In a rip-snorting appearance on YouTube this past weekend, gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Bextel was interviewed by controversial podcaster Tucker Carlson.
It has been viewed by over 360,000 people. So far.
It was a meeting of two imperfect entities.
Bextel hurt the Freedom Caucus last winter when she didn't realize how controversial it would be to pass out three campaign donation checks on the floor of thee Wyoming House of Representatives.
It was photographed, there was a backlash, no crime was committed, but most members of the Caucus were defeated in the August primary election, in part because of the check controversy.
And Carlson's increasing skepticism about our country's relations with longtime ally Israel - with some going so far as to say he's become antisemitic - has many longtime listeners simply turning him off.
But, it was the old Tucker Carlson asking questions this time, interviewing Constitution Party candidate Bextel to find out how the overwhelmingly red state of Wyoming is in the process of turning blue.
“You have states, primarily in the west,” Carlson said, “that are overwhelmingly Republican that wind up becoming nothing like what Republican voters would like their state to become. And that over time you just wind up like Colorado.”
He said these states become “unrecognizable, and not a better place.”
“My sense is that something is happening to Wyoming,” he said, “of all places.”
Bextel replied, “In 2020 Charlie Kirk was in Gillette, Wyoming, and he said very famously now that in six years, Wyoming will be blue, because the Democrats will have infiltrated the Republican Party.”
“He said that?” Carlson asked.
“I can show it to you now,” Bextel replied.
“That's prophetic,” Carlson said.
“Democrats have no say in Wyoming politics,” Bextel said, “so they all switch over to the Republican Party. We always have conservatives that split the election for the primary, and then we end up with the Democrat candidate, and that is exactly what's happening right now.
“Our candidate for the Republican Party (Eric Barlow of Gillette) won't even (sign) the platform pledge to say that they'll stick with the party 80% of the time,” Bextel said. “This guy is so radical. He actually testified before Congress one time and said we needed to remove our dependence on fossil fuels in favor of a renewable energy model.
“So you can't imagine a guy like that being in charge of Wyoming, where our bread and butter is the mineral industry and the energy sector.”
Bextel told Carlson that Barlow voted “eight times in six years (while in the Wyoming Legislature) to expand Wyoming Medicaid to 55,000 able-bodied adults that don't even have children. He voted for taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens. He loves the green energy scam, wind farms, solar farms.”
“We end up with governors who don't reflect the will of the people,” Bextel said. “The conservatives split the votes and the big money comes in and takes it away. And that's what I'm up against right now.”
She will be lucky to raise $1 million for her campaign, she said, while those who oppose her can raise far more. Barlow “is funded by the Democrats, the darks, George Soros money. I mean that has trickled its way into Wyoming.”
Bextel told Carlson, “One of the things I want to do when I'm governor is get rid of the property tax.”
“In Jackson there's a woman, she's 94 years old, she's been working since she's six. She bought her house for $40,000 in 1960. It happens to be sitting on a double lot in Jackson now, and it's falling down all around her. But it's worth four and a half million dollars.
“So her Social Security income is $12,704 a year, and her property tax is $19,000. And so she's working. She had to get a job answering phones at an acupuncture place. At 94, she's still working.”
Carlson said, “People don't know” about the changes taking place in Wyoming. “They just vote Republican because that's who you vote for. They don't know.”
“That's what I'm up against,” Bextel said, “is “begging people, please don't vote for the R. The Republican Party has imploded. We don't have any leadership. One third of the Republicans are Democrats.”
“So I'm running to basically save us from turning into the state of Colorado,” Bextel said. “If I lose this election, we'll be Colorado in four years.”
“Barlow is for anything that will get him elected,” she said. “He's a Democrat.”
“Please, Wyoming,” she said, “give me a chance. Put me in, Coach. I'm ready for this. I'm going down there and I'm breaking up the old boys club.”
The 34-minute interview is wide ranging, taking in affordable housing problems in Jackson and around the state, ownership of some affordable housing projects by private equity firms in Japan and on our east coast, and whether Charlie Kirk's 2020 prediction that Wyoming will turn blue is really happening before our eyes.
Check it out on YouTube.
This may not be the third-party suicide mission that such efforts almost always turn out to be.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
