One has come to expect false claims and extremist rants from Ravalli County Republicans, but this time, they’ve uncorked some doozies.  This ad comes to us from Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, from a group of Tea Party Republican extremists calling themselves “Citizens for Conservative Government.”   These “citizens,” who appear to be the backers of the current slate of Republican county commission candidates, just ran an ad in the Bitterroot Star accusing a handful of volunteer citizens of costing the people of the Bitterroot Valley $725 million dollars.   What evidence did the ad site for its absurd claims?  None.

The point of the ad appears to be to promulgate tired old falsehoods to morons in hopes that  Republican candidates for the Ravalli County Commission Suzy Foss, Ron Stoltz, and Matt Kagenwisher will be elected. (Note to Ron: you might what to correct multiple spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors on your site, unless this is part of your strategy to attract TEA Partiers.)

It also appears that the newspapers in the Bitterroot Valley have no problem allowing a political PAC to run an ad with such false and outlandish nonsense. I mean seriously? An ad claims that a handful of retired Forest Service biologists and rangers costs the Bitterroot Valley almost a BILLION dollars in lost jobs and the Bitterroot Star was unable to figure out that this might be dishonest?

Below is the Friends of the Bitterroot’s response, which ran in the B-root Star as a letter to the editor, including the statement that:

The $700 million dollar figure in this misleading ad is beyond absurd and simply an excuse to repeat the tired, old scapegoating of FOB rather than recognize the reality of a slumping housing market and its effect on the timber industry nationwide.

Even the timber industry itself has reported on the slump. But to some people, the truth doesn’t seem to matter.