Showing posts with label Populism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Populism. Show all posts

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Governor Gordon has enough of Chuck Gray.

The rise of Californian Chuck Gray in Wyoming's politics has really been remarkable.  Filling the seat of a popular Casper legislator he failed to unseat in a primary, after that individual died, he became a firebrand populist funded with family money.  His bid for earlier larger offices failed until he latched on to the Secretary of State's office in a campaign which was frankly nasty in town, something that was common to him, and which hasn't stopped.  He has his sights on higher office now, with reliable rumors claiming that he's going to run for Congress and that Congressman Hageman will run for the Governor's office, which she's done before unsuccessfully.

Gray still surfaces in the media, rising up from what is otherwise a very mundane clerical position, to claim this or that.  He did so the other day in a public meeting regarding wind farms, and that apparently caused Gordon to react.

The Governor's statement appears to have caught Gray a bit flat footed.  Gray's made a career out of spouting lies packed with invective but having somebody call him out publicly, and from a higher office, is something he isn't used to and obviously wasn't expecting.

This isn't the only area this past week where the two have locked horns.  Gray earlier this year accused Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock of misconduct in the last election and asked for the Governor to remove her, a truly extraordinary move for the Governor to take.  The investigation was completed, and Gordon issued a letter stating:

While the review revealed there were multiple mistakes committed by Clerk Hadlock and her staff, no information or evidence was provided that supported any malicious intent on the part of Clerk Hadlock, or that she was trying to manipulate the results of the election.

“[O]ne of the key elements to determining malfeasance is motive or willfulness, but in this incidence there is no indication that she did so with any intent to change or nullify the results of the votes of the people of Weston County,” the Governor wrote. In essence, the process worked, with any irregularities identified and corrected during a review by the canvassing board.

“It is clear that Clerk Hadlock made many mistakes and exhibited a high degree of unprofessional and perhaps slipshod management of the election,” the Governor wrote. “Still, the system set up to discover, correct, and properly count votes worked here.”

He went on to note that he didn't feel it appropriate to override the choice of the electorate and would leave Handlock's future up to the voters, something that 100% echoes what Republicans said about efforts to remove Donald Trump in his first term.

A current feature of Republican politics is to completely ignore precedent where it doesn't serve what amounts to a sort of NatCon view and Gray has practically based his career on election lies, claiming that there are all sorts of irregularities.  Not too surprisingly he came right out with his own statement.

CHEYENNE, WY – In response to Governor Mark Gordon’s May 23rd decision not to initiate removal proceedings for Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock, Secretary of State Chuck Gray issued the following statement:

“I am deeply troubled by Governor Gordon’s letter and for refusing to conduct a rigorous analysis of the facts of this case. I am particularly troubled by the Governor’s lies by omission in completely ignoring our finding that Clerk Hadlock submitted a false post-election audit report with our office, which we discussed multiple times as the most serious finding in our investigation released in March. The Weston County Clerk’s submittal of a false post-election audit report on November 6, 2024 does appear to be a willful violation of the code, as revealed by the Weston County Canvassing Board meeting on November 8, 2024, as well as the subsequent, properly-performed audit, which confirmed that there were 21 of 75 ballots with a discrepancy, in direct contravention to the initial post-election audit results submitted to our office. This false post-election audit occurred after we had expressed concerns about the anomalies. Our investigation came to the conclusion there are only two reasonable explanations for the false submission of this audit, absent another explanation provided by the Weston County Clerk, the Governor, or any relevant actors, which was not even discussed. Our investigation found that one possibility is that Clerk Hadlock conducted her audit, finding errors in the election and then choosing to falsely assert that no errors had been found. The investigation found that the second reasonable possibility is that no audit was conducted at all. Either one of those possibilities would suggest that she attempted to hide the problems with the conduct of the 2024 General Election. That is why we made the recommendation that we did, and the Governor’s omission of discussing the false post-election audit in his decision is inherently problematic. Gordon has gotten used to the media refusing to cover these lies of omission and this is another example of those lies of omission. I’m deeply troubled that Governor Gordon refused to even acknowledge key parts of the case.”

Gray has his supporters in the populist mass that's running the GOP and influencing Wyoming's politics, with those same people really disliking Gordon. Gordon has a lot of more quiet supporters.  There's a lot of speculation on whether Gordon will run for a third term, which he's theoretically barred from doing but which the Wyoming S.Ct would clearly say he could do, and he'd have a good chance of winning, certainly against Gray.  Hageman seems to be wildly popular with the GOP base right now, so it'd be unclear how that would go.  I suspect that Gray would fail in a race for Congress.

At some point there's going to be a reckoning for the flood of lies the populist base of the GOP has been fed by its leadership.  Trump's horrific funding bill may be the beginning of it.  Wyoming is going to pay in spades for the results of what it's been supporting, with the first wave of that already hitting.  By November of next year a lot of chickens may have come home to roost and will have died in their coups.  Whether a political change starts to occur in 2026 or 2028 isn't clear, but it's going to.  I don't expect Gray to survive it.  Most of the better known Wyoming politicians will, as they'll modify their positions to the time, although those who came up during this period will have  hard time doing so.

Anyhow, more than one person is cheering Gordon on.  No doubt more than one is cheering Gray too, having bought off on what he's told them, facts aside.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Looking for Nate Champion.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse;

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V.

The views of average Wyomingites, by a huge margin, are clear on public lands.  We want them to remain public.

And yet our Congressman voted to transfer 500,000 of FEderal land in Arizona and Utah over to private hands. It's clear that at least one of our Senators is okay with doing something similar in Teton County.

Wyomingites aren't in favor of this at all.  Indeed, one of the most rabid Trumpites I know actually expressed bewildered opposition to this.

