Montana 2024 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy. (Courtesy Tim Sheehy campaign)
When Tim Sheehy overwhelmingly won the Republican primary to challenge Jon Tester for his senate seat his election night speech was truly a masterful piece of political theater. Surrounded by his kids on the stage, with one hugging him around the neck while resting on his shoulder, it was heartwarmingly perfect.
But when he claimed his campaign was “for the kids” he’d best take a harder look at the “Make America Great Again” platform he’s promising to support, because it’s anything but “for the kids.”
The Sheehy-Tester race is one of the most closely watched in the nation, drawing millions and millions in out-of-state contributions that promise to make it the most expensive in Montana’s history. Given that Montana’s junior senator, Steve Daines, is head of the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sheehy can rest assured the money will continue to flow like the Yellowstone River in flood stage.
As Daines put it: ““Tim Sheehy is a strong conservative, an American hero and a successful businessman who will bring an outsider’s perspective to a broken Washington.”
Of course that’s kind of hilarious for a couple of reasons. Only four years ago, MAGA’s orange hero was president, spewing invective, making looney suggestions to handle COVID by injecting bleach, and claiming he’d already Made America Great Again.
Yet now, Daines says Washington is broken, and it’s completely Joe Biden and Jon Tester’s fault. But if Sheehy wins, by golly, everything is going to be coming up roses — especially if they can keep their presidential candidate just convicted of 34 felonies out of jail and re-install him in the White House.
As it turns out, Daines’ description of Sheehy as “an outsider” is probably more applicable in Montana than it would be in Washington, given that he’d be one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, which is chock full of millionaires. Having grown up in “a multimillion dollar lake house” in Minnesota and only been a Montana resident for about a decade, it’s fair to say there’s a lot about the Big Sky Country Sheehy doesn’t know.
And that’s where the conflict between the MAGA agenda and “it’s for the kids” arise. For instance, it’s doubtful Sheehy ever saw the Gallatin River below Big Sky when it ran gin clear and drinkably clean. Those days are gone thanks to the proliferation of MAGA McMansions for the wealthy whose sewage has now turned one of Montana’s great rivers a sickly neon green.
Likewise, hard to see how he could ever have experienced a real Montana winter, since thanks to the increasing impacts from climate change, our winters come later, with less snow, that vanishes earlier thanks to hotter springs and broiling summers with triple-digit temperatures rarely experienced in our past.
That’s totally attributable to the burning of fossil fuels — and the MAGA agenda is to drill, blast and burn ever more fossil fuels in a misplaced goal of “global energy domination.” If Sheehy wants his kids to have any kind of future other than inhabiting a burnt cinder of a planet, he’ll have to dump the MAGA climate denial and face the fact that we just set a new record for the hottest year in recorded human history.
It would take more than one column to detail all the ways MAGA isn’t for the kids at all, it’s “get as much as you can as fast as you can and devil take the hindmost.” And Mr. Sheehy, if you really want to do right by those cute kids of yours, the degradation has to stop — not continue and expand into the environmental nightmare MAGA will bring to our state, our planet, and your kids’ future.
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