Why, exactly, Montana Cong. turned GOP Senate Candiate Denny Rehberg (R-MT AL) (pictured here, where I also have posted the clip of Ed Schultz calling out Rehberg on MSNBC for his comments) was so red in the face as he addressed the joint session of the state legislature Monday is unclear. But he was definitely an angry man.
The speech was entirely negative (in stark contrast to Governor Schweitzer's upbeat and generally optimistic State of the State address) and an exercise in incitement and scapegoating. Perhaps Denny hadn't had a nip off the bottle since early that morning and so he was irritable. But in a short, loud, angry speech, Rehberg blamed everyone (except himself) in Washington for the nation's problems. Judges, Congress, Tester, Bureaucrats, Obama, and especially wolves. He made a tasteless and politically tone-deaf threat against Judge Molloy who sits on the federal bench in Missoula, MT--three weeks after a federal judge was gunned down in Arizona--calling on conservatives to find a way to "make Molloy an endangered species", a questionable innuendo given that judges are life-appointees.
But beyond Rehberg's ranting, dunce-like, childish Fox News anger, the one thing that stood out was this: he didn't point to a single professional accomplishment, a single thing that he has done in his twelve years of sucking up a taxpayer salary and federal health benefits.
Strangely, there is apparently one person in Washington that Rehberg admires--Max Baucus. In this speech, Rehberg said Baucus is a guy he can work with. Its an interesting twist on what Rehberg has been saying since he announced his Senate candidacy Saturday. In his announcement for Senate, he referred to Tester and Baucus as "one senator" which votes in support of Obama--a two-headed monster, as it were. That probably came as bad news for Tester, who has often acted in tandem with the more senior Baucus these last four years, only to now watch the GOP roll out an attack which says, in effect, that Tester and Baucus are twins but Tester is more liberal.
Fortunately, Rehberg is a do-nothing party boy with minimal rhetorical skills and nothing but generic right-wing talking points, and he is quite beatable.
And when he talks about "less spending", never forget that you have him and his cronies to thank for the trillion dollar experiment in Iraq, which cost roughly 7,000 lives of young Americans and will last for several decades notwithstanding Obama's call for an "end" to it.
Tester has worked hard for veterans, created an excellent forest management reform, serves constituents very well, and has at least put in a good faith effort to try to fix the price of health care. (Rehberg might not know this, but 18 percent of Montanans can't afford to see a doctor). And Jon's personal story--a working class farmer and virtually the only member of the US Senate who is not wealthy-- will always be a bigger draw than a boozer with a big cowboy hat who inherited $100 million worth of prime real estate and who has a hobby herd of goats, and who spends five days rolling out a Senate candidacy without pointing to a single accomplishment from his decade in Congress, but rather just whines and blames everybody else.
This diary is cross posted at The Montana Cowgirl Blog for those interested in seeing what Montanans are saying.