So here's the problem, and the question.

Why are Wyomingites still supporting the people who support this?

Politics are varied and complicated.  The reasons that Wyoming has gone so far to the right in its recent politics are as well.  A lot of it has to do with social issues, abortion, transgenderism, immigration, and so on, and much of that, here, has to do with the death of the Democratic Party and there being, seemingly, no where else to go.

But at least on the local level there certainly is, and what Wyomingites are presently doing is not in their own best interest.

Much of what they're currently doing is, frankly, based on a host of lies.  Donald Trump was not the victim of a stolen election with Joe Biden won.  Joe Biden won.  Global warming is not a fib.  The long drift away from coal cannot be arrested.  The state's petroleum industry was never under any governmental assault (leases went up under Biden).  There is no war on the West.  The region's agricultural sector isn't under governmental attack, but rather under real estate developer attack.  The Democrats really weren't advancing gun control.  

But we've been bought off on a bunch of dramatic assertions designed to cause the rise up of what plaintiff's lawyers call our "lizard brain".

Well, now we have a whole host of legislators, many from out of state, who don't share local values at all, and a Congressional delegation that is more interested in supporting the agenda of the far right and its ostensible leader, a nearly 79 year old real estate developer suffering from dementia, than paying attention to what we actually believe.

And that's because that's exactly what we let them do.

In reality, those close to the inside know that John Barrasso doesn't believe  what he's supporting.  It's pretty clear from her past that Cynthia Lummis doesn't either.  Harriet Hageman, well she probably does, as she's a political family that has always had this set of views.  Having said that, and importantly, she intends to run for Governor next election and Chuck Gray, who is a Californian with very little connection to Wyoming, will run for House.

In the next election Wyomingites have a chance to make their views known, although they really need to start doing so right now.  That can have an impact.  John Barrasso, in the last election, adopted a whole host of new views he probably doesn't hold at all to hold off an attack from his right.  Lummis just quietly mostly didn't say what her views actually are the last time she ran, which she could do under the circumstances, and which leaves her room to maneuver.

Maneuvering will, it must be noted, need to occur.  In 2026 the House is going to be Democratic and the MAGA reign will be over, save for in Wyoming, where there's every reason to belive it will keep on keeping on.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus of its day, the Johnson County invaders.

Much of this, we'd note, is perfectly consistent with Wyoming's history.  Early on Wyoming sent a solidly Republican group of legislatures to our solon in  Cheyenne in spite of its association with large outside agricultural interest which were oppressing local interest.  That didn't end until the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which briefly swept the Republicans out of power, and brought Democrats into the legislature and which sent Governor Barber packing, although not until after he tried to actually remain as Governor a la Trump insurrection in a way.  That event, however, shows the electorate can react.  It also shows us that politicians can too, as Francis E. Warren managed to survive the event, career entact, when really she shouldn't have, by changing views.

And this is happening in Montana, which was a little in advance of Wyoming in tilting to the far right, right now.























Just sitting and complaining "well that's not what we think" won't get much done.  

Politicians from any party ought to represent the views of their state.  They ought to also intelligently lead.  There's not much intelligence being manifested in the populist far right, which is mostly acting with a primitive response on a set of social issues combined with false beliefs, andy in Wyoming, with views they brought up from their own states which don't have much to do with us here.  We aren't Sweet Home Alabama.

But that won't happen unless Wyomingites educate themselves as to the truth, and what is truly going on, and how they're simply being fed raw meat for the dogs.  Until that occurs, we're going to go further into the abyss.


Friday, May 9, 2025

Pope Leo XIV

As I'd predicted, the new Pope, Pope Leo XIV, was a cardinal that wasn't in the pundit list.

A quote from an AP news article:
Vatican watchers said Prevost’s decision to name himself Leo was significant given the previous Leo’s legacy of social justice and reform, suggesting continuity with some of Francis’ chief concerns.

Not just the AP, I said this yesterday, and in spades.  In fact, as a Distributist, Pope Leo XIII is one of my absolute favorite recent Popes.  He was an ardent opponent of communism and capitalism.

Some headlines:

NEWLY ELECTED POPE FIRST FROM US

From the Star Tribune.

MAGA Melts Down Over New Pope's Anti-Trump, Pro-Immigrant Social Media

Rolling Stone

This will be interesting. There was, yesterday, a flood of negative comments about Pope Leo from the mostly non Catholic populist far right.  I suspect that a hidden anti Catholicism in that quarter will really start to surface.

Indeed, Pope Leo being an American poses a real challenge to the isolationist, nationalistic MAGA populist elements now in power, as well as the pretending to be isolationist, nationalistic and MAGA fellow travelers.  Some have already wondered if that's part of the reason that he was chosen as Pope, but that will not be known for years, if ever.  At any rate, right now, it's really interesting to note that the US is lead by a not very smart almost octogenarian who has shown aggressiveness and extreme nativism, while global Christianity will be lead by a highly educated catholic concerned for the poor, who as a Cardinal corrected J. D. Vance's odd comments about an order of mercy.  

This leads, I suppose to noting that Pope Leo is, at this point, nearly as Peruvian as he is American.  But as noted, the Catholic Church is catholic, i.e., universal.  It's concerns are for humanity, not a narrow section of the American public.  But Pope Leo might serve to remind Americans of what the United States has, in its better moments, stood for. 

Friday, April 25, 2025

The Very American Roots of Trumpism | The Ezra Klein Show


This is the first commentary I've seen with a sense of American history and the Trump movement.  Like Klein, I'm not worried that there won't be midterms or a 2028 election.

Worth listening to.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

The 2026 Election, 1st Edition: Spring Training Edition.

Walter "Big Train" Johnson, April 11, 1924.

