Roy Brown should probably not be calling Kendall Van Dyk silly nicknames, given his vulnerability on a certain embarrassing issue that arose in his 2008 run against Schweitzer that could lead to a few nicknames of his own, such as Olive Oil Roy or Broccoli Brown.
When we talk about "Red Meat" in politics, the expression refers to a politician's support for an issue that his ravenous partisan voters crave: "red meat for the base" is an expression you might hear used to describe Denny Rehberg making a pro-Pharma vote, or Schweitzer supporting universal healthcare.
But in Roy Brown's case, the red meat is anything but red meat. It's tempting to dismiss the "Brown is a Vegetarian" press from 2008 as a bunch of silliness, but behind the silliness there is an interesting political question as to whether ranchers, and those who make money in the ranching economy, would base their votes on whether a candidate eats meat or not. Roy got less than a third of the vote against Schweitzer. Did the story about him being a vegetarian (or is he vegan?) have any effect on the outcome of the race, because it hindered his ability to shore up his base vote. The GOP base is a meat-eating lot, and one of the stereotypes Republicans love to play up is the image of Democrats as hippy, vegan, fruit-and-nut-eating liberal voters from Missoula. So when a conservative standard-bearer has to fight to clear his name of the outrageous, unthinkable assertion that he is a vegetarian, it's likely that you haven't heard the end of it.
To recap what happened, Montanans awoke in the fall of 2008 to one of the most amusing declarations in Montana political history: Brown: "I am not, nor have I ever been, a vegetarian", Brown in a Billings Gazette article said it was an outrageous lie.
A neighbor of the Browns said she was invited to their house for dinner and was informed that Brown and his wife were vegetarians. She wrote an email to a few ranchers asking if they would oppose a candidate on such grounds, the email got around, and Brown sent out a press release strenuously denying the outrageous rumor.
Or sort of.
He said he "was not, nor had he ever been" a vegetarian. But then he said that he had been a vegetarian, but only for a year and as a show of support for an ill family member who couldn't eat meat. Then, in a little-noticed paragraph of a profile-piece on Brown a few weeks after that, a family member was quoted as saying that he is practically "a vegetarian." The link has expired but I've posted the story in the comments so you can see the source. And then there was the pathetic photo Roy posted of himself, on his campaign website, sitting in front of a big plate of steak. Publicitiy stunts are certainly not Roy's thing.
Stay tuned to the Billings senate race, to see if beef is what's for dinner in the Van Dyk/Brown face-off.
Imagine this - you're been an elected politician for over a decade. You get a call from a reporter who is writing his first story about your current campaign. Do you, (a.) talk a little bit about what you've done for the folks you represent; or (b.) do you revert back to negative tactics you've used in your most recent campaign (a campaign that set records for ineptitude and failure)?
If your answer is (b.), don't be surprised if voters start asking, "What the heck has that guy been doing?" And saying, "Maybe it's time for him to get out of the way."
The Gazette's Tom Lutey has some early coverage of what is shaping up to be the premier legislative race this election cycle - the battle between Kendall Van Dyk and Roy Brown in Billings' State Senate District 25.
While Van Dyk talks about his accomplishments in three short years...
Van Dyk likes his chances of appealing to moderates. In his last legislative session, he crafted a bipartisan bill to settle the disputes over stream access between property owners and river users. It was the first stream access bill to pass through the Legislature in 25 years. He also won bipartisan support for a bill to grant certain therapies for autistic children.
Roy Brown jumps to the low road (and doesn't mention one, single thing that he's done)...
Brown is getting the jump on nicknames.
"I'm not afraid of Tax Hike Van Dyk," he said.
Many Republicans I know (the smart class that have run and won statewide elections) were embarrassed by the campaign that Roy ran last year for Governor (and not just because he lost 50+ counties and ran even with Bob Kelleher.) They're embarrassed because his campaign lacked any substance, blamed everyone else but himself for his problems and went on silly attack threads that showed him to be weak.
Big Oil reaped record-setting profits this quarter, thanks to rising gas prices. According to the New York Times, Exxon-Mobil made $11.68 billion this quarter, an increase of 14 percent.
In other news, economic growth was weaker this quarter than expected. Experts guess that whatever growth we did experience this quarter was mostly the result of emergency stimulus packages, and, as "the bracing tonic of the tax rebates fades, the economy could be in for another rough patch this year." Layoffs "rose sharply," unemployment claims "jumped," and workers' wages remained stagnant, despite a relatively high rate of inflation, especially at the pump.
Of course middle-class earnings and economic well-being have been stagnant, or worse, throughout the Bush years.
Recently the Montana Chamber of Commerce held a "Climate Change Dialog," entitled "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change Proposals," and featured Dr. Margo Thorning of the American Council for Capital Formation.
Given that the council has been an active lobbyist against climate change legislation since the mid-1990s and is extensively funded by Exxon, you'd expect a doom-and-gloom study about the cost of battling climate change. You'd be right.
I haven't seen the actual report, but I suspect it leaves out the already existing economic impact of having a fossil-fuel based economy. Heck, the Iraq War itself is costing taxpayers - what? -- $12 billion a month? And then there's environmental cleanup costs associated with drilling and mining for coal and oil, the cost of polluting, the billions poured into infrastructure supporting an oil-burning economy, and the subsidies for Big Energy.
And I suspect not a word was penned about the economic impact of not reacting to climate change, a hint of which we already see here in Montana as our wildfire fighting budget spins out of control, hampering the Forest Service's ability to actually manage our country's forests.
Thorning and the American Council for Capital Formation are defending existing and obsolete industries from extinction, and drumming up support to halt meaningful innovation, progress, and long-term sustainability of our environment and, yes, our economy.
At least, the AP's analysis indicates to them that the oil industry is winking-and-nodding its way to higher profits by tinkering with supply.
This isn't really that incredible. Big corporations are doing what they can to make money? Shocker. What's disappointing is the relatively weak government response to these types of shenanigans.
