Brian Schweitzer Gets Noticed But Hurdles for '16 Bid Remain

[Beacool]

By Scott Conroy
June 17, 2014

Politicians often say they don't really care about how they are treated in the media, but former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer doesn't bother with such charades.

Schweitzer -- who has been publicly mulling a long-shot campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination -- was in Park City, Utah, over the weekend to speak at Mitt Romney's annual confab and strategy session.

The event typically caters to elite Republican donors and ambitious GOP politicians, so it was an unlikely venue for Schweitzer -- a Democrat who has been pushing a populist, progressive message intended to establish himself as a liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party's frontrunner-in-waiting.

In a counter-intuitive strategy, Schweitzer delivered a stem-winder of a speech Friday, in which he criticized President Obama on a range of policy issues while praising Romney for being “a fun guy” and “easy-going” -- qualities he said Obama lacks, according to the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/06/17/brian_schweitzer_gets_noticed_but_hurdles_for_16_bid_remain__123011.html

Well, well, isn't this interesting? That's a different approach that Schweitzer is trying out. Show up at Romney's annual gathering of Republican fat cats and criticize Obama. For a Democratic politician who expects to run in 2016, that's an unusual strategy.

[MineralMan]

1. Now, there's a strange strategy.

I'm not sure I get it at all. So far, I'm not impressed.

[Beacool]

3. I don't know what game he's playing, but it's going to backfire.

He already said in the past that he planned to run as the "anti-Obama". For a Democrat to say something like that is crazy.

[Capt. Obvious]

2. Oh no

the eye roll smiley

[Larkspur]

4. I love Schweitzer but find this strategy dumb

What I had liked about Schweitzer was that he knew how to battle the right wing rhetorically and with strength, but this is just pandering to people who will never support him as long as he is a Democrat.

I"m not a HIllary supporter either. She's closer to Wall Street than Main Street.

[Historic NY]

5. Romney's confab...really

Because playing to the loser and Republican folks is the way to get the Democrats to nominate him....not.

[Beacool]

7. Exactly, I don't get it either.

That was not precisely the venue to attract potential Democratic voters. Besides, bashing Obama and praising Romney? Really?

[JustAnotherGen]

27. I agree and I love this gif!

[Tarheel_Dem]

6. Liberals loved him, even before they knew what he stood for, just because he trashed Obama.

Schweitzer bullish on 2013 Keystone pipeline construction

HELENA — Gov. Brian Schweitzer is hoping for construction to start in early 2013 on the Keystone XL pipeline after a recent meeting with its builders.

Schweitzer met with TransCanada company officials Monday in Calgary.

The governor has recently been defending the work of the Obama administration on the pipeline, arguing he believes it will get federal approval once the company submits a permit request.

The governor says TransCanda may be able to formally seek federal approval this fall, perhaps allowing for a federal permit late in the year. That would allow the company to meet critical deadlines to ensure construction can begin in 2013.

Schweitzer says the company remains excited about building an on-ramp for eastern Montana oil that the governor helped negotiate as part of the Montana state permitting process.


http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/schweitzer-bullish-on-keystone-pipeline-construction/article_9f7127aa-93e7-11e1-99aa-001a4bcf887a.html

Obama stands between him & the people he's already made a deal with. I'm not surprised to see him welcomed in rightwing circles, so was Zell Miller.

[Beacool]

9. There's also this:

After noting that the Democratic Party should be a “big and diverse party,” Schweitzer added that it also “has to be that same party that not only respects gay and lesbian rights and transgender rights in San Francisco but respects that blue collar guy who takes a shower at the end of the day and not in the morning.”

On substance, this characterization is one that Democratic activists across the country would find little room for disagreement. But Schweitzer’s use of San Francisco as shorthand for gay activism would have been out of tune in 1984 when the city held the Democratic nominating convention. In the Democratic Party of 2014, it’s just plain provocative.

.......

Throughout his career, Schweitzer has strongly opposed gun control measures, earning an “A” rating from the NRA. He has also been a longtime thorn in the side of environmentalists, once characterizing opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline as “jackasses.”

[Octafish]

8. What's Schweitzer really like?

Any DUers know him? Work with the guy? Lived in Montana when was guv?

[Capt. Obvious]

10. Most here have never even met the man

Most here have never even met the man, let alone had a meaningful conversation with him. Yet, you are all so quick to criticize and pass judgment.

[Octafish]

11. Fer shure.

Guy may deserve to get a drone sent up his tractor tailpipe for all the NSA knows.

[grasswire]

14. have you heard?

Under the tractor is the new under the bus.

[Octafish]

29. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Starting Spring 2015.

[Beacool]

12. Did you read the article?

What the hell was he doing at Romney's confab? Worse yet, what was he thinking by bashing Obama and praising Romney?

[Capt. Obvious]

13. Have you had a meaningful conversation with him?

[Beacool]

16. Nope, I've never met the man.

If you personally know him, elucidate us.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. You need to lose your 'sarcasm' signature if you want your points to be taken seriously

At the moment, you're doing an excellent impression of someone who is pointing out that we have enough to criticize him heavily. Is that what you want to convey?

[Capt. Obvious]

18. That's a risk I'm willing to take

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. So you're actually saying we shouldn't criticize politicians until we've met them personally?

Might as well shut down DU then.

You'll be a laughing stock if you don't watch out.

[Capt. Obvious]

20. Funny thing is

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5111832

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. Ah - well played.

I will transfer my incredulity to the other DUer.