Yes, the 2024 Election hasn't even occured yet, and the 2026 one is clearly on, at least locally.

What we can tell for sure is that Chuck Gray is running for the office of Governor.  He always was.  The Secretary of State's office was very clearly a mere stepping stone in that plan, and the plan probably goes on from there.   By coming to Wyoming, a state with a low population and a pronounced history of electing out of staters (we nearly have some sort of personality problem in that regard), it was a good bet, particularly when combined with his family money, although it was never a sure bet that he'd make the legislature and on from there.  His plan requires, however, or at least he seemingly believes it requires, that he keep his name in the news, which he's worked hard to do, being involved in lawsuits, which is probably unconstitutional on his part, and releasing press releases that are extraordinary for his role, and for the invective language they contain.  Mr. Gray has probably used the term "radical leftists" more in his two years of office than all of the prior Wyoming Secretaries of State combined.

This explains something that was otherwise a bit odd that we noticed recently, which was Secretary Gray's appearance in Casper in opposition of something he'd otherwise voted for:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.

 


Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

The environmental populists?

Politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows.  But how strange, nonetheless still surprises.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who rose to that position by pitching to the populist far right, which dominates the politics of the GOP right now, and which appears to be on the verge of bringing the party down nationally, has tacked in the wind in a very surprising direction.  He appeared this past week at a meeting in Natrona County to oppose a proposed gravel pit project at the foot of Casper Mountain.  He actually pitched for the upset residents in the area to mobilize and take their fight to Cheyenne, stating:

We have a very delicate ecosystem, the fragility up there, the fragility of the flows … the proximity to domestic water uses. All of those things should have led to a distinct treatment by the Office of State Lands, and that did not happen.

I am, frankly, stunned.  

I frankly never really expected Mr. Gray to darken visage of the Pole Stripper monument on the east side of Casper's gateway, which you pass by on the road in from Cheyenne again, as he's not from here and doesn't really have a very strong connection to the state, although in fairness that connection would have been to Casper, where he was employed by his father's radio station and where he apparently spent the summers growing up (in an unhappy state of mind, according to one interview of somebody who knew him then).  Gray pretty obviously always had a political career in mind and campaigned from the hard populist right from day one, attempting at first to displace a conservative house member unsuccessfully.

We have a post coming up which deals with the nature of populism, and how it in fact isn't conservatism.  Gray was part of the populist rise in the GOP, even though his background would more naturally have put him in the conservative camp, not the populist one.  But opportunity was found with populists, who now control the GOP state organization.  The hallmark of populism, as we'll explore elsewhere, is a belief in the "wisdom of the people", which is its major failing, and why it tends to be heavily anti-scientific and very strongly vested in occupations that people are used to, but which are undergoing massive stress.  In Wyoming that's expressed itself with a diehard attitude that nothing is going on with the climate and that fossil fuels will be, must have, and are going to dominate the state's economy forever.   The months leading up to the recent legislative session, and the legislative session itself, demonstrated this with Governor Gordon taking criticism for supporting anything to address carbon concerns.  Put fairly bluntly, because a large percentage of Wyoming's rank and file workers depend on the oil and gas industry, and things related to it, any questioning on anything tends to be taken as an attack on "the people".

Natrona County has had a gravel supply problem for quite a while and what the potential miner seeks to do here is basically, through the way our economy works, address it.  There would be every reason to suspect that all of the state's politicians who ran to the far right would support this, and strongly.  But they aren't.

The fact that Gray is not, and is citing environmental concerns, comes as a huge surprise.  But as noted, given his background, he's probably considerably more conservative than populist, but has acted as politicians do, and taken aid and comfort where it was offered.  Tara Nethercott ran as a conservative and lost for the same office.

But here's the thing.

That gravel is exactly the sort of thing that populists, if they're true to what they maintain they stand for, ought to support.  It's good for industry, and the only reason to oppose the mining is that 1) it's in a bad place in terms of the neighbors and 2) legitimate environmental concerns, if there are any.  But that's exactly the point.  You really can't demand that the old ways carry on, until they're in your backyard.  

Truth be known, given their nature, a lot of big environmental concerns are in everyone's backyard right now.

The old GOP would have recognized that nationally, and wouldn't be spending all sorts of time back in DC complaining about electric vehicles.  And if people are comfortable with things being destructive elsewhere, they ought to be comfortable with them being destructive right here.  If we aren't, we ought to be pretty careful about it everywhere.

There actually is some precedent for this, FWIW.  A hallmark of Appalachian populism was the lamenting of what had happened to their region due to coal mining.  John Prine's "Paradise" in some ways could be an environmental populist anthem.

Right about the time I noted this, Rod Miller, opinion writer for the Cowboy State Daily, wrote a satiric article on the same thing:

Rod Miller: Flip-Flops Around The Ol’ Campfire

We have no idea, of course, who his opponent will be, unless it's Gordon, who is theoretically term limited out, but we already know from prior litigation that the restraint on his running again is unconstitutional.  And Gordon clearly doesn't like Gray, a dislike that's not limited to him by any means.  Gordon would have to challenge that in court, however, unless 1) a group of citizens does, and 2) the court ruled they'd have standing.

As voters, they should.

If that happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see Gordon run again, and to be asked to run again.  While he was a candidate initially I worried about him, as he was further to the right on public lands issues than any candidate since Geringer, but he's actually acted as a very temperate Governor, something made difficult by 1) the intemperate level of our current politics, and 2) the occasional shortsightedness of the legislature.1

Anyhow, if you've ever had the occasion to see, Gordon and Gray together in an official setting, it's clear they don't get along.  Indeed, on the State Land Board, it's clear that Gordon isn't the only one that's not keen on Gray.  Gray for his part reacts back, as he did recently when he sent an unprecedented lengthy letter to the Governor on his vetoes. 

