How surprised are we that longtime Republican lawmaker Cale Case of Lander had plenty to say at a forum hosted by Fremont County Democrats last week in Lander?
Not very.
Given the assorted flavors of Republicanism these days, Case probably felt right at home in a room full of Democrats.
It was kind of surprising, however, that Case encouraged the large crowd at a Democrat-hosted forum to cross over and vote in the GOP primary in August, to blunt recent advances by Wyoming Freedom Caucus Republicans, who now control the Wyoming House. And he urged them not to miss the new, May deadline to cross over.
So you had a Republican urging Democrats to cross over to stop Republicans.
Let that sink in.
Case said if Democrats want to stop anticipated cuts in education, health care, communities and economic development, “you have to do it in the Republican primary,” according to published newspaper accounts.
“This year's primary is going to be the most consequential election since statehood,” Case warned the Democrats...
About his fellow Republicans.
So much for the famous words of Ronald Reagan on Aug. 19, 1976, in Kansas City, Missouri, calling for “a banner of bold, unmistakable colors with no pale pastels” when defining the Republican Party.
One is also reminded of Reagan's “11th Commandment,” to “not speak ill of another Republican.”
What would Reagan have thought about a Republican asking Democrats to assist in defeating a Republican movement? (Listen closely, and you might hear the gentle rustling sound of The Gipper rolling over in his grave.)
What we have here in Wyoming is a full pallet of pale pastels, a cornucopia of differing opinions of what it means to be a Republican. Ranging from the direct, unvarnished thinking of the Freedom Caucus, to the flexible beliefs of slippery pragmatists, all the way to the faintest memory of Republicanism among Weak Sauce Republicans. (My wife calls them Democrats in Disguise.)
(By the way, I first heard the term “weak sauce” used as a mark of lameness from a high school kid in North Platte, Nebraska, way back in 2004. Seems to describe our more wobbly Republican friends to a tee.)
Analyzing the varying degrees of Republicanism here in Wyoming – sometimes described as the bluest red state in the union – is like wine tasting. Freedom Caucus wine comes in a box, is cheap, and you can squeeze the last drop out of the bag inside, like milking a cow. Nothing particularly subtle about it. Compare that to the more sophisticated RepublicanISH wines, that have good “nose” when you swirl them in a glass and sniff it at election time, but let you down after the election when you get a taste of the stuff.
All hat. No cowboy.
Pale pastels 'til the cows come home.
None of this should come as a surprise, since six (maybe more) vote monitoring sites on the internet deal specifically with measuring the lead in the pencils of Wyoming Republican legislators. They are WyoRINO.com, EvidencebasedWyoming.com, WyoVOTE.com, 307Votes.com, TheFreedomindex.org, and Honorwyoming.org.
Check out these sites and you'll know whether you've been voting for a Hatfield or a McCoy.
Sen. Case, mentioned above, voted along with his fellow Republican senators, on issues deemed important to Republicans, a mere 20 percent of the time in 2025, according to WyoRINO.com. Compare that to Freedom Caucus mainstay John Bear, who comes in at a perfect 100 percent. Also at 100 percent are Speaker of the House Chip Neiman of Weston County, Jeremy Haroldson of Platte County, Freedom Caucus chair Rachel Rodriguez-Williams of Park County, and 26 other Republicans around the state.
Case gets a “low trust” rating on 307Votes.com, compared to Bear's “high trust.” And Case is 25 out of 100 at TheFreedomIndex.com, while Ken Pendergraft of Sheridan County rates a perfect 100.
And, as expected, a whole lot of our lawmakers are clogged up in the middle.
The pale, pastel colors Reagan wanted to avoid.
We'll see if encouraging Democrats to come on over to the Republican side in the primary can neuter the Freedom Caucus, as Cale Case hopes.
Democrats crossing over didn't save Liz Cheney.
But, it might help get Cale Case re-elected.
There's that.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
