This stuff is interesting to follow. Some lessons are learned harder than others.
I get heat from some who claim I, and Hunting Collective, are responsible for Tester beating Rosendale in the MT Senate race, because Tester was on our podcasts. Rosendale was invited but failed to come on.
As much as I would like to take credit for that, such is not why it turned out the way it did. It turned out the way it did because Rosendale was pals with the core Congressional Western Caucus members. He was the hand-picked RNC dude who took a lot of marching orders from Utah and the PLT crowd. He was a puppet and the strings led to Utah and the DC think tanks. Not a partisan statement, just a fact.
We saw the result. Even with four visits from the President, Rosendale and his anti-public land pro-PLT message got defeated in a state that is considered RED. A state where public lands are a huge voting issue, just like is the case in Colorado, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Nevada.
If this Caucus wants to continue pushing this kind of stupidity and using their clout to influence western state Republican primary outcomes in a way that results in more Rosendale-type candidates, they best get prepared to lose the Senate and lose more western seats in the House. Just a reality of where the electorate is in these states and how high of a voting priority the topic is among those electorates. Not that DC-based RNC types understand that intuitively, but one would hope they would heed some lessons from the Rosendale outcome and drop the stupidity.
There are some really good Republicans on public land and conservation issues. The Congressional Western Caucus, the Utah delegation, the anti-public land think tanks funded by despoiler money, and some of the crazies who have zero understanding of western public land issues are trying to eliminate these pro-public land Republicans. Their effort leads to further polarization of the the public land and conservation issues and more partisan division on the topics that historically were party-agnostic.
I want more support for Republicans who are good on public lands and conservation. Anyone who thinks it is all good on one side and all bad on the other is drinking tainted juice. The DNC, if opportunity presented/required, would use public lands and conservation as bargaining chips to secure some of their higher priority agenda. Just a reality and the reason why we need advocates on both sides. Progress ceases and defeats are guaranteed when our issues only have advocates on one side or the other.
The next two election cycles will have some really big influence on public land and conservation issues. Odds are that Senator Burr (R-NC) is going to retire rather than run for re-election in 2022. He is a very conservative guy who can be counted on for public land and conservation issues. If he steps aside, we lose a huge advocate on that side.
Who in that caucus is going to take his place when we need support for these issues? I don't know, but I sure hope some of the pro-public land Rs can press back against the crazies that are well-funded. If candidate selection is left to the groups promoting to the UT Doctrine, the outlook is not good.
I hate to see it going this way. Hopefully some sanity will be injected, learned from the Rosendale fiasco, to counter the groups like the Congressional Western Caucus, ALC, ALEC, AFP, and the others intent on ridding the Republican party of any candidate that is pro-public land or conservation. If those crazies succeed, wild places and wild things will lose. We lose. Hunting loses.