Gray, like Donald Trump, has some feverish admirers.2  Indeed, this seems to be a hallmark of the populist right.  They not only run candidates, but they develop personality cults routinely.

Rod Miller, again, in a recent column noted a real problem that Gray has.  As, so far, they haven't really been able to advance their agenda without the help of conservatives, they have an advantage there as they always portray themselves as besieged by the numerous barbarians, the last legionnaire on Hadrian's Wall.  Trump has actually, at a national level, worked to keep that status by ordering his party to defeat immigration legislation that was probably a once in a lifetime conservative opportunity.

Anyhow, as noted, Rod Miller recently noted a problem that Gray has.  He's not married.

Rod Miller: Bride Of Chucky – Or – Advice To The Lovelorn From The Ol’ Campfire

Is this actually a problem?

It shouldn't be, but it might be.

Indeed, without going into it, there was a figure in Wyoming decades ago whose marriage was questioned by whisperers on the basis that they believed he married just to end the speculation on why he wasn't married.   The marriage lasted a very long time, so presumably the rumors were without foundation, but there were questions, which is interesting and shows, I guess, how people's minds can work.  

Another way to look at it, I supposed, was prior to Trump if a person was a conservative people would ask about things that appeared to be contrary to public statements about conservatism.  Not being married, for a conservative, was regarded as odd, and for that matter there are still people who whisper about Lindsey Graham, while nobody seems to worry about AOC being shacked up with her boyfriend or whatever is going on with Krysten Sinema. 

And then there's Gray's age.  It will make people suspicious of him at some point, or people will at least take note.  Indeed, some of his critics from the left already have, but in a really juvenile way.

Actually determining Gray's age is a little difficult, and indeed, knowing anything about his background actually is.  But Cowboy State Daily, a conservative organ, managed to reveal about as much as we know.

Gray was born in California and raised outside of Los Angeles.  According to somebody close to the family, or who was, he was homeschooled by his mother.3 He felt uncomfortable about his birthplace, and stated in the campaign

I come from a divorced family, like many people in our country. A judge said I was to live in a different place, but my dad lived here, built a business here, and I spent my summers here during the time that was allocated by the judge.

According to the same source, he didn't seem all that happy in Casper, Wyoming as a kid, but the circumstances could well explain that.  The same source, who probably isn't a family friend anymore, reported to the Cowboy that Gray's father had a focus on the family owned radio station impacting legislation at a national level.  Photos have been circulated of the father with President Reagan.

Gray graduated from high school in 2008 and the respected University of Pennsylvanian in 2012, which makes it all the more remarkable that he's been a success in Wyoming politics.4   If we assume the norm about graduation ages, he would have been 22 in 2012, which would make him 34 now.

In Wyoming, the average age for men to marry is 27.8 years on average, while for women it's 25.6.  Gray's now notably over the median age, but that is a median.  I was over it too when I married at age 31.  My wife was below the female one.  That's how averages work.

My parents, I'd note, were both over the median, although I don't know it with precision for the 1950s.  In the 50s, the marriage age was actually at an unusual low.  My father was 29, and my mother 32.

So his age, in the abstract, doesn't really mean anything overall, although it might personality wise.

As has been noted elsewhere on this site, Gray is a Roman Catholic and indeed I've seen him occasionally at Mass, although I would never have seen him every weekend as there are a lot of weekend Masses and my habits aren't the same as his.  I have no reason to believe that he didn't attend weekly as required by the church.5  Catholics are supposed to observe traditional Catholic teachings in regard to sex and marriage.  I'm not really going to be delving into that, but again we have no reason to believe that Gray isn't observant, in which case, as he is not married, he should be living as a chaste single man, and he probably is (something that has casued juvenile left wing ribbing).

Wyoming, however, is the least religious state in the union and while Catholics, Orthodox, Mormons and Protestants of traditional morality observe that morality, here, as with the rest of the United States, the late stage mass casualty nature of the Sexual Revolution means that a lot of people in these faiths don't, and the society at large does not.  We've gone from a society where such outside the bounds of marriage behavior was illegal in varying degrees, to one where, nationwide, society pushes people into things whether they want to or not.

Be that as it may, save for Casper, Laramie, and probably Cheyenne, sexual conduct outside the biological gender norm is very much looked down upon.  Indeed, in a really dense move, a Democratic Albany County legislator went to a meeting in Northeast Wyoming a while back on homosexual issues and was shocked by the hostile reception she received.  She shouldn't have been.

No, I'm not saying this applies to Gray.  I have no reason to believe that, and indeed I believe the opposite.

However, we've gone from a state whose ethos was "I don't care what you do as long as you leave me alone" to one in which, largely due to the importation of Evangelicals from elsewhere, a fairly large percentage of the population really care about what you do, particularly if they don't like it.

Indeed, at the time that Matthew Shepard was murdered, I was surprised when I heard an anti-homosexual comment.  Such comments do not surprise me now, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear one now in the context of a murder.  As noted, the exceptions seem to be Laramie (where Shepard was murdered, but which has never been hostile to homosexuals), Casper (which has had a homosexual 20 something mayor and which has a lesbian city council member) and Cheyenne (which has a homosexual member of the state House, as does Albany County).  Well, I omitted Jackson and should include it here too.

At any rate, being an open homosexual and aiming for major office probably is impossible, although for minor ones it hasn't proven to be.  The point is, however, that Miller is right. At some point, people are going to start wondering why staunchly populist Gray isn't married.

Maybe it's because he is in fact a staunchly populist out of state import.  There aren't that many women in that pool.  Indeed, having a one time vague contact with our staunchly populist Congresswoman, I was very surprised when it turned out she was a populist, or even a conservative.  I'm not saying that she's not, I'm just surprised.

