Conrad Burns was only the second Republican U.S. Senator since WWI in Montana — and he was the first ever to be re-elected.
Historically, Montana has elected a good number of GOP governors, but the Senate seats have belonged to Democrats.
Gov. Judy Martz was a political disaster for Republicans even though she was a decent governor, which then set the stage for Schweitzer to win — and then we served up a poor candidate to run against him in 2004, no less.
Baucus is a skilled politician who runs hard to the right in the last two years of every term. That, and he has a ruthless machine. Ruthless.
None of that is an excuse. We should be putting up a strong fight against Baucus in every election. Republicans (forgetting the history of our own state) got lazy in the 1990’s when we were riding high — figuring that we would always own the whole state other than that one Senate seat, so the party sort of quit trying.
Not a particularly brilliant strategy.
I met Schweitzer in New Orleans a month or so after Katrina, he was in town with the MT NG. He seemed like a nice enough guy but he is a Dem.
What is the deal with him?