Photo credit: Thom Bridge, Independent Record

This bill has not yet become law, but Democrats are already howling with outrage because Republicans in Montana are attempting to craft an election law which exactly matches the ones used -- to great Democrat benefit -- in states such as California and Washington. Except this time the benefit, tiny though it may be, would accrue to the GOP. Hence the hypocritical outrage from the left.

The idea is to make the November, 2024 U.S. Senate election a 1-on-1 race with no interference from minor party candidates. Tester has won three times previously, with percentages of 49.2% in 2006, 48.6% in 2012, and 50.3% in 2018. In all 3 cases, the candidacy of a Libertarian was engineered in order to cost the GOP candidate enough votes to lose the election. It worked perfectly twice, and even in 2018 when Tester finally got over 50% the Libertarian eventually discovered how he was being used and manipulated, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But he bailed out too late to affect the outcome.

There remains the little matter of determining who the GOP nominee will be in 2024. The filing deadline is still 11 months away so there's plenty of time, however no serious Republican has as yet entered the race. One or both of the state's U.S. House incumbents (Zinke, Rosendale) probably will file. So too may some others who already hold statewide office.

Because there will be only one primary ballot instead of separate ones for each party if this law passes, Democrats will not so easily be able to utilize their effective scheme from 2022 in which leftist voters invade the Republican primary (as they did in Colorado, for example) to try to help the weakest candidates prevail.

Even with one or more good candidates running for the GOP -- preferably only one -- liberals may resort to old tricks such as placing bogus "conservatives" on the primary ballot in order to split the right-wing vote and ensure that the most liberal of the big-names becomes the Republican nominee; this obviously creates as much of a win-win scenario for the left as possible. Democrats won't have to sabotage conservatives all by themselves; the GOP establishment will be happy to take charge of that particular task.

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Senate 2024 Montana Jon Tester No more Libertarian assistance?