Gray is in a sort of oddball demographic.  Not being from here, he wouldn't be in any circles in which women from here, professionals or otherwise, would be in.  He appears to really be a fish out of water in terms of the local culture.  When he appears at things, he does wear cowboy boots, but you can tell they've never been in a stirrup, and he otherwise is, at least based on my very limited observation of him, always dressed in what we might sort of regard as 1980s Denver Business Casual.  I'd be stunned if I saw him on a trout stream or out in the prairie with his bird dog, Rex.  I've seen him at a bar once, for a grand opening of something, but I don't imagine him walking up to the tender at The Buckhorn or The Oregon Trail and ordering a double Jack Daniel's either.

I was once told by an out-of-state lawyer who had been born in the state but who had moved to Denver after graduating from law school, regarding Wyomingites, that "you have to be tough just to live there".  People who live here probably don't realize that, but there's more than a little truth to it.  I'm often shocked by the appearance of populist legislature Jeanette Ward, as it's so clear she just doesn't belong here.  She's not the kind of gal who would be comfortable sitting next to the ranch girl chewing tobacco who has the "Wrangler Butts Drive Me Nuts" bumper sticker on her pickup truck.6   Gray probably isn't comfortable with such a gal either.  "Tomboys", as they used to be called, are sort of the mean average for Wyoming women.  

Gray is well-educated, of course, which is part of the reason that I suspect a lot of his positions are affectations.  I don't think he really believes the election was stolen, for example, unless he's doing so willfully, which would mean that he really doesn't believe that.  Recently he's taken on the topic of firearms arguing, as part of the State Facilities Commission, that the state needs to open up carrying guns at the capitol, which is frankly absurd.  While I don't know the answer, I suspect that Gray isn't really a firearms' aficionado. 

Up until very recently, Wyomingites knew a lot about the people they sent to the legislature and public office, often knowing them personally to some degree.  We actually knew the Governor and the First Lady on some basis other than politics, quite frequently, and our local reps we knew pretty well.  The populist invasion defeated that to some degree, and in some cases, a great deal.  The question is whether this is permanent, or temporary.  It wasn't until the last election that people looked at Gray's background at all, and they still have very little.  People haven't really grasped until just now that many of the Freedom Caucus are imports, not natives.  We don't know much about some of them or their families, and chances are an average Wyomingite, or at least a long term native, would regard them as odd on some occasions.  Chuck Gray just ran an op ed that was titled something like Only Wyomingites Should Vote In Wyoming's Elections.  Most long term and native born Wyomingites feel that strongly, and wouldn't actually regard a lot of our current office holders as being Wyomingites.

There's evidence that the populist fad is passing. We'll see. This and the 2026 election will be a test of it.  2026 is a long ways off.  For that matter, it's sufficiently long enough for these candidates to evolve if they need to. Some are probably capable of doing that.  Others, undoubtedly not.  The question will be if they need to.

May 11, 2024

It's very clear, to those paying any attention, that Wyoming elected executive branch officials really dislike Chuck Gray, including those who are very conservative.  This became evident again when Superintendant of Education Degenfelder indicated Wyoming would join a Title IX lawsuit in opposition to the Federal Government's new rules on "transgender" atheletes.  Degenfelder indicated that she'd been working behind the scenes with Gov. Gordon on this matter.  In doing so she blasted Gray who earlier made comments wondering where the state's officials were on this matter, even though his office has less than 0 responsiblity in this department.  Degenfelder stated in regard to Gray, "I would encourage Secretary Gray to join those of us actually making plays on the field rather than just heckling from the sidelines".  Gray, who is a Californian who has lived very little of his life in Wyoming save for summers here while growing up, declared in response he was on "Team Wyoming".

FWIW, Wyoming really doesn't need to particpate in lawsuits maintained by other parties, as they're already maintained.

July 8, 2024

Now here's an interesting development. . . 

I may have mentioned on this blog before that I feel Gov. Gordon should consider running, text of the Wyoming Constitution aside, for a third term.  In doing so, if I did (I know that I've discussed with people) I've noted that the Constitutional prohibition on him doing so violates the Wyoming Constitution.

Turns out that I'm not the only one speculating on that.

Chuck Gray Says He Won’t Certify Candidacy If Gordon Seeks 3rd Term

And it turns out that Chuck Gray doesn't like the idea at all.

January 7, 2025

I managed to miss it, but back in November, Brent Bien announced for Governor.

Bien is on the far right, and is a Wyoming native, but he spent 28 years in the Marine Corps before retiring in 2019 and coming back to the state.  This puts him in the camp of far right Republicans in the state who spent their entire working lives drawing on one of richest portions of the government t** while also never actually having to make sure a business actually functioned.  

I've never quite grasped "trust me, I know how run things for the common man. . .I've never actually had to work in a business. . . "

Moreover, Bien was a prime mover on the initiatives that will be on the ballot to cut property taxes 50%, essentially meaning he's backing bankrupting local governments and schools.  So, after living off of taxpayers for his adult life, having retired, with a retirement funded by taxpayers, he doesn't want to pay them himself.

Well, Bien will have competition, as we know.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 70th Edition. Inside Wyoming Political Baseball

March 14, 2025

Cynthia Lummis ‘Gearing Up For Reelection’ To US Senate In 2026


Rob Hendry leads slate in sweep of Natrona County Republican Party leadership

Footnotes

1. There are numerous examples of this, but a really good one is Gordon's effort to buy the UP checkerboard, which the legislature defeated.  It would have been a real boon for the state, but fiscal conservatives just couldn't see it that way.

