When you play for high stakes at the Big Table, the chips get a lot heavier and the competition a lot less friendly. Frank Eathorne, the Ayatollah and Chief Cleric of the Wyoming Republican Party is learning that painful lesson very publicly.
Sen. Anthony “Romeo” Bouchard found that out when he challenged Liz Cheney for her seat in Congress. His previous elections for the Wyoming Legislature were characterized by his bellicosity, bluster and bluff as he used personal attacks on opponents as his campaign tactic.
He was good at dishing it out.
Then all of a sudden, he challenged a very astute and well-financed opponent in Cheney and was given a dose of his own medicine. Cheney – or her supporters – spent some money and time digging into Romeo’s past and uncovered his impregnation of a 14 year old girl.
In his ‘splaining of this news, Bouchard claimed that it was just “…like the story of Romeo and Juliet”. He gave that nickname to himself.
This inconvenient news knocked the legs out from under Bouchard’s campaign, reduced his fundraising to the level of a Kool-Aid stand and flattened all the tires on his honey wagon. His candidacy plummeted from that of a serious challenge to the Swamp to a laughingstock almost overnight.
Losing a high stakes hand at the Big Table will do that to a politician. And Frank Eathorne just blew a HUUUGE hand of stud poker in a very pubic game. His rapid rise up the political ladder finally got him high enough to have some sunshine thrown his way.
An investigative article by WyoFile and the Casper Star Tribune uncovered proof of several past sexual indiscretions by Eathorne. In one instance, he was busted several years ago while a law enforcement officer in Worland for engaging in oral sex in his squad car with someone other than his wife.
Ouch!
In another instance, last December he stood in front of his congregation on Sunday and confessed that he had cheated on his wife. Not with the blowjob lady, but with some as yet unnamed “other woman”. Sort of a turquoise mystery.
There has been speculation for months about exactly who that Jezebel is. I’m sure that when the final credits roll on this soap opera, all the characters will be named.
Readers will recall that I have referred to Eathorne in past columns as “Oath Keepin’” Frank, because of his association with the Oath Keepers, a loose assortment of right wing, evangelical knuckle draggers.
But these new revelations convince me that Frank is VERY selective about which oaths he keeps. And the marriage oath didn’t make that list.
He doesn’t deserve to be called an oath keeper of any sort. So, from henceforth I shall refer to him as “Oral” Eathorne, itself a very evangelical moniker. And I trust we will all know of whom I speak.
The cautionary tale that Oral and Romeo tell us is that things get rough when you play with the big kids. Don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose. Secrets are bound to come out into the light of day. Bluffs never work. There is always a blue (or turquoise) dress.
As of this writing, Oral hasn’t responded to this revelation. Let me clue him right now that claiming, “hey, at least they were all of legal age” probably won’t work.
Anybody who wants to play for high stakes at the Big Table of American politics needs to memorize the lessons that Bouchard and Eathorne are trying to teach them through their pubic embarrassments. That table doesn’t suffer fools lightly.
For the Park County Men’s Full Gospel Gun & Glee Club who will attack this column using the stones and glass houses metaphor, I’ll confess right now that I am a professional, and my private life makes lightweights like Romeo and Oral look like choirboys.
And for their ilk who wanna gripe ‘cuz I only write about Republican zipper-fails, I’ll remind them that there aren’t enough Democrats in Wyoming to have a decent orgy.
Rod Miller is a life-long Republican and Wyoming native. Born into a ranching family that has been in the Cowboy State since 1867, he ran against incumbent Liz Cheney for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat in 2018.
