The death of the a bad idea. . . at least for awhile

I've spent a fair amount of time this political season commenting on how odd the season has been, and how it seems we have two candidates that people are less than thrilled to have, so its a relief to be able to report something positive about both candidates and  the death of a bad political idea.

 

That bad idea is the concept of transferring land from the Federal government to the states.  As I've repeatedly warned here, that transfer would not stop there, it'd ultimately go to the rich, and it wouldn't take very long.

Well, it turns out that at least three of the rich agree with me, and those three are Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Hillary Clinton. 

So, this bad idea is dead, or at least it will not being going anywhere for the next eight years. 

The Trump campaign's statements came from Donald Trump Jr. (the elder Trump has mentioned them before, in an interview with one of the outdoor journals) in a statement delivered to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance, a conservation organization that's fighting these terrible ideas. The news couldn't be more welcome, and Trump put it in the correct context.  He frankly stated that the land would end up in the hands of private land owners and the states couldn't be trusted not to do that.  That's an amazing statement from a campaign that's been running as a conservative one, whether it is or not.  The Clinton campaign immediately endorsed the same view. So the two campaigns have come out in full agreement with each other on this issue, one that matters hugely to sportsmen and rural residents.

Indeed a survey of Wyoming's residents found that they are overwhelmingly opposed to transferring the land away from the Federal government.  Only the local GOP is in favor of this, which means that the GOP  here openly acts in contempt of the majority view of Wyoming residents and of its own members.  This should provide a huge avenue for Democrats in the state, but the fact that our Democratic party can't help but commit suicide (one Democrat running locally has slowly been increasing her comments in favor of gun control and legalization of marijuana, an act so delusional here she might as well be hunting her fellow Democrats down and beating them with sticks).  But that doesn't mean that the GOP can afford to ignore this.

Nor can the national party.  If the GOP doesn't want to slide into irrelevance contempt for the rights of common people, such as rural residents and less than wealthy public land users, can't continue to go on.  This would be a good place for them to pull off the road and consult the road map.