Recently, Gordon hasn't been shy about vetoing highly unadvised bills that have come out of the legislature, or shutting down bad regulations that come out of the Secretary of State's office.

2.  And not just Gray, Harriet Hageman does as well.

3. Homeschooling, for whatever reason a person does it, can be developmentally limiting.  I don't know about Gray's case, but its notable that some on the far right have done it, as they believe that schools are left wing organs and there are things they don't want their children exposed to them.  The problem this presents is that children who are homeschooled grow up in a very narrow environment, whereas, at least here, those who go to public, and for that matter religious schools, do not.

4. There used to be a school interview of him from the University of Pennsylvania, in which he expressed a desire to become a lawyer.  He's clearly not going to do that now, unless of course his political career ended, which is perfectly possible.

5.  As noted here in prior posts, lying is regarded as a potentially serious sin in Catholicism, and lying about something like who won the 2020 election would be, in some circumstances, a mortal sin if you were a political figure.  

6.  Ward is from Illinois and openly calls herself a political refugee. At the time of moving here, she posted something about her children not having to wear masks in our public schools, adopting the far right wing view that trying to protect others in this fashion is somehow an intrusion on liberty.  I suppose it is, but not relieving yourself in public is as well.  Anyhow, at some point, presuming those children remain in public school, she'll be in for a shock as Casper's schools truly have a really wide demographic and are not exactly made up of an Evangelical populist sample of the population.

March 25, 2025

Hmmm. . . the tide seems to be coming in.

Former Wyoming Legislators Win Big In County Republican Party Elections

March 29, 2025

Donald Trump has endorsed Cynthia Lummis.

April 2, 2025

While a non partisan race, in Wisconsin the liberal Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court prevailed over the Musk backed conservative Republican.

The race was widely regarded as a test of how people are feeling about Trump.

In Florida two Republicans won election in open House seats in heavily Republican districts, but the Democrats did better than expected.  A Democratic victory would have been a huge upset, so in some ways this also showed that people aren't keen on the GOP path.

April 17, 2025

And the race for Governor is sort of on.

Now in the GOP race are two declared candidates, one of whom has filed, Joseph Kibler.  Brent Bien has said he's running as well.

Both are in the far, far, right.  Kibler moved to Wyoming (his wife is from Wyoming) in 2020.  Bien is a Wyoming native, but completed a Marine Corps career and therefore fits into the crowed of Wyoming anti government candidates whose careers were in the government.

Related threads:

Want to Play a Game? Global Trade War Is the New Washington Pastime. Two dozen trade experts gathered recently to simulate how a global trade war would play out. The results were surprisingly optimistic.


Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 70th Edition. Inside Wyoming Political Baseball

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

"The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law."

The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law.

Retired Federal Judge Michael Luttig

There's so much every day that now many people just ignore it.

Trump, who isn't Constitutionally eligible to hold the office of President in the first place, has illegally imposed taxes, something reserved to Congress.  He's either used emergency powers where there is no emergency, or he's actually imposed them where he's not even authorized through an emergency act.

A completely spineless Republican Party is in control of Congress, and therefore nothing is being done about it in that quarter.  

He's ignoring a court order that a prisoner sent to a horrific El Salvadorian prison be returned, using the pretext that fellow traveler Bukele of El Salvador has chosen not to return him, something that I'm confident he could compel to occur.

And that's just a start.

Trump is acting like the Red Caesar desired by an anti democratic element of the far right.  The Courts are stepping up.  Congress needs to as well.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

A Primer, Part 2. How did we reach this lowly, and dangerous state. Soap Poisoning and Grape Nuts. (Written before the election).

We left off the last edition with this:

A warning

And here we get, in a way, to where we are now.

Conservatives in the modern West, and always in the English-speaking West, have democracy as a primary virtue, in spite of being aware that they're never in the majority, although the National Conservative movement, which is reactionary in the true sense of the word (it's reacting to something) is weakening that and looking to a pre Second World War model of European conservatism.

Liberals are always in favor of democracy.

Progressives and Populists really aren't quite often. Sometimes they are, but often they are not.

And Progressives and Populists only are in the forefront of politics in odd, and dangerous, times.

We are in odd and dangerous times.

To put it another way, like Ralphie's dad in A Christmas Story asks about Ralphie's imagined blindness, how did we reach such a lowly state?

Do we have soap poisoning?

Well, sort of.

A little history

We've gone into this before, so we won't belabor it too much, but in large part what we're seeing now is the combined effect of ignoring what was going on in the country on a political and social level.  

As we already noted, populism only rises in strength during times of severe stress. The mere fact that its strong now, and has taken over one of the two parties, means something extremely stressful is going on.  Progressivism is always there in some form, but it rarely takes over either.  The fact that it too is so strong right now indicates something has occured that is fueling it. 

The fact that the two of them are vying for the country right now, and this is going on in other country's as well, means that we are really at some massive tipping point for global politics.

What happened?

Well, we should know. We've been here before.  More than that, Europe has been here before, and gone further down the road than we have.

An American Tale

If we go back to 1900 or so we'll see that Progressives, Populists, Conservatives and Liberals were all significant forces in the US, and in Europe as well.


The 1890s had been extremely strained economically in the 1890s.  Added to that, the late stages of the industrial revolution were taking people off of fields everywhere and putting them in factories, under grim conditions.  Agriculture, which had been the economic backbone of the US, was under severe strain.  Conservatives chalked everything up to the business cycle, which they did not believe should be tinkered with.

This gave rise to the first real liberal movement in the US since the Civil War, although there had been liberals all along.  Calling themselves "Progressives", even though they were not that as we've defined the term, they sought government intervention in the economy to address these ills.  Theodore Roosevelt, in his campaign of 1912, proposed something like Social Security for the first time.  He also proposed treating large corporations as public utilities, a radical, but liberal, proposition.

