How strange Rep. Rosendale and Sen. Daines are still sitting in D.C. and were involved in the process of deciding whether Trump incited violence by spreading the lie that the November 2020 was stolen. They, too, dangerously promoted the Big Lie. Also without evidence. And without yet having had to answer to Montanans for deeply anti-democratic, dangerous beliefs and messaging.
When he took office, Rosendale joined Daines in holding onto the ex-President’s coattails through years of Trump lying with impunity, starting with his birtherism and inauguration crowd numbers and continuing almost daily, on into the terrain of COVID-19 — for which there have been enormous consequences to his misinformation — and climate change, the even bigger crisis facing us all.
In light of the severity of the issues facing us, we can’t afford the fantasy, escapism and conspiracism of the Republican Party. As Yuval Levin, a director at the American Enterprise Institute, said
about Republicans like Hawley and Cruz in an interview with Ezra Klein, “…what they were doing was affirming fantasies and conspiracies that are dangerous to the American civic order and deadly and destructive to a functional politics.”
Daines and Rosendale, calls for unity now mean nothing in the face of what you have done in denying the votes of 7 million Americans and an Electoral College win and in continuing to hold with the Republican mob that is trying to break the back of our democracy.
Kathryn Schmidt
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 2/18/21