[Capt. Obvious]

24. His response to me above

makes it even funnier

[Beacool]

26. What does that have anything to do with this article?

I was referring to the personal attacks, and yes I know her. I wouldn't have wasted so much time defending a person I have never met.

[Larkspur]

23. Progressive journalist David Sirota was a campaign aide to Schweitzer in 2000 and 2004

when Schweitzer first ran for the US Senate and then for governor. See his article "Top Billings" from December 2004.

Schweitzer is no Zell Miller. He does have a progressive side. He bussed senior citizens up to Canada to get cheaper drugs. He's for single payer health care. He's for women's rights, including reproductive rights. He's against Corporate Robber Barons.
He did manage to get environmentalists and hunters on the same side of protecting the environment from pollution when he won the governorship. However, he also favored killing wolves, which is what angered a lot of environmentalists.

So this strategy of bashing Obama at a Romney fanfare, does not seem like Schweitzer has a strategy or a team of good Democratic advisers to assist him with plotting a course to win the Democratic nomination for Prez.

[Octafish]

31. Agree 100-percent, Larkspur.

If he's a stealth candidate, someone needs to tell him his cloaking shields are down.



If he's a man of integrity, who would do the progressive things in office -- I'd like to forgive his known public associations.

[ProSense]

25. He supported McCain in 2000

<...>

Within months of his election, bloggers were clamoring for a presidential run, and his popularity transcended the wonk journals to include coronation as “Hot Governor” by Rolling Stone magazine, while “60 Minutes” called him the Coal Cowboy. On camera he persuaded Lesley Stahl to take a whiff from a vial of diesel fuel synthesized from coal — a product that Schweitzer claims will not only fill Montana’s coffers but also help end the nation’s dependence on foreign oil peddled by “sheiks, rats, crooks, dictators.”

<...>

Schweitzer veers right on many economic and social issues: he opposes gun control, favors the death penalty and preaches about lowering taxes and balancing budgets. At the same time, he leans left on some issues that matter to progressives: championing energy conservation and environmental regulation, opposing governmental restrictions on abortion and criticizing free-trade deals. “He’s as much a prairie centrist as he is a prairie populist,” Bruce Reed of the Democratic Leadership Council told me. Schweitzer has the ability to reduce a complicated issue to a few sharp lines, reframing it with themes of patriotism and underdog know-how. “I was a critic of Nafta, I was a critic of Cafta and I’ll be a critic of Shafta,” he says of free-trade agreements, long the hobgoblin of even the most articulate liberal politicians. “Why is it that America supposedly creates the best businessmen in the world, but when we go to the table with the third world, we come away losers?”

<...>

Other than the fact that they grew up on farms, it’s not immediately clear what unites Schweitzer and Tester, Ritter and the Salazars. With his outspoken criticism of the war in Iraq — “I was very public before we went in that it was a bad idea, and history has borne that out,” he told me — Schweitzer has become a hero to progressives, while Ken Salazar has infuriated liberals with his support of Alberto Gonzalez’s nomination for attorney general and his endorsement of Joe Lieberman’s independent re-election bid. Governor Richardson of New Mexico suggests that such differences are evidence that the movement has no overarching strategy. “It’s happening from the bottom up,” he told me. “This is a natural evolution. It’s no grand design.” Or maybe it’s that the region’s Democrats simply don’t have many core beliefs in common. Schweitzer remains an iconoclast; he says he supported John McCain’s presidential bid in 2000, though he has since soured on McCain because of the way he has courted the religious right, and he says he is now intrigued by the possibility of a presidential run by Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, in 2008. “If he gets the nomination, I might support him,” Schweitzer told me.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08governor.html?pagewanted=all

'Populist' Schweitzer courts Romney's donors?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025103192

[Beacool]

28. Thanks for the links.

I was away for the weekend and didn't see your post.

He supported McCain in 2000 and liked Romney in 2008??? Why doesn't he switch parties?

[Octafish]

30. That's sad, if he's really a Republican.

It's not like he picked friends of Larry Summers to run America's economy.

[Larkspur]

32. Yeah, a lot of Democrats who could switched to vote in the Republican primary

in 2000. A vote for McCain in the 2000 Repub primary was a vote against Bush.

[PragmaticLiberal]

15. Isn't Schweitzer guy who said that Obama's only accomplishment was being the first AA President?

[Beacool]

21. Yes, he's the guy.

"In fact, Sarlin said Schweitzer would only go so far as to praise Obama for being the first African American president."

http://news.yahoo.com/democratic-presidential-hopeful-can-t-think-of-anything-positive-to-say-about-obama-230031884.html

[Beacool]

33. I guess Schweitzer needs some sensitivity training.

Dem 2016 Hopeful Schweitzer: Cantor’s ‘Effeminate Mannerisms’ Set Off My Gaydar

Former Montana Governor and current MSNBC contributor Brian Schweitzer has some interesting thoughts, shall we say, about ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and about how the Republican congressman… erm, well… sets off his “gaydar.”

------

It wasn’t the only time Schweitzer was unable to hold his tongue. Last week, I called him on the night Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in his GOP primary. “Don’t hold this against me, but I’m going to blurt it out. How do I say this … men in the South, they are a little effeminate,” he offered when I mentioned the stunning news. When I asked him what he meant, he added, “They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say—and I’m fine with gay people, that’s all right—but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he’s not, I think, so I don’t know. Again, I couldn’t care less. I’m accepting.”

http://www.mediaite.com/online/dem-2016-hopeful-schweitzer-cantors-effeminate-mannerisms-set-off-my-gaydar/