Progressives of that era were really basically the Socialists. We have a pretty good idea of what they stood for, so we probably don't need to dwell on it. Of note, Progressives of the GOP and Progressive Party, which we've defined as being liberal, campaigned partially on the concept that if they didn't prevail, the Socialist ultimately would.


The Populists, whom as we have noted had their own party at the time, campaigned in 1892 on graduated income tax, a radical proposition in a country that didn't have an established one, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, restrictions on immigration to the United States, and public ownership of railroads and communication lines.  As the country fell into a depression, "free silver" became a bid deal with them.  Some of them fell into radical Anti Catholicism, and some became virulently Anti-Semitic. . . sound familiar?

In 1896 the Populist Party united with the Democratic Party, giving us an example of a movement co-opting an established party which had sympathies with it. The Democrats indeed had a strong populist base in the American South, which had seen populist sympathies from before the Civil War and which retains them to this day. Populist William Jennings Bryan ran as the candidate for both parties, and lost.  He did so again in 1900, although by that time the Populist Party as an independent party was declining both because it had captured the Democratic Party, as because the economic crisis seemed to be passing.

Both parties had learned their lesson from two election in a row. The GOP lurched to the left in 1904 and ran Theodore Roosevelt, a liberal.  Alton Parker's campaign went nowhere.  By 1912, however, the Democrats were running a liberal of their own, Woodrow Wilson.  Populism, except in the South, disappeared in the US as a political force, the stress gone.  Progressivism remained, but very much on the back burner.

Both would be back during the Great Depression.  Populists rose up with figures like Huey P. Long and Fr. Charles Coughlin, both of whom posed a serious threat to Franklin Roosevelt's administration.  Long was ultimately assassinated and Coughlin was silenced by the Catholic Church, but the fact is that populist radicalism was alive and well in the 1930s.

So was Progressivism.

Radical progressives found roles in Roosevelt's Administration, demonstrating one of the weaknesses of both parties in believing that fellow travelers are pretty much just like you.  Mainline Communists, Trotskyites and Socialist all found homes in the numerous agencies created in the 1930s.  Attempts to warn the administration fell on deaf ears until really very late, when at least worried Democrats were able to remove Henry Wallace from FDR's final Presidential ticket.  It wasn't really until the late 1940s when it became clear how deep this had gone, at which time the Democratic Party undertook a monumental effort to hide it, something that they were so successful at that it remains largely unappreciated to this day.

Coming out of World War Two the US had the only industrial economy that hadn't been bombed, and accordingly the country had an extremely good economy from the end of the war into really the very early 1970.  It's interesting that in this period the liberals and conservatives moved very much towards a consensus on things, giving us pretty much what might be regarded as a second Era of Good Feelings.  It would be difficult, really, to hold that Eisenhower's administration was much at odds with Truman's, or Kennedy's.  There were difference, but in that era, which was one of low economic stress, the differences weren't large enough to cause severe distractions, in spite of the dangers of the Cold War.  Populism remained in the American South, but without much influence.  Progressives existed, but not until 1968 did they really start to emerge back to the forefront.

And then things fell apart.

It really started with the Courts, although it was not obvious at first.

American society, and politics, following 1945 moved towards the center, but it was a center left where it moved to.  The two Republican Presidents fo the era, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, would be regarded as being quite liberal today.  Interventions in the economy were accepted.  And brining civil rights to the South, and elsewhere, became a dominant feature of both parties.  Populists, mostly located in the South, were squashed.  Progressives were largely satisfied with the direction of things.   But it all took a lot of court intervention to get things done.

Conservatives and Liberals were fine with this throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and for good reason.  Progress on long dormant things they both agreed upon, such as Civil Rights, was really being made.  But the Courts were, without it really being noticed, drifting increasingly to the left.  At the same time the number of lawyers in the country exploded as the revolution in education following World War Two vastly increased the number of people with university degrees.  Courts, without people really noticing it, began to become effectively a second legislative and second executive branch, without being elected.

Thing began to really fly apart in 1968, as a result of the Vietnam War.  But they came off the rails in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision.  Conservatives suddenly realized that they couldn't be heard on social issues that really mattered anymore.  Liberals went asleep to a large degree because now the Courts were achieving for them tasks that they wanted to, without having to do any work for them.  The political consensus that had dominated the 1945 to 1973 era collapsed.  By 1976 Conservatives were moving steadily to the right, and railing against the courts.

At the same time, Southern Populists were a force in the South, but an ineffective one, throughout the 50s and 60s.  Southern Populism being part of the Democratic Party had initially made sense in the 19th Century, and even as late as Woodrow Wilson's Presidency, but it stopped being natural during the Liberal administration of Theodore Roosevelt.  It was kept together as a marriage of convenience as the Republican Party remained associated with the Southern defeat in the Civil War and the GOP, for its part, remained the party of civil rights into the 50s and 60s.  By 1968 Southern Populists were seething over desegregation and busing.

Rust Belt populism was just beginning to rise.  Solidly Democratic in the 40s, 50s and early 60s, as the economy became more strained in the late 60s and the Democrats moved increasingly to the left, they began to rebel against their party.  It'd grow much worse in the 1970s as the Great Recession started to change American heavy industry forever.

The now more conservative Republican Party was well aware that conservatism in and of itself, while increasingly popular to sections of the electorate, remained in the background enough not to be able to come into power on its own.  People were unhappy with the economy and the distress brought about by inflation, the loss of the Vietnam War and social changes brought about by court action, but they weren't so unhappy that they were willing to take a radically new direction, or they didn't' think they were.  The election of Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford was as much about competence, which Carter proved not to have, as anything else.  Conservative Ronald Reagan, however, saw an opportunity to recruit Rust Belt and Southern Populists into the Republican Party, and did so for his 1980 campaign.

