| I don't really want to make this election all about Derek Skees - but, man! He's just been popping up in the news all the time, connected to all sorts of crazy campaign tidbits!
Now Montana Cowgirl and James Conner have been doing an excellent job of following Skees' campaign, but I thought I'd provide a quick summary of the madness:
-- In a Mother Jones' profile of Semitool tycoon Ray Thompson's bankrolling of the "grassroots" Tea Party movement, it was revealed Skees - "one of the tea party's most radical candidates" - was one of Thompson's beneficiaries.
-- The "dirty tricks" written up by Matt yesterday - fake endorsement phone calls by foreign phone banks designed to make the Demcratic candidate look bad - first appeared against Skees' opponent, Will Hammerquist. (Conner's post also lists some other campaign "irregularities.")
-- Skees wore a jacket emblazoned with a Confederate flag in Whitefish's Memorial Day parade, admitting his crush on the Confederacy, secession, and nullification, and holding Abraham Lincoln responsible for the Civil War, to which slavery was an unpleasant but largely unimportant side-story.
-- In the same post, James Conner reveals Skees' love for The 5,000-Year Leap, a right-wing propaganda tract full of historical inaccuracies authored by a 1960s Glenn-Beck embraced "right wing pariah" too radical for the John Birch Society, and whose purpose is to pave the way for an American Christian theocracy.
-- And here's why Skees apparently hearts a Christian theocracy: he was called on by God to pursue political office. (No doubt he'll get a plum position in the New World Order.)
-- In a Whitefish Pilot profile of Skees, the candidate reiterated his love of the Confederacy and nullification, and denied association to the "kooks" at the recent Liberty Convention, saying, "The John Birchers would call {them} a 'tangent'...someone who distracts from the real issues." Because we all know John Birchers aren't kooks, and nullification is a "real" issue.
Maybe it's me, but doesn't Skees make a nice illustration of the mania that's swept over American politics since Barack Obama was elected president? Here's a Glenn-Beck fueled far right conspiracy theorist running for political office in a local election on national issues...
Here's Tom Junod's explanation of right-wing "rage," the angst of the "Sore Winners":
It is one thing to listen to Sean Hannity tell his listeners, day in and day out, that they look down on you, and they think you're stupid. It is quite another to enter into a Facebook debate with an evangelical preacher of your acquaintance about the presence of God in the world - as I did a few weeks ago - and read this comment: "You and I believe many of the same things. The big difference is that you think I'm stupid." You could say that the preacher listens to too much Hannity, or too much O'Reilly, or Limbaugh, or what have you; but you'd be missing the point, which is that somewhere along the line of me having hurt his feelings. This is what you hear again and again from the Sore Winners, whether you hear it from the professional Sore Winners or the Sore Winners who happen to be your friends: the conviction that no amount of financial success, political domination, religious hegemony or cultural currency is sufficient to take away the sting of being looked down upon.
Derek Skees responding to a James Conner post criticizing Skees' ill-considered opposition to a local "dark skies ordinance":
It is a great joy of mine that in attacking me, they prove my point better than anything I could say or write: They want to tell us what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why we should listen to them in their superior understanding for what is good for us. We can't argue with them and we can't ask them why. If one of us does, they label us a "hate based extremist", or someone who wants to destroy the government, or other such nonsense. They never answer the question, they just attack the one who asks.
It's not actually about policy or ideas of government! It's about fighting back against people who feel superior to you!
Call me crazy, but I believe it's important to elect those that craft laws who have a serious approach to policy and ideas of governance, not someone who's running out of a feeling of inadequacy and subscribes to crackpot conspiracies and policies that were off the accepted political spectrum 50 years ago and fed to him by a cable-news crank.
No wonder then, according to Skees' campaign finance reporting he's received less than half of his campaign contributions from his district. According to his Schedule C5 report (which for some reason I can't upload), only 31 percent ($3455) of his contributions came from individuals in Whitefish; 46 percent ($5085) of his contributions came from individuals outside of Whitefish; 7 percent ($800) came from GOP committees, half of which came from the Stillwater Republican Central Committee based out of Absarokee; PACs accounted for 12 percent ($1370) of his contributions, nearly a quarter of which came from PACs that aren't registered in the state. Hopefully, the donation patter augurs well for the district and the outlook of the state of Montana.
(PACs that support Skees include the Montana Farm Bureau, Seattle's Plumb Creek Timber, Montana Gas & Oil, Montana Employees of Qwest, Insurance and Financial Advisors PAC, Montana Auto Dealers Association, the Houston-based oil and gas Newfield PAC, the Billings Association of Realtors' RPAC, and ExxonMobil PAC. I wonder if they're aware of Skees' views on nullification, slavery, and secession, and his divine mission...) |
