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Demographics and Elections Commentary tagged with Matt Rosendale

2/10/2024: [Montana] Creating a 'Divisive Primary': NRSC Chair Blasts Rosendale's Senate Run [Townhall]


Photo credit: townhall.com

Confirming what had been rumored for months, conservative two-term congressman Matt Rosendale on Friday announced his entry into the Montana Senate race against ultra-liberal Democrat Jon Tester -- and the GOP establishment is absolutely irate at this development.

National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) chairman Steve Daines, a squish who serves as Mitch McConnell's sock puppet regarding GOP Senate election campaigns (and who also happens to be from Montana) immediately ran crying to the liberal media to attack Rosendale for creating a "divisive primary". The establishment already had a horse in this race: moderate newcomer Tim Sheehy, a wealthy businessman who was selected on the basis of being able to help fund his own campaign, and on the basis of not being too conservative -- the two things the GOPe looks for the most in a candidate these days.

Daines blasted Rosendale for giving Tester "the biggest win of his career" when the two faced off in the last Senate election for this seat in 2018. In his lame attempt to smear Rosendale as a loser and as a bad candidate, the NRSC squish conveniently left out a few pertinent facts:

  • That "biggest win" was by a mere 3.6 percentage points, in the Democrat landslide year of 2018 when every election for the House or Senate was a referendum on the Trump presidency and the haters came out of the woodwork to show how much they despised Trump and pretty much anyone else with an (R) after his name.

  • In that year, Tester was allowed to spend nearly 4 times more than Rosendale, as the Republican party left Rosendale high and dry in the money department. Yet, even as a relative unknown in statewide politics, with little name recognition and facing an incumbent who had all the money in the world to campaign with, the Republican still came within 3.6 points of a major upset.

    It would have been even closer than that if not for the presence on the ballot of Libertarian candidate Rick Breckenridge who took nearly 3 percent himself despite withdrawing from the race (too late) and endorsing Rosendale. Breckenridge took exception to an "anonymous" Democrat dirty-trick mailer which made fraudulent claims about the Republican and encouraged GOP voters to choose the Libertarian instead.

  • Speaking of being a newcomer, the main Democrat campaign tactic (aside from dirty tricks) in 2018 was to paint Rosendale as an outsider because he was not born in Montana and had only resided in the state for a paltry 16 years as of 2018. This "outsider" had actually served in the MT state legislature for 6 years (2011-2016) and in 2016 was elected statewide as Auditor.

    Following his defeat in the 2018 Senate election, Rosendale completed his term as Auditor and then ran for and won the statewide U.S. House seat in 2020. After reapportionment gave MT a second House seat, Rosendale was re-elected in 2022. Yet as recently as last year articles were quoting Republican sources -- who feared a Rosendale Senate run -- as being incapable of ever winning statewide in Montana despite the fact that he had done so twice already. The utilization of outright lies and dirty tricks in campaigns isn't limited to Democrats; liberal Republicans are allowed to resort to those as well, but only against a conservative.


If divisive primaries truly are such a bad thing as Daines is whining, then he has apparently adopted another typical Democrat trait here: hypocrisy.

In West Virginia, conservative Congressman Alex Mooney declared his Senate run against Joe Manchin back in November, 2022, long before Manchin chickened out and elected to run away, rather than run for re-election. Guess who suddenly decided that a "divisive primary" would be a good thing? That's right, Steve Daines, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the simps who control the Senate GOP. These cowards panicked and ran to doddering old moderate Governor Jim Justice, desperately begging him to run against Mooney and promising him lavish support if he would do so.

The GOPe's purchase of the ex-Democrat Governor was finalized in April of 2023, six months after Mooney announced his run. There are several other pissant-level candidates in the Republican primary, but Mooney would have been effectively unopposed for the Senate nomination; that was a prospect which clearly terrified the establishment. Perhaps due to Justice's late start, Mooney -- with zero support from the party puppetmasters -- has actually outraised his moderate opponent and has more cash-on-hand as of the most recent financial reports.


