Rebecca Bextel, the Constitution Party candidate for governor, won’t get within sniffing distance of that office. And you can take that to the bank.
Republican Eric Barlow will be our next governor, and he’ll serve with distinction. Barlow will occupy that office for two terms, if he so wishes. And you can take that to the bank, too.
The crayon-eating kids is the back of the room are passing notes back and forth during history class, and telling each other that Bextel has a chance to win in the general election. They need to crack a book more often and pay some attention, or they will flunk history.
You remember Bextel as the Republican Checkgate Lady who delivered campaign checks to Freedom Caucus inbumbents on the floor of the Wyoming House during this past budget session. The photo that Rep. Karlee Provenza took of that boneheaded move went viral, and prompted a criminal investigation by the Laramie County Sheriff that is ongoing.
Nine out of ten recipients of those checks lost their primary election. Yet somehow Bextel saw that as a handy platform to dive headfirst into the Wyoming gubernatorial race as the Constitution Party candidate, without first checking the depth of the water.
It must be noted that all of the legislators she handed checks to are Republican, yet she chose not to run as a Republican candidate. She instead characterized her weird candidacy as an insurance policy against Eric Barlow the eventual GOP nominee.
Caramba, talk about wasted insurance premiums! That’s like taking out insurance against the wind blowing in Wyoming.
Far from being a bona fide third, fourth or fifth party pushing against GOP hegemony, the Constitution party – in the minds of most Wyomingites – remains the party of Rex Rammell. Rammell, if you recall, is the poacher from Idaho or Utah or somewhere who drooled about being governor in Wyoming.
Rammell ran on a platform of using the Wyoming Natinal Guard to arrest and drive from our borders the feds, in the persons of employees of the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.
The citizens of the Big Empty who thought that was a good idea weren’t enough to fill up the Desert Bar in Wamsutter on a slow afternoon.
The Constitution Party in Wyoming simply doesn’t have much reach.
Perhaps Checkgate Becky is counting on disaffected Republicans who supported either Megan Degenfelder or Brent Bien in their feckless gubernatorial primaries to follow her over to Rammell’s Constitution Party and give her a win.
That’s what you get when you eat crayons in the back of class, and don’t pay attention.
The schisms in the Wyoming GOP are real, and factions within it are pulling this way and that. But that disaffection, at least in my view, simply doesn’t run deep enough for Republicans to abandon the party of Hansen and Hathaway, and throw their weight behind a rich chick from Jackson who is being pulled along in Rex Rammell’s wake.
I think they value their votes more than that. The numbers just aren’t there to put Checkgate Becky in the governor’s office.
Add to that the fact that Republicans hate cross-over voting with a purple assed passion.
The utter bloodbath inflicted on the Chemtrail Caucus in the primary has left blood spatters on Rebecca Bextel for all to see. If she is as invested as she says in that political movement, she would be well-advised to sit down with them and figure out where they screwed up.
Bextel’s right wing “media” knitting circle has seen their metrics ratchet up since the primary, as folks engage with taunts of “Scoreboard! Scoreboard!” and “Suck it up, snowflake” while her strident talking heads blame the massacre on everyone but the Chemtrail Caucus.
So some sincere introspection and self-criticism is called for if that wing of the GOP has any prayer of gaining some of the ground they lost. A doomed and goofball run for govenor will only make them look like bigger fools.
But hey, if Checkgate Becky decides to stay in the race and tilt at windmills for the next couple of months, I’m fine with that.
I sure as hell won’t lack satire material for my columns.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
