The American Spectator

Political Hay

The Montana Howard Dean

By Bill Croke on 3.31.05 @ 12:10AM

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DESPITE HIS ROOKIE STATUS, Governor Schweitzer has also not been shy in his criticism of current domestic Bush policies. While recently attending a National Governor Association meeting in Washington, D.C., Schweitzer employed the sort of barnyard rhetoric that the President would have certainly understood when he also told the L.A. Times that Bush's projected Social Security reforms were "a bull market hawking lousy studs." Around that time Schweitzer also delivered the Democrats' rebuttal to a Bush Saturday morning radio address, where he questioned -- among other things -- administration policies concerning our neighbor to the north, i.e. Canadian beef imports and cheap prescription drugs: "Why allow bad beef to enter the U.S. from Canada and not allow safe medicine." Not bad for a guy just a few weeks off the ranch.

The Montana governor's latest bit of public grandstanding concerns the letter he has lately sent to the Pentagon, in which he demands that Montana National Guard troops --and equipment -- currently serving in Iraq be excused from that duty and sent home in anticipation of Montana's annual summer forest fire season, which is expected to be severe this year due to ongoing drought in the Northern Rockies. I'm not aware of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's response to this letter, but the subject did get Schweitzer some zingers from Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, which the governor probably found gratifying.

Montanans seem to have elected to the governor's office the Treasure State's version of Howard Dean. Not Dean the governor, but Dean the presidential candidate and DNC chairman. In some respects there is a refreshing prairie populism to even Schweitzer's most bizarre rhetoric and schemes. Brian Schweitzer-watching has certainly become endemic in this part of the world. But Montana's GOP political establishment, media, and ordinary citizenry seem to be eagerly -- and perversely -- awaiting the governor's next (so far only figurative) Deanesque scream. They rub their palms together in anticipation of the real thing.

It's going to be a fun next four years around here.

Letter to the Editor

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Business, Social Security, Sports, Environment, Law, Iraq, NATO, Oil