I've tried to bring to light issues and ideas involved in the races for Wyoming's congressional seats. Since the races for both senate seats are, to put it bluntly, foregone conclusions (and that's a damn big shame), most of my focus has been on the race between Republican (and aspiring comedienne) Cynthia Lummis, Democrat Gary Trauner, and Libertarian W. David Herbert. It's pretty clear who I think the best candidate of the three is.
Gary Trauner is the candidate that will best represent the entire state - not just the narrow majority (or possibly even plurality) of votes that send the winner to Washington. A vote for Trauner is a vote for balance, for common sense, for what is right for Wyoming instead of what is right for a political party. He's run a largely positive campaign and has stood up for himself firmly. Our exceedingly popular Democratic governor endorsed him, and he even got an A- from the NRA (the only real difference between him and Lummis is her record of voting on gun-related issues; he hasn't been in a position to do so yet). He's far more a pragmatist than an ideologue - not your garden-variety "typical liberal" by any means.
Cynthia Lummis has given no indication she'll be anything other than a blindly loyal partisan rubber stamp at the beck and call of the congressional Republican leadership. She's run a negative campaign full of gross mischaracterizations and what can only be accurately called "shit she made up" ($2.6 trillion for illegal immigrants, much?) or else she's been, to put it charitably, intellectually lazy (labeling Trauner a "typical liberal Democrat" in a recent TV spot) suggests that she won't work with Democratic House leadership or a potential President Obama (y'know, they're all typical liberal Democrats), so it isn't a big logical step to figure she'll be an ineffective congresswoman at best. She's been endorsed by both Pat Boone and the NFIB, a group that considers unions "interference." It's also clear she out of touch with the average Wyomingite and wants the job for the wrong reasons, as she's contributed $100,000 to herself. Oh, and if she did show up at a candidates forum she didn't make much of an effort to stick around and meet with the voters in attendance. And to top it all off, she appeals to the worst of Wyoming's nature by pushing the notion that the "Wyoming Values" - which she still hasn't defined - she shares with the voters belong to her and her alone, and can never be shared by anyone born outside the four borders of the state (like Senators Enzi and Barrasso, I guess). She's the same kind of class act that Barbara Cubin has been for the last eighteen years, except she'll show up more than half the time.
For the last time, Wyoming: we're smarter than this. Let's get it right this year!
See you at the polls,
Regis
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