| Take this with a grain of salt, because my Republican sources are few and far between, but I have been hearing a lot of chatter out of Helena that Republican House members are suffering from a bad case of buyer's remorse with their choice for Speaker. It turns out that Sideshow Scott Sales may have been good enough for a vote cast in anger following what appeared to be a failure of traditional Republican leadership to win back the Montana House.
The problem is that once Sideshow and Rep. Lange got ahold of the mic, they just couldn't figure out whether they were declaring war on Democrats, trashing voters, or offering to be conciliatory. And those messages are all a bit contradictory.
Anyways, my sources tell me that Amateur Hour is about to end. A large group of Republican House members are pretty close to begging Democrats to save them from their misery and what would prove to be a political implosion for their party in T-minus 23 months.
The Dems are being hesitant to cut a deal too quickly. The reality of the situation is that Sideshow, Lange, Sinrud, and Jore can only cause so many problems -- we control the Senate and the Governor's office and 1/3 of their caucus is ready to flee on every major vote. A deal cut too quickly is unlikely to mean much.
I think it's smart for the Dems to wait it out a bit for a few reasons. First, bipartisanship can be wonderful, but the sort of political angling bipartisanship that altered the Speaker race in '05 and that is being proposed this year isn't real bipartisanship. It's political angling posing as bipartisanship and all it does is move the political fights from one venue to another. Second, the Republican caucus made a really bad decision and even if 10 Republicans want to reverse that, it isn't the Democrats' job to bail them out by backing their preferred Speaker candidate. If the Republican caucus as a whole wants to come back to Saneville, they are free to hop the next train. But I'm not super-enthused about my party playing Designated Driver for the GOP. Third, if this meant anything big time policy-wise, I'd say forget the rest of this, the state is more important. But unless I'm reading the tea leaves as badly as Sideshow, I don't think this will have major policy implications.
Either way, the political junkie in me is awfully curious to see what happens next. |