Reagan had the first conservative US administration since Herbert Hoover, but it was never purely so.  Reagan was an actor and a compromiser, who brought in elements that he didn't really believe in so that htey could be used.  Hoover had never done anything like that.  The conservative Republicans thought they could control the imported populsits, and at first they proved correcdt.  Indeed, following Reagan the next two Republicans were more Nixon like than Reagan like.  But the populists having come over, did not leave.

Nor did their concerns get addressed.  By the 1980s the economy was fundamentally changing in the wake of the 70s.  Heavy industry was not returning, "good" blue collar jobs were evaporating.  Ethnic enclaves in urban areas were smashed.  The progressivism of the late 60s and 70s felt free to attack long standing social matters. The liberals in the Democratic Party went to sleep and Democratic politicians appealed increasing to Progressives the way that conservatives had to Populists.

The breaking point proved to be a court decision again, that being the Obergefell decision.  I warned it would have that impact at that time, but it was such a shock to core beliefs of conservatives and populist that a reaction by both was inevitable.  The populists reaction carried along with it rage over a host of issues they'd been ignored on, many of them essentially economic, but some of them social.  Because the social issues were there, conservatives did what they'd been doing since 1980, figure they could simply carry the populist along.  

The 2016 election proved that to be completely incorrect.  Two populists emerged, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.  Election controls built into the Democratic Party's' process kept Sanders from being the Democratic nominee.  No such controls existed in the GOP, and Trump ended up winning the election against Hillary Clinton, and incredibly poor choice for the Democrats, but only through the electoral college. Clinton carried the popular vote.

It was populists, particularly Rust Belt populist, who carried the day for Trump.

Enough of the conservatives remained in the party, and Trump was incompentent enough as a President, that conservatives kept the Trump Presidency from goign full bore populists.  He knows that and his supporters do as well.   A second Trump Presidency will not repeat that.

A European Tale

Giving the European story is more difficult than the American one, as Europe is of course a collection of countries, not one, and each country has its own story.  So we'll do broad generalizations.

Europe, going into the 20th Century, remained more traditional, and hence more conservative, than the United States.  Almost every European country, save for France, had some kind of monarch who at least represented tradition, but who had very limited, if any, powers, save for Austro Hungaria, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, whose monarchs held real power.  The Russian Czar actually held absolute power.  Many countries, however, such as Sweden, had monarchs who had a least some veto type power over their  parliaments.

In this system extremism was bound to rise, but underground.  The more substantial a European monarchy was, the more likely it was to have really radical underground movements which, in the way we are analyzing this, would be termed Progressive.  Imperial Russia had a host of far left Socialist parties.  Germany had a strong radically left Socialist Party.

Other more democratic countries had radical movements as well, but they tended to never get as strong, or they would see their radicalism dissipate if they received voter support.  So, for example, French socialist were elected to power, but they never behaved like a Communist Party once in power.

World War One smashed the old order in Europe.  Democratic countries became more democratic.  Countries with parliamentary democracies began to make their monarchs symbolic or eliminate them altogether.  Monarchs in Austro Hungary, Germany, Russia, Finland (which had just become independent) and Turkey were tossed out, with the Russian one and his family losing tehir lives.  

The 1920s accordingly saw struggles between liberalism and conservatism all over Europe, and in the most stressed countries, a type of populism and progressivism enter the mix as well, sometimes as arm contestants for the future of the country.  The Russian Revolution can be seen as a contest between liberals and conservatives as allies, against progressives as enemies, with the radical left winning.  The Russian Civil War can be seen as a contest between Progressives and Populists as allies, against Conservatives.  Weimar Germany saw endless contests between Liberals and Conservatives, with Populists being the allies of extremists on the right and the left, giving their support to the KDP and the NASDP.

All of that, of course, gave rise to Communism, Nazism, and FAscism, which in turn gave rise to the Second World War.  

World War Two, like World War One, smashed the existing order and saw the triumph of Liberalism in the West.  Communism, won in the East, of course, but not in the same fashion.  Like in the US, the post war free European states were very much consensus oriented and remained so even after the stress of 1968.  AFter the Cold WAr, however, all European states began to see some of the same economic issues, and cultural issues, that had arisen in the United STates rise in Europe.  Some of the state accordingly began to fall into extremism.  Russia retreated into a weird sort of conservative imperialism that recalled its pre World War One status, but without a Romanov.  Putin became the new imperial head.  Hungary outwardly abandoned liberal democracy in favor of illiberal democracy.  Poland teetered on the edge of liberal and illiberal democracy.  Ukraine went for the long pass of liberal democracy.

And now we have a war in the former Russian Empire over the question.

Grape Nuts.



And in the US, we're about to have an election over it.  

Unfortunately, that election will feature only two parties, and in one of them the ancient candidate feels he must take input from progressives in his party. The other party's candidate is an ancient narcissistic oddball who tells populists what they want to hear, and who feeds from them in an application of the Führerprinzip.  

This is not good, to say the least.

The Democrats, of course, retain liberals in their party still.  The progressives are few, but influential.  The Republicans retain conservatives, but hey'v ebeen largely silenced and castrated.  The GOP is the populist party.

Part of the reason we're where we are is due to a poverty of parties, and language.  Populists have never been conservatives, and they aren't now.  But they think they are.  Progressives aren't liberals, but liberals don't really understand the extent to which that's not true.

Grape Nuts aren't made of grapes. . . but there's probably a lot of people who think they are.

Last prior edition:

A Primer, Part I. Populists ain't Conservatives, and LIberals ain't Progressives. How inaccurate terminology is warping our political perceptions.