Sophocles is said to have written, “Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.” Wise words indeed, but if last week’s election was any indication, succeeding through fraud may unfortunately be Wyoming’s new future.
Opinion
The state may be in for a whole lot more theater in our Legislature, and a whole lot less legitimate lawmaking. Legislative votes will be taken simply for use in elections, to hammer those who oppose the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ imported agenda and divisive tactics.
Theater may be the new game, but if there’s one lesson from last week we must not miss, it’s that fear is central to the Freedom Caucus’ strategy. Those who do not wish to bend the knee to them will have to decide how to go forward.
You see, from the schoolyard bully to the tinpot dictator, fear is the key ingredient to intimidate and force others to bend to their will. Whether it’s bloodying the nose of an unsuspecting boy at recess or a lightning invasion of another country, fear is an effective tool, and bullies the world over know it.
Last week’s primary election, preceded by weeks of coordinated attacks on candidates using lies and misrepresentations, effectively demonstrated how the coordinated use of mistruths can instill fear — both in the electorate who are told Freedom Caucus opponents are coming for their rights, and in the politicians being demonized. These unprecedented wins did not happen solely because candidates, as Freedom Caucus leader John Bear says, worked hard on the ground. They didn’t win because they raised lots of money from constituents and spent it talking to voters. No, they won because out-of-state folks “played” in their races (frequently using lies) to their huge advantage.
The Freedom Caucus and its allies have gained a majority in the Wyoming Senate and will most likely claim the Wyoming House of Representatives as well in November, and they did it by attacking incumbents with dishonest mailers. Lies, lies and more lies. The bigger the lie, the better, and now that they’ve been successful, those who stand to be lied about have a reason to fear for their political futures.
Bear was featured in a Facebook post after the election by McShane LLC, a Las Vegas, Nevada-based consultant hired by Bear’s Freedom Caucus PAC, touting a “Wyoming victory.” In the post, Bear thanked the firm for bringing “their trademark aggressive tactics” to Wyoming.
Who is McShane LLC?
Well, it’s a GOP consulting firm. More specifically, it’s a firm that in 2021 had an employee linked to the Proud Boys. Other reporting shows McShane created a super PAC called “Take Back the West.” “The owner of McShane LLC, the political consulting company that arranged to recruit Proud Boys to attend a post-presidential election protest and rally in North Las Vegas, set up a political action committee in Nevada that has one benefactor — McShane LLC,” the Nevada Current reported in 2021.
At least one candidate in Tennessee fired McShane LLC after learning about its ties to the Proud Boys.
This is the political firepower Bear and his Speaker of the House candidate Rep. Chip Nieman clearly believed they needed in Wyoming to win the majority for themselves. McShane has enjoyed success in our state before. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray paid McShane LLC nearly $200,000 during his bid to win in 2022, campaign finance records show.
And what other groups played in Wyoming’s elections? Well, in a post the day after Wyoming’s primary election, Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the national American Federation for Children said on X, “My organization targeted three legislators in Wyoming House Republican primaries for voting against school choice this year. They all just lost their seats.”
This kind of spiking the football by a guy in Texas who has nothing to do with Wyoming, celebrating the losses of targeted lawmakers, is exactly the kind of dirty D.C. politics the Freedom Caucus has brought to Wyoming.
And of course, we can’t forget Make Liberty Win, the campaign wing of Young Americans for Liberty, Ron Paul’s brainchild, which was one of the main players this year sending out mailers, many of them also containing false and misleading information.
Here is the “Privacy and Disclosure Notice” at the end of the intensive seven-page survey created by Young Americans for Liberty that I’ve been told some Freedom Caucus candidates have admitted they filled out:
“Young Americans for Liberty does not intend to share these survey results with the public. However, if you are elected to office and vote against the positions you described or otherwise act against the policy positions you represent in this survey, YAL will make it known.”
If you didn’t catch it, that is a threat intended to intimidate Wyoming lawmakers into obeying an out-of-state group — not Wyoming voters — through fear.
You see fear is a powerful force. Fear can make people cower, obey and withdraw. But more importantly, fear makes people lose their sense of decency. We’ve seen it throughout history: Good people will acquiesce to things they do not believe in because of fear. They will agree to tactics they find personally repugnant because of fear. They will surrender because of fear. And while all political operators seek to instill some fear in their adversaries, overcoming one’s fear is something all political victors have in common.
