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Is Rosendale a fad or the acolyte for the new breed of Montana politician? – Daily Montanan

['More From Author', 'May', 'Darrell Ehrlick']

Date: 2022-05-19 00:00:00

Last week, Congress took action on two items that have literally been pressing Montana issues for decades. A House Natural Resources subcommittee held hearings on whether to establish a truth-and-reconciliation commission on Native American boarding schools. The second issue was closing a loophole that would include a list of cancers that are presumptively caused from exposure to smoke from firefighting.

While neither issue is ready for President Joe Biden’s signature, these are issues that should have widespread, bipartisan Montana support.

But last week was truly exceptional for another reason. Montana’s lone Congressman, Rep. Matt Rosendale, voted against the firefighters’ protection and didn’t even bother to show up at the hearing for the boarding schools, even though he’s a member of the subcommittee.

I wanted to find out more about his reasons for voting against the legislation, but requests for conversation were ignored.

Ignoring the media is a favorite pastime of so many politicians, mainly conservatives and Republicans, that it’s hardly surprising. But it’s also part of the process of communicating with constituents and the checks and balances that go along with being elected.

Oddly, it seems like those entering the midterms have struck upon a new kind of bipartisan agreement inadvertently: Matt Rosendale is out of touch with Montana’s values.

I suppose this is the point where I drop in the “Maryland Matt” moniker, but that’s not fair to Maryland, admittedly no more regressive than Montana.

I could summon a healthy dose of outrage as I think about the simple and absolutely necessary first step toward reconciling our horrible past treatment of Indigenous People at the hands of boarding schools, where not only children were forcibly taken from parents, but beaten, abused until any vestige of Native culture was stamped out. The very least Rosendale could have done was show up.

I could rail against his insensitivity toward federal wildland firefighters, those men and women who risk their lives once on the fire lines, then again as the lasting effects of smoke kill them with cancer. How much more out of touch does a congressman from Montana have to be to vote against those protections, which would total about $10 million? Without those men and women, more of Montana burns, and with it, more Montanans’ lives and property are at risk.

But this isn’t a column of outrage aimed at several of many questionable votes. Keep in mind, the week before, Rosendale was one of 57 members of Congress voting against sending more aid to Ukraine because he’s pouting about the southern border and the non-completion of former President Donald Trump’s wall (as if Congress can only handle one issue at a time).

Whether Rosendale represents or reflects the sentiments of Montana remains to be seen in this upcoming election, where Republican voters have good alternatives within their own party, regardless of which side they favor.

Instead, Rosendale is a sort of symptom – an epitome of the problem as much as he is a participant in it.

He cannot be blamed altogether: While he may indeed not be a reflection of a more moderate Montana, he is, by no means, an outlier on the national political stage where oddities like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz hang out.

In all honesty, I cannot decide whether Rosendale represents a one-time moment of collective extremism that will be corrected when the pendulum inevitably self corrects toward a moderate center, or whether he is the new standard-bearer in the next generation of conservative Republican politics, and folks like me, who seem nostalgic for the days of Marc Racicot, must admit that we’ve become relics, not so unlike those who thought think fondly of video rental stores.

Rosendale, not unlike Gov. Greg Gianforte, Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Sen. Steve Daines, are profoundly different than the Republicans of a generation ago, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a party transforming itself more rapidly. There’s probably a greater argument to be made that those Republicans are, to borrow an old marketing term, the choice of a new generation.

But Rosendale isn’t so important for any of those shameful policy decisions that he has so thoroughly embraced. It’s what he is, not who he is or how he votes. Is he the representation of the waning popularity of Trumpism or is he an acolyte of what is going to become more and more normal – a new breed of politician more comfortable with the techniques of strongmen rather than strong laws?

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