Montana Republicans are choking on their own supermajority
If you doubt that the Republican “Party” has ceased to be a party in any sane parliamentary sense of the word, then I give you exhibit A, the failed state of Montana. Montana is the land where Republicans today have a supermajority in their state legislature, they are in charge of the courts and they own the State House. They can, in short, do anything they want to the environment, for the wealthy and against civil liberties. And boy have they ever.
The only good news is that, in the midst of this orgy of evil legislation followed by bad faith justifications, Montana Republicans have lost control of the process. Their moron Speaker of the House, Republican Matt Regier, “explains” it thus: “I don’t think we can do another session with that bandwidth and our capacity that we’re at.”
So what did the inarticulate, blubbering moron actually say? So what’s this “bandwidth” talk? What he means by inadequate “bandwidth” is a complete, incompetent failure to properly manage the Republican supermajority’s caucus. Bills don’t receive sufficient time for reading and debate. They get rushed through committe too quickly without sufficient due diligence. And whose job is it to manage the supermajority caucus? You guessed it, it’s the Speaker of the House’s job, of course.
And here’s another one of their problems. On no sane planet, not even planet Republican, can the Republican supermajority in Montana blame the Democrats for their screw ups. Democrats are just along for the ride. They are completely powerless. Republicans own both the House and the Senate by two-thirds majorities, and both houses are facing this problem. Imagine how infuriating it must be for them not to be able to blame their personal Great Satans of Joe Biden and the Democrats for their inability to govern efficiently.
But the bad news is these problems can be fixed. Despite the fact that most Republicans today are lazy, stupid and greedy, they have enough low cunning and fear of their wealthy paymasters to know that they had damn well better start shaping up or they can jolly well start shipping out. Now that Montana is a bona fide “Handmaid’s Tale” state, there’s no telling how long THAT opportunity is going to last.
One unprecedented thing they did at the start of the legislative session was to close the gallery. That was smart, because they understand that the evil they do needs to be kept under the cloak of darkness. It’s no good having the hoi polloi jeering at them up in the gallery and running off and telling their friends what evil bastards they all are. They may fool some of the people of Montana about who they really are, but they haven’t yet fooled themselves.
Just to give you an idea of the kind of evil these cretins are doing, consider this. Republican State Representative Josh Kassmier last month introduced House Bill 971, an amendment to the Montana Environmental Policy Act. The amendment changes the process of how large projects are reviewed. They do so by — and I hope you’re sitting down for this — preventing state regulators from considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts when conducting environmental reviews!
They what? Let me put it another way. They can now conduct environmental impact reviews without conducting environmental impact reviews. Figure that one out.
Now that Republicans own Montana they intend to never relinquish ownership. There are evil, draconian things they can do to see to that, including gerrymandering any pockets of Democratic power right out of existence. With Democrats leaving states like Montana in droves, it can only get easier for the Republicans they leave behind in charge. In other words, and to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, the people of Montana now have their very own fascistic, totalitarian plutocracy — if they can keep it. By all accounts they intend to. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.