Continuing his string of blundering and inexplicable endorsements, Trump had already endorsed the moderate candidate in West Virginia and then made a deliberate point -- just moments after conservative Rosendale announced in Montana -- of blundering again and endorsing Sheehy. Perhaps Trump admires successful businessmen who (like himself) are not overly conservative. Plus an affinity for political neophytes and dilettantes, such as the supposedly "Electable Dr. Oz" in Pennsylvania.

Other party bigwigs also felt the jerk of the puppet strings yesterday and jumped into line behind Sheehy following Rosendale's apostasy. They include Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota and pathetically ineffective House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Johnson had originally promised to support Rosendale, but then he received new marching orders and immediately reneged on that promise.

A poll taken last year when Rosendale was merely considering getting into the race against Tester showed that he had much stronger support among Republican primary voters than Sheehy did. This is starting to add up to another "Oz" situation: Sheehy isn't a bad person but he's in way over his head here and all the establishment money in the world isn't likely to save him. Republicans don't have all the money in the world anyway -- but Democrats sure seem to. Tester currently has over $11 million to work with, while neither Rosendale nor the wealthy moderate businessman have as much as $2 million.

Even with Trump's Golden Endorsement, Electable Oz barely made it out of the Senate primary in PA in 2022. Sheehy has a good chance to not get even that far.

If Rosendale wins the primary despite all of the establishment supporting his rival, we'll see where the GOP money goes then. Our guess is that it will dry up completely, proving once again that in any contest between an ultra-liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican, the GOPe prefers the former every time. In this case, Senate control be damned.

Tags:

2024 Senate Montana Matt Rosendale Irate establshment Blundering endorsements


12/11/2023: [Montana] Rep. Matt Rosendale Throws Cold Water on Efforts to Impeach Joe Biden [Breitbart]


Photo credit: Matt Rosendale

Reacting only to the headline as opposed to what Rosendale actually said, the simple-minded are going to interpret this announcement as "Matt Rosendale thinks Joe Biden shouldn't be impeached!!!!"

However, what Rosendale actually said was this:

    "I do not believe that you're probably going to be able to get an impeachment, a removal, of President Biden," Rosendale told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business in late November.

    "But I do think that if our Department of Justice acted in a legitimate manner that there's enough facts that are already laid out there on the table because of all the great work that James Comer has done that we can see that the Biden crime family has major problems. And I think the Department of Justice should be picking up a lot of this and starting to make charges and prosecutions"


That's clearly accurate -- the Democrat-RINO Senate will obviously never consent to "removal" of a Democrat President from office. Rosendale is also accurate in pointing out the liberal bias of the Department of So-Called Justice in the matter of the Biden family crimes.

Even so, Rosendale allowing himself to be chosen as point man for this unsurprising revelation that the House GOP utterly lacks the balls to do anything "controversial" in an election year, was not the smartest move for his career if he has any designs on moving up from the House to the Senate.

Real Republicans (i.e. conservatives) have been waiting for Rosendale to enter the Senate race against quite vulnerable liberal Democrat Jon Tester; the GOP establishment squishes have desperately been trying to discourage Rosendale precisely because he is a conservative, and the GOPe much prefers one of their own squishy kind to run instead.

Now it's even more likely that Rosendale's going to turtle, and slink away from any possibility of running for the Senate next year. That leaves the field for the GOP nomination pretty much clear for squishy businessguy Tim Sheehy, who is being boosted by Mitch McConnell, Steve Daines and other establishment wimps.

Furthermore, the pro-abortionists have proclaimed their intention to influence the 2024 elections in Montana by submitting a ballot initiative (apparently not yet approved, though) that would alter the Montana state constitution and try to build on abortionist ballot success in other supposedly "red" states like Ohio, Kansas & Kentucky.

