Posted: October 28, 2010 at 6:49 am

Perfect Choice for GOP Leader

The bad news about the infamous attack mailers coming from Republicans, desperately trying to link state Democrats to Obama with no evidence, is that politics has degraded into a zero-truth game. Say anything, facts are optional.

The good news is that the man behind them, Jeff Essmann the candidate for State Senator from Billings, is probably going to try to become the next senate leader. Democrats couldn’t ask for anything more. He appears to have very little political savvy. When his RLCC mailers crossed the line and prompted a fellow Republican senator to resign from the committee, Essmann made a bizarre decision to replace him with a guy who fled the state two years ago in the wake of a GOP scandal that could, had the Democrats pursued it, have resulted in state and federal charges. It is sickening. ~sniffle~ Then, when questioned about this dubious choice, Essmann refused to comment on it and instead got into a verbal rally with a reporter, making the story worse.

But beyond his questionable skills, he’s a far-right and angry-at-Schweitzer kind of guy. Every time a hot-headed, rabid right-winger like Essmann makes into leadership, the Governor and the Dems end up making a deal with a moderate faction of Rs at the end of the session, and the right wingers head home bruised, failed and looking stupid, and of course twice as angry as they were when they came to town. Sales, Brown, Lange, Keenan. The list goes on.

Posted: October 25, 2010 at 12:35 pm

Top Republican Resigns Over Negative Mail

The Ravalli Republic is reporting today that State Rep. Gary MacLaren resigned from the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, humiliated over the fact that his name appeared on mailers that the RLCC has sent out, dirtily attacking Democratic legislative candidates by absurdly trying to link them with Obama. The Flathead Memo posted a couple examples of the false mail here. (Example A,Example B)

MacLaren showed guts, apologizing personally to the candidates that were attacked for the shameful behavior of his party.

Notably, the person who heads the committee that mailed these ridiculous, over-the-top flyers is State Senator Jeff Essmann, of Billings, who distinguished himself earlier this week by attempting to derail a national business recruitment effort by the Governor.

It’s not clear how much money the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee, or RLCC has spent on these communications, but my guess is that it is around $70,000 to $100,000, given how many districts these lit-pieces have appeared in.

It’s not at all surprising that the Rs are trying to focus on Obama. State Democrats have humiliated the Montana GOP now for six years running, balancing the budget, creating huge surpluses, developing record amounts of energy, recruiting record amounts of businesses to the state, and even handing out the largest tax rebate in history. As a result, Dems now occupy all five statewide-elected positions.

Republicans don’t know how to deal with this, seem enraged by it, and need to find a way to make an argument to voters that Democrats “tax and spend” too much. So, they just lie about it, and try to claim that state candidates are somehow responsible for what Democrats in Washington are doing. They figure truth simply doesn’t matter anymore in politics, so why not just say whatever you want.

Now a senior Republican has basically admitted to the entire state that his party is engaged in a massive act of political fraud.