Wow. Rep. Mike Lange is going after Max Baucus on the war. There's not a lot of substance to his charges, unless Lange wants to announce his support of Reid-Feingold. But it's worth noting that the only Republican running for U.S. Senate right now is vehemently opposed to staying in Iraq.
As many of you know, disgraced Republican Mike Lange entered the Montana Senate race last Friday. Why on earth did he announce on a Friday? So he could enjoy all that sexy Saturday press that no one would read, of course. It's like Lange said, 'Bob Schaffer in Colorado had a stumbling, embarrassing entry into his Senate race. Let's copy that!'
Then, earlier this week, Republican rancher Rex Rammell announced that he would be entering the Idaho Senate race, regardless of primary challengers, and seemingly expecting a Larry Craig retirement and a Jim Risch entry (with which I agree). Anyway, it appears that, despite Rammell being far less known in Idaho than Lange is in Montana, and despite the fact that Rammell will be a primary underdog while Lange could very well be the Republican nominee-to-be, it seems that Rammell got more positive press for his Senate race entry than Lange did for his.
Makes Lange look pretty bad by comparison and his nascent campaign pretty inept. Just food for thought.
In October 2005 Republican lobbyist Leo Giacometto hosted a NASCAR Fundraiser in Georgia. For $2,500 a pop donors received breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton and a day at Atlanta's famed Motor Speedway. Giacometto, a former chief of staff to Montana GOP Senator Conrad Burns--disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's favorite senator--has been involved in a number of tawdry political scandals, raising questions about why any elected official would want to be associated with him. But the most interesting thing about his NASCAR party was the identity of the guest of honor: not a fellow Republican but the Democratic senator from his home state, Max Baucus. To Giacometto, Baucus, the ranking Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, was not a partisan adversary but a useful and valuable ally. "I believe that he's good for what I believe in," the lobbyist told the Billings Gazette.
Today, in the aftermath of the Democratic sweep of Congress, Baucus is still one of corporate America's favorite Democrats. As chair of the Finance Committee, he counts among his friends and political supporters a Who's Who of bankers, oilmen, ranchers, pharmaceutical lobbyists and Wall Street executives. He's particularly close to Montana's sole billionaire, industrialist Dennis Washington, a major donor to the Republican Party whose business interests Baucus has promoted over the years. The business community, in turn, expresses admiration for Baucus in its usual style--by writing big checks.
Note: The following is a general overview of a new blog I am working on called Progressive Wave. It is a re-post from Daily Kos. Simply put, we are looking for a large number of bloggers to cover our new representatives and senators in Congress. For Montana, we'd appreciate any bloggers who would be interested in covering Jon Tester. If you're interested, please post here or email me at my address in my profile. Thanks!
It's great to see citizen journalism in action. A project here at Daily Kos is picking up steam - where we 'adopt' a congressional committee and keep tabs on their progress. It's a great idea, and by all means one that we should encourage; after all, a democracy thrives when its citizens participate actively within it.
Before the election I was thinking of taking a similar principle and applying it to our newly-elected Congresspersons and Senators in the U.S. Congress. Many of our newly-elected representatives come from extremely close races (such as Patrick Murphy in PA-08 or Joe Courtney in CT-02), or they are in areas that will make it a challenge for them to be re-elected every time they are up (Nick Lampson in TX-22 or Nancy Boyda in KS-02). While the Netroots-endorsed list has only included challengers, it's inevitable that we will have to begin defending our incumbents, beginning in 2008.
The Associated Press had an interesting story a couple days ago about the National Republican Senatorial Committee becoming a whipping boy for blame following pretty disastrous Election Day results -- especially the narrow defeats here in Montana and in Virginia.
The strangest thing about the article, though, is that it begins with Burns saying the NRSC's ads hurt him more than they helped him -- an allegation that says that in the .7% race, Burns thinks Liddy Dole basically cost him the election. But other critics think the NRSC didn't do enough in Montana, failing to get back on the air here quickly enough.
This juxtaposition goes unmentioned by the reporter -- all grouped together simply as the NRSC gets the blame. It reveals a few things, though:
Politics is still more art than science. There is little agreement among the practitioners of its dark arts over what works, what helps, and what doesn't.
Campaigns like to blame party committees. Party committees like to blame independent committees. Independent committees like to blame candidates and parties. And voters get damn sick of all of 'em.
Success has a 1,000 fathers. Defeat is an orphan. No surprise here.
In presidential elections, the state of Montana is as red as a ripe tomato. Yet Democrats currently control the governorship, the legislature, and both Senate seats. Sen. Max Baucus is insurmountably popular, but if he were to drop out for some unexpected reason, Republican congressman Denny Rehberg might have a good opportunity to succeed him.
Other than the fact that we don't control the legislature, this is basically true. Here' the thing -- I wouldn't bet on Max dropping out. It's still interesting to read that D.C. conventional wisdom is becoming that challenging Max is a fool's errand. The same can be said of challenging Brian. We'll see how many fools the Republican Party has.
The cart before the horse circumvention of his duty as a US Senator is all the more remarkable considering that last time Gates was nominated by a president named Bush, Baucus voted no.
Without public hearings to demonstrate that Gates has changed, the question then becomes whether it is in fact Baucus who has changed over the last 15 years. Was Baucus right in 1991 to conclude that the senate wouldn't be able to hold accountable a CIA Director who was a central figure in Iran-Contra? Or is Baucus right now to trust Bush and have such a little focus on accountability that he is signaling support before the first hearing?
SurveyUSA released such a new poll and it shows that popularity for Baucus skyrocketed after the senator was seen campaigning with progressive populists Jon Tester and Brian Schweitzer.
Among all voters, Baucus' net approval increased by 18 points. His net support among Democrats increased 29 points and he netted a 20 points gain among Republicans.
Will Baucus stick with Gov. Schweitzer and Jon Tester when it comes to progressive teamwork and economic populism?