These initiatives have less to do with abortion per se and far more to do with stimulating Democrat turnout in order to influence other items on the ballot. In the case of Montana, the idea is to save the incumbent pinko Senator and perhaps also affect the outcome of the race in the marginal congressional district currently held by moderate Republican Ryan Zinke, who won in 2022 with less than 50% of the vote. That sort of narrow outcome has been habitual for Tester as well, showing why he needs extra assistance (usually the tactical presence of a "Libertarian" candidate suffices to draw votes away from the Republican) to try to eke out a 4th Senate term in 2024.

Tags:

Montana 2024 Senate Matt Rosendale Impeach Biden Jon Tester Tim Sheehy


9/1/2023: [Montana] Rosendale holds big lead over establishment-backed Sheehy in Montana Senate race: poll [The Hill]


Photo credit: Greg Nash

Republican voters in Montana are clearly saying that the conservative alternative in the GOP primary is far more to their liking than businessman Tim Sheehy, the squish who is being pushed hard by establishment twerps like Steve Daines and Mitch McConnell.

This greatly upsets the GOPe, or at least forces them to work harder to rig the primary, because the establishment will always insist that a more liberal candidate has greater "electability" than a conservative one, and they spare no expense in fulfilling that prophecy anytime the voters defy them and select a conservative nominee instead of the officially-anointed moderate. Their backstabbing of conservatives doesn't always work, otherwise Liz Cheney would still be in office, and J.D. Vance would have lost in Ohio. But it almost always works.

Sheehy served his country with honor, runs a successful business, and I'm sure he routinely performs CPR on wounded kittens too. It's possible for him to be a great guy but still be a moderate squish -- and one who is actually less electable than conservative Matt Rosendale.

Sheehy is already facing the typical attacks from the left. You can rely on the fact that anyone who runs a business and who runs for office as a Republican will be hysterically assaulted for being an evil "millionaire" who "wants to raise YOUR taxes" and who "outsources jobs to China!" In other words, they'll claim he fits the profile of a Democrat.

These attacks don't in any way imply that Sheehy is a feared conservative; they just mean that since the GOPe simps favor him, he is very likely to be the nominee so the haters are getting an early start.

Recall that the #1 and only real "stopper" against Rosendale when he ran against Jon Tester and narrowly lost in 2018 was that he was a carpetbagger who had committed the mortal sin of not being a lifelong Montana resident. Apparently the voters -- who in 2020 elected Rosendale statewide in a high-turnout presidential election year -- have forgiven him.

Sheehy OTOH hasn't even been in Montana for 10 years yet, so by all means let's make the Rats' task even easier in 2024 by letting them use the same playbook from 2018. Sheehy is also being attacked for allegedly "lewd" and "racist" posts he made on Facebook years ago, among other things.

Of course Rosendale, if he is somehow the nominee, will be similarly attacked by the media and other Democrats just like he was in 2018, 2020 and 2022. He won the last two of those races anyway, and he has a good conservative political track record on which to run.

The difference is that, if Rosendale is the nominee, he will face not only a lack of support but actual oppostion from the squishes on his own side as well. The ones (like Daines & McConnell for example) who would rather Tester get another term & Democrats keep Senate control than risk some unwashed conservative taking that seat.


This race may be reminiscent of 2022's Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, where we were assured that Electable Dr. Oz was a much better option for the GOP than surging conservative Kathy Barnette who was criticized as inexperienced and as a loser -- even though she outperformed Donald Trump by 3 points in Pennsylvania in 2020 in the district in which she ran (CD-4); a performance which is overlooked or misunderstood by dolts who don't know how to read election results.

It's also a parallel to the 2022 gubernatorial race in Wisconsin, where a weak liberal Democrat incumbent (a la Tester in Montana) was quite vulnerable.... until the GOP primary was decided by Trump's blundering endorsement of empty-suit businessman Tim Michels (similar to Sheehy) over decently conservative former Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, who had been elected statewide (similar to Rosendale) as running-mate for Governor Scott Walker and had a good record on which to run.

Yet we're told that the GOPe is so much better at picking candidates than conservative voters are. It's a lie.

Tags:

Montana Senate 2024 Matt Rosendale Tim Sheehy "Electability"