Wyoming Governor candidates fall over themselves to be more anti-fed than the next guy

I LOVE livin’ in the Cowboy State.

In a debate on Thursday night of Wyoming Gubernatorial Republican candidates Matt Mead, Rita Meyer and Ron Micheli (candidate Simpson didn’t bother showing up) and Libertarian Party candidate Mike Wheeler, they all tried to out-do each other on how anti-Fed each one is.

This is a nice contrast. In my former state, California, the candidates generally praise Washington DC and talk about how if elected (or re-elected), they will enact more programs and entitlements. In Wyoming the candidates talk about calling out the Wyoming National Guard against the federal government (RLC-endorsed candidate Rita Meyer), and taking federal land in Wyoming away from the Feds (RLC-endorsed candidate Ron Micheli). Statist Matt Mead even talked boldly about “securing the nation’s borders.” (Not really a bold issue for a non-border state gov candidate, but hey…more conservative than some RINOs would try to get away with.)

I love it. So far Wyoming has no Democrat announced for the November election, and the Republicans are fighting on a platform of who hates the Feds more. I find it refreshing.

Check out some of the user comments  from appalled lefties on the Casper Tribune (a leftie rag  that some call “the Casper Turbine”) :

I’ve never been so embarrased (sic) or depressed to live in Wyoming, because let’s face it it – one of these boobs is going to be our next Governor, and more than half of our state populace will embrace this boob with open arms. My god, look at what they say in a public forum – lord knows what they’re really thinking in the dark cobwebbed feverish little poison closets of their minds. Dark days ahead indeed, for the state and the country. Time for educated and enlightened folks to wake up and come out swinging or we’re going to wake up one day and find the teabagger trolls running the show.

and

You and Rita are both suggesting the treasonous use of force against the federal government. It doesn’t matter what 7th grade scenario you think up, if you’re using force to fight the rule of law in this country, you’re committing treason. I hope you both end up before a firing squad should you ever try to pull such nonsense using this state’s national guard. Or any other force.

Yikes!

Anyway, the Libertarian Party candidate, Mike Wheeler, showed up tonight at the Republican Liberty Caucus meeting we had at the library. He seems like a nice gent, but I’ve got to say, he kinda monopolized the meeting and spun it into a campaign pitch for ten minutes or more until I stopped him. And moreover, he is not a true libertarian, he’s a LINO who thinks the government should subsidize cars to run on natural gas to help the state economy of Wyoming. When I pointed out that this wasn’t a very libertarian stance, he said “I’m not really a libertarian.”

Mike Wheeler may have his heart in the right place (being of service), but has a very child-like understanding of government (several laymen and one laywoman attending the meeting had a much deeper understanding of the way the world works. And my wife, the only other person at the meeting who was a registered Libertarian Party member, said “No way I’d vote for that guy.”)

This was confounded more by Libertarian Party candidate Mike Wheeler’s comments at the debate last week, (from the Casper Turbine):

Growing up on a southern Colorado cattle ranch, Wheeler said there were “a couple of people that had a little water on their back working on the ranch.”

He then lamented that there are “red-blooded Wyomingites that are losing a job to somebody that’s probably sending their money back to Chihuahua for tacos.”

Anyway, the scary thing is the guy thinks he can win. He said so tonight when I asked him.

I told him, in front of others at the meeting, that I think he’ll just take away votes from people who should win.

I asked him if he knew who Dave Dawson is, Wheeler didn’t know. Dawson is the Libertarian Party guy who split off three percent of the Republican vote in the last election and handed the Wyoming Governorship to a Democrat. (I’ve had lunch with Dave Dawson. He’s a sweet guy regardless of putting a Democrat into office. And that Democrat was Gov Dave, who really probably should have run as a Republican. Gov Dave is at least as fiscally conservative, if not more so, than Scott Brown.)

I also thought it was a little ironic that a Libertarian Party guy took up so much time at an RLC meeting, because I was anticipating (and prepared for) liberal shit-starters, and none arrived. So it kinda took me off guard when a Libertarian Party guy showed up and talked until I cut him off…at a meeting of a group that came out of the Libertarian Party to run candidates as Republicans so they could win, rather than splitting the vote to make a point, like the Libertarian Party so often does.

Amway, I’m excited about Rita Meyer and Ron Micheil, and the consternation they’re causing the small (but growing) number of liberals in this state. Yay!

-Michael W. Dean