Montana Politics
Mike Lange Announces Senate Bid Against Baucus
By Courtney Lowery, 6-29-07
As Jim Gransberry reports at the Billings Gazette this morning, state Rep. Mike Lange, R-Billings, has just announced that he will challenge Democratic Sen. Max Baucus.
Lange, a pipefitter from Billings, told reporters he knew he has a long, hard road ahead of him, trying to unseat a powerful incumbent. He pledged to put "America first" during his campaign and focus on freedom, security and America's working class.
Lange, who has served three sessions in the House but became famous during the last legislative session (in which he was the House Minority Leader) for the tirade against the governor, will make several other stops in the coming days to speak about his candidacy, including Great Falls, Helena, Bozeman, Missoula and Butte.
Barrett Kaiser, Baucus' spokesman, said although Baucus has not officially announced he will run again for the seat, "we fully expect them to."
Kaiser said he expects it to be an interesting race, characterizing Lange as "out of step with mainstream Montana values" and wondering why "Montanans would want to replace one of the most powerful men in the country" with someone "with extreme views and has proven himself as a very divisive figure."
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Baucus voted for liberal activist judges and against conservative judges. He votes against pro-growth tax cuts and for job-killing tax increases. He's a spineless do-nothing jellyfish and a politician in the worst sense of the word. You could elect a moose to the Senate and it would be an improvement. Max Baucus must go!
Sticks and stone hurt more than words:
"The wife of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., reached a deal Wednesday with federal prosecutors to avoid prosecution on a misdemeanor assault charge that stemmed from a dispute with another woman in a garden center parking lot. " His wife also got in hot water for praising Saddam at a time when Baucus himself was in favor of deposing him.
Max, like Hillary Clinton, is of the school of two-faced misleadership. voted for the war back then and talked like a hawk, but now want to avoid responsibility for it and talk anti-war.
Al Hunt of WSJ says: "The Montana Democrat is a case study in legislative weakness. More than ideology or seniority, effective legislators, whether a liberal Democrat like Sen. Ted Kennedy or a conservative Republican like Rep. Bill Thomas, are knowledgeable, resourceful, tough and politically calculating; they know when to hold, and when to compromise.
In more than 30 years as an elected legislator -- 25 in the Senate -- these are skills Max Baucus never acquired. He's always looking over his shoulder politically, usually willing to accommodate and often more interested in a result than the result."
Support term limits, citizen Government and American values - FIRE vicious do-nothing bad senator MAX BAUCUS.