by Travis Mateer

I think it’s time for George Ochenski to be put out to pasture. This Republican-bashing opinion writer who once opined for the Missoula Independent (before hopping over to Lee Enterprises) is just too old and out-of-touch to be relevant anymore.

After wasting readers time with a wrapped axle metaphor, Ochenski describes his cognitive limitation regarding Republicans’ collective non-vote on the stimulus bill:

It boggles the mind to think that not one Republican in either the U.S. Senate or House voted for the massive $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill signed into law by President Biden last week. How, one might ask, is it possible to justify these cult-like unified votes against measures that significantly help their constituents? What, there’s not a single Republican out of the nation’s 331 million citizens suffering from the year-long trials and tribulations of the coronavirus pandemic?

Ochenski won’t be put out to pasture because he plays a very important role for Democrats. Keeping the focus squarely on the “cult-like” actions of Republicans means less attention on Democrats failure to provide $2,000 stimulus checks as promised, their failure to raise the minimum wage (thanks Jon Tester!), and their failure to protect stimulus checks from debt collectors.

None of that gets any attention from old George, who is still talking about Trump and using Trump to bash the legislative actions of “Trumpers”. From the link:

Closer to home, the Republican-dominated Montana legislature is not exactly garnering widespread applause for its actions — just the opposite, in fact, as Montanans rightfully wonder at the nutty legislation emanating from the Trumpers in the first half of the session. Far from helping fellow Montanans, so far the focus (if you can call it that) seems to be on doling out favors to special interests and bashing those that don’t fit the Republican ideological mold into which they’re trying very hard to stuff the wide diversity of Montanans.

I’m not sure if George realizes this, but the Montanans he arrogantly assumes to speak for OVERWHELMINGLY voted for Republicans. That is why Republicans won every big ticket race this election cycle.

If George wants to see Democrats win political races in Montana he should spend some time examining why the DNC doesn’t give two shits about what happens in this state. The last time the DNC cared about Montana was during the Victory Fund money laundering days of the disastrous Hillary Clinton campaign. Since then, the blue bench efforts from Montana Democrats has been utterly pathetic.

Self-reflection over political failure is not something Democrats and their supporters appear capable of doing. That needs to change if they want to win races in Montana again.