Daily Archives: November 7, 2008

The Glass is Half-Full?

We knew it was coming. The Monday morning quarterbacking started early Wednesday morning after the election. Today, I’ve decided to take a few snaps from center, so I plead guilty to what is written below.

By most accounts, the Republicans, the GOP, and the Conservatives – whatever they are calling themselves got their butts kicked by the Democrats, the Liberals, and the Progressives, who can call themselves winners in 2008.

Calm down my friends. As Hannity says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Of course, Hannity has a job for the next few years bashing the liberals, so it’s all good for him – he was not voted out of office.

Here in Montana, the final nail in the coffin happened yesterday when Secretary of State Brad Johnson was defeated by Linda McCulloch by about 4400 votes. Speaking of nails in coffins, I believe the first nail was hammered when Bob Kelleher ran as a Republican and the party faithful did not disown him very much until he won the primary, which was too late. They thought he would never win the primary. His opponent, Max Baucus, had 11 million dollars to spend on his friends. PARTY!

I believe the second nail was the voter challenges that backfired when the GOP only challenged voters in Democratic-leaning counties. The Democrats flipped the table on this and paraded military members and college students out in front of the media and cried voter suppression. It worked.

Still another misfire that I believed hurt the GOP cause was not having McCain or Palin swing through Montana for one brief stop for one brief hour or so to rally the faithful and help the candidates down the ballot. Sure McCain won Montana, but I believe a short stop could have helped other GOP candidates. Heck, even Todd, the first dude, might have helped.

One of my friends called me late yesterday and said, “Every freaking state-wide seat in Montana was won by the Democrats, except Rehberg’s. What the heck is up with that?”

My response was, “Calm down. Go hunting. Take a walk. Watch some TV and see what’s on besides Hannity and Colmes and O’Reilly. We need you ready for 2010.” People like my friend need a little re-programming.

I also read some remarks from a disgruntled right-winger who had commented on a blog or in the comment section of a newspaper saying something like everyone working for the National and State GOP should submit their resignations by the end of the week. I think that was the same one that listed the results, which showed something like the GOP was zero for five in state government races, one for three on the Public Service Commission races and 50/50 (maybe) in the Montana House. Then there’s losing the White House, losing seats in the U.S. Senate and several in the U.S. House. It’s enough for some folks to start drinking from their half-full glass.

But, for the folks who want their glasses to be half-full, here’s the good news: Montana’s U.S. House seat is still in GOP hands, and the GOP gained three seats in the state senate.

These results are not exactly a résumé builder.

Unfortunately, there’s no mercy rule in politics. You can’t tap out. In 2006 and more recently in 2008, the Democrats were better at grinding their opponents into the ground, then kicking them again and again. That’s not to say that the Republicans did not offer a fine slate of candidates – they did. I voted for most of them, did some consulting for a couple, and wrote letters to the editor for some others.

Fortunately, these things have a way of working out. In a few years the tide will turn. History proves that. So my conservative friends, lick your wounds, find out what worked and make it better. Find out what did not work and find a better way. Bring in new people with new ideas and get rid of the dead weight. Open the tent flaps a little more, because there’s another major election in two years.

Defeated

On November 4, voters in Cascade County overwhelmingly defeated a bond proposal to keep the land near the Malmstrom AFB runway free from development. The proposal failed miserably 63%-37%.

I had endorsed the proposal. The Great Falls Tribune did a story today with the headline, “What’s next for property near runway?” Several supposedly in-the-know local officials chimed in with their opinions.

In my humble opinion, if this bond issue had passed then it would have sent a signal to the leaders of the Air Force, the Department of Defense and the Obama Administration that Cascade County Montana residents were open for more military missions.

Since it did not pass, it probably sent the opposite message to those in position to send a new flying mission to Malmstrom. That’s a chance the backers of Malmstrom had to take. The defeat of the bond issue also sent a negative message to any private company that may be looking at Malmstrom’s runway for use in the future.

To be quite honest, Malmstrom’s future looks very dim today. In 2007, the Air Force decided to take one-quarter of the missile mission. Along with that came the loss of several hundred personnel assigned to the base and cuts to the number of new homes being built for base personnel, which harmed local businesses.

It is unclear how the Obama Administration will handle our land-based nuclear missions since he has only started to get the highly classified briefings about the happenings in the world. While running for President, Obama said, “It’s time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons.” He added, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, we’ll retain a strong deterrent. But we’ll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.”

The strong deterrent part should (hopefully) include Malmstrom AFB.

There are several ways of looking at what the future of Malmstrom holds:

The first thing is that Malmstrom personnel are already trained to dismantle a missile mission. Since 50 missiles were just removed, it just might be easier to take more. The equipment and the training are in place to do it again.

The second thing is politics. Yes, it matters in everything. President-elect Obama is a Democrat and so are Montana’s two U.S. Senators. So are North Dakota’s senators, but not Wyoming’s. They might sway his opinion and urge him, if he’s bound and determined to disarm land-based missiles, to remove them from a place like Wyoming. Wyoming is the home of the current Vice President. He will soon be gone as will his clout. The states that have land-based nuclear missiles all went for McCain, with Wyoming being McCain’s strongest supporter of the three. Cascade County Montana supported Obama, while the counties that are the home of Minot AFB and F.E. Warren AFB supported McCain.

The third reason is it would be easy to close Malmstrom. Malmstrom really has only one other mission (RED HORSE), so some may be think why not just close it and move the RED HORSE mission somewhere else. I’m sure there are other pro and con reasons.

Hopefully one or more of Montana’s three elected officials (Baucus, Tester or Congressman Denny Rehberg) will get a seat on a defense or military committee in the next session of Congress to drive some a new mission to Malmstrom that would help expand its worth in the “defense of our nation” world.

Sadly though, with the overwhelming defeat of the bond issue, the road ahead for Malmstrom may be a bumpy one.