congressman Denny Rehberg and Gubernatorial Candidate Roy Brown. Ooooh the sour grapes taste awful!

YEEEAAHH!!!

Erik Iverson and the Montana GOP took a lot of flack for their February 5 presidential caucus. Most of that came from Montana Democrats expressing their outrage at the “elitist” approach of the caucus. But the chickens are coming home to roost - although the Media is sort of missing the boat on this one.

Roy Brown credits the caucus with increasing interest and participation in the Republican Party at all levels.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown said the state party’s Feb. 5 presidential caucus helped spur more interest early in politics, which he said will help statewide GOP candidates like him.

We’ve personally heard similar stories of interest among Republicans here in Missoula. Republicans who didn’t vote in the caucus, but who felt that they had a role to play - and continue to play in the process. Participation in a democracy is about more than the simple act of voting and oversimplifying civic duty to casting a ballot is patronizing.

Remember, participation in the caucus didn’t require any money or official title. That’s an important distinction because the Montana Democrats have been touting their party’s primary plebiscite as less elitist than the Montana Republican caucus. Let’s look at the Democrat’s version of inclusion:

Meet the Presidential Candidates in Butte (if you were lucky enough to be one of the few that could afford to buy tickets and have a computer and have an internet connection and not have a job that prevented you from logging on at 9 am exactly or a well connected friend to give you tickets).

Meet the Hillary in Missoula (if you can afford the $250 minimum donation).

Every vote counts the same to decide how Montana’s 16 delegates vote (unless you’re one of 8 Superdelagate from Montana whose votes will count for roughly 100,000 times more than the average Montana vote).

It’s 3 am. I’m not sure “elitism” is a grenade the Montana Democrats want to be throwing…