(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Daines duplicity means swearing allegiance to Trump not Montana – Daily Montanan [1] ['More From Author', 'February', 'Peter D. Fox'] Date: 2024-02-21 Montanans who know about the remarkable career of Mike Mansfield, U.S. senator from 1961 to 1977 including 16 years as Senate majority leader, longest-serving majority leader in the history of the Senate, might wonder what he’d think about our current junior Senator, Steve Daines. Daines, as most of us know, has spent huge portions of his time in 2023 and thus far in 2024 as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A recently published book, “Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate,” by Marc C. Johnson, puts what many Montanans already know about Democrat Mansfield and what we learn from this book into stark contrast with what we know about Daines. Johnson writes: “The Senate Mike Manfield tried to foster in the 1960s, often with remarkable cooperation from Everett Dirksen (the Republican minority leader) was an institution that could be more than an obstacle, a legislative body more important than its individual members or its two parties, a collection of diverse personalities of varied interests that could also consistently function as a decision-making body and that could, at least once in a while, rise above its natural state of partisanship.” This bipartisan team led the Senate and its disparate voices to enactment of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964 and 1965; Communications Satellite Act (COMSAT) of 1962; Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963; Wilderness Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965; Medicare in 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and supported creation of both the Warren Commission and the Peace Corps. By contrast, Daines – an educated and accomplished family man in his private life and his private sector experience – opts to publicly castigate his political opposition in language that can only be described as bombastic and malicious – and frequently wrong. Even before he ascended to majority leader, Mansfield held a higher standard of bipartisanship and comity for the Senate than for the House of Representatives, saying, as Johnson noted, that issues coming before the Senate were “of such transcendent importance to the nation that the only acceptable answers can never be either Republican or Democratic but only American.” Daines never got that memo, apparently. Or learned that in his Bozeman grade school education for that matter. Instead, he relentlessly bestows every ill in the country on President Joe Biden and his Democrat colleagues in Congress while kowtowing to a former president who demands total subservience. Daines is quite happy to genuflect – more mindful of injury to his own political hide from Trump’s wrath than what’s best for the nation. A headline in a recent Daines press release makes the point: “Daines: Joe Biden Made Everything Worse.” It went on to fantasy when he gave border-security credit to Trump by stating, “President Biden inherited a secure border.” Chaotic, yes; secure, not so much. And no contribution from Mexico. Compare Daines knee-jerk repudiation of the Senate immigration bill without an opportunity for debate with its support from Sen. James Lankford, the Republican lead negotiator, no “snowflake” by any means: “The bill that’s been put together has been a bipartisan effort. Welcome to the United States Senate. That’s what we have to do. While I have people from around the country and back home that say, ‘Do a Republican-only bill. Just get all of our priorities and none of theirs,’ I smile at them and say, ‘Welcome to governance.’ You can do a partisan bill in the House, but in the Senate, we have to look at each other across the aisle, then figure out a way to be able to solve this. Sadly, Lankford is now a pariah among Republicans for putting country above partisan politics in urging both sides of the aisle to accept the compromise bill. It’s doubtful Daines will spend much time searching his conscience about whether his “No” vote was ethical because he is ever so mindful of his dance to the tune Trump is trumpeting. Instead, Daines will turn his attention to recruiting and promoting Senate candidates who possess great wealth: Eric Hovde, real estate and banking tycoon in Wisconsin; West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a coal-mining magnate; and Montana’s Tim Sheehy as well as wealthy GOP candidates in Ohio, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Those seem to be the folks the moneyed Steve Daines prefers. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2024/02/21/daines-duplicity-means-swearing-allegiance-to-trump-not-montana/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/