This seems like the kind of revealing mistake that could be incredibly damaging. Publicly, wealthy businessman Greg Gianforte, the GOP’s candidate in the special election for Montana’s lone congressional seat later this month, has kept his distance from the health care repeal bill the caucus he's looking to join just passed last week. But privately, it turns out he's said something quite different. Here's the mealy-mouthed hedge his campaign's been offering up:
"Greg has repeatedly said he will not support a bill until he knows it reduces premiums, preserves rural access and protects Montanans with pre-existing conditions."
But here's Gianforte himself, on a phone call with GOP-friendly lobbyists the very day the AHCA passed:
"The votes in the House are going to determine whether we get tax reform done, sounds like we just passed a health care thing, which I'm thankful for, sounds like we're starting to repeal and replace."
This is the kind of flub that you'd have thought modern politics—what with its widely available audio recording technology and all—would have more or less eliminated, but perhaps Gianforte is unfamiliar with such marvels. (He did, after all, make a major donation to a creationist museum that tells visitors that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time.) We'll have to see, though, if Gianforte's Democratic opponent, musician Rob Quist, can draw any blood.
Please give Quist $3 so that he can let Montana know what a two-face Gianforte is.