It’s always fun to catch politicians on camera saying things or maybe sleeping and using that against them. It’s so important in the campaign world that they hire people to follow politicians around with a camera to try and catch them.

In the old days of campaigning sticking a camera in an official’s face or following them around would not have happened for various reasons like because you’d get a visit from Sonny Corleone…

The Democrats are circulating a video of Montana Congressman Denny Rehberg being asked over and over “Are you guys willing to pay minimum wage” and “What’s minimum wage?”

I never heard an answer from Rehberg on the video, but the Democrats took it as Rehberg not knowing the minimum wage and the “fun” began.

When I saw the video, my answer to the question was “seven dollars and…uh…”

There were a few tweets and facebook posts about the minimum wage video from the lefties. A couple of pro-leftie websites picked it up and away we go.

The righties put their heads together and sent this e-mail:

“TESTER CAMPAIGN WORKER DOESN’T KNOW STATE MINIMUM WAGE RATE”

The Montana GOP wrote, “Yesterday, a Tester campaign operative was caught on tape not knowing Montana’s minimum wage rate. Embarrassingly, the entire incident was captured on video by the very staffer who was ignorant of the law.”

That was pretty catchy. It kind of reminds me of the police officer shooting himself in the leg while teaching a gun safety class…

Next up we’ll probably see a GOP operative asking Jon Tester how much a burrito costs from Taco Bell…

In all sincerity, what worries me more than anything about these gotcha moments is what the film shows wackos who may want to do harm to someone – things like vehicle models, license numbers, number of staff present with the official, etc., because we know there are some people who take this stuff way to seriously.

But not the staff here at The Western Word. We are never very serious. We are unemployed winners!