But fear can also bring out the deepest acts of courage and heroism.
Winston Churchill said, “Fear is a response, courage is a decision,” and he’s right.
Fear has been used to great effect in politics here in Wyoming, and I think most politicians had better get comfortable with feeling it. But succumbing to fear is no way to live, and it’s no way to represent your constituents.
Courage is a decision, and Wyoming conservatives had better make the decision to embrace courage and push past fear. If not, we will continue to be ruled by the Freedom Caucus bullies and their out-of-state puppeteers. And that’s no way for the Cowboy State and her fierce people to live.
I will never understand how the good, hard working, down to earth people in our once great state allowed this title wave of extremists to gain a foothold. I fear that one day soon the reality of poor voting decisions will hit home, and likely after many of our freedoms and liberties have been taken by these yahoos. Wake up Wyoming.
We didn’t end with the cowardice of the Freedom Caucus here, we started with it. Wyoming’s political reps have increasingly been drawn from the pool passive fascists, as the greatest generation left us and the worst generation rushed in to steal the National treasures.
Men don’t punch down, men protect the vulnerable. Men don’t lie, they hold themselves with honor. Men don’t use an antiquated and contradictive religious text to justify their bigotry or ill deeds. Men find their spirituality quietly within and share thru righteous actions. Men don’t oppress others and call it their ‘freedom.’ Men fight to protect the rights of all, particularly those they disagree with.
We don’t have many men left in WY, which is a stark comparison to my youth, when I can’t remember looking at a man and thinking, “What an remarkable coward he is. A slave to fear who attacks those in need.”
Thank you, Amy Edmonds for this article. Fear and bullying seem to be the game choice today at all levels of government! Well written and please keep on telling the facts and help to wake people up to what is happening in Wyoming as well as in the entire country.
People who are old and rich or the uneducated are most easily swayed by fear. Wyoming is on its way to being the most backward state in the union because it is afraid of any progress since the auto replaced the horse. But I ain’t leaving.
“You see, from the schoolyard bully to the tinpot dictator, fear is the key ingredient to intimidate and force others to bend to their will. Whether it’s bloodying the nose of an unsuspecting boy at recess or a lightning invasion of another country, fear is an effective tool, and bullies the world over know it.”
Laughing. You lefties don’t much care for anyone else using your age old tactics, eh? “Dictator”, Death of Democracy”, National theft of reproductive rights”, “misery for the LBTJQ community”, “tax cuts for the rich”, separation of (illegal alien) families”, “retribution and revenge”, “gonna put y’all back in chains” and etc., etc. Yep–a small portion of the lefty lexicon of fear and diversion–repetitive over numerous election cycles, State, Federal, and local. You are familiar with the theory of projection, are you not? If not, flip through your copy of Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals for a refresher.
Last thought–any legislator anywhere beholden to the Teachers Union, and against school choice deserves booting. Good riddance.
Thanks Reid.
Amy speaks from experience here. During her mercifully brief tenure in the Wyoming Legislature, she paraded a series of homophobic lunatics before the Legislature attempting to scare her fellow legislators into restricting the rights of LGBT Wyomingites. Thankfully, she failed to do so.
She had no problem spreading baseless fears then, so I can’t help but wonder why it was okay for Amy Edmonds to spread lies and fear about LGBTQ people but not for the ironically named “freedom caucus” to do so about rival political candidates now?
Fear, cowardice, mendacity and blatant hypocrisy have long had a place in politics, in Wyoming and elsewhere. Amy Edmonds might come across as a more credible commentator if she spoke frankly about her role spreading baseless fears while in office. What changed her mind and transformed her approach to politics? Or has she changed? Perhaps she continues to be an unrepentant homophobe, standing by the promotion of baseless lies and bigotry, so long as it only targets gay people who are not also GOP candidates for office?
Amy, Liz and Dick rode the wave of hatred to power and are now here to fight the fire they started. I find it funny that they get paid or receive airtime instead of being put into the dustbin of history.
Mrs. Edmonds revisionist history is self serving. It’s en vogue to call out the integrity challenged bigots when she’s no longer apart of them.
Wyoming caucus are just liberal Democrats, registered as Republicans. Some of them have worse voting records than open Democratic legislators in Wyoming. Why don’t you examine out of state money and Democrat funding of the Wyoming caucus. The Wyoming Freedom caucus is at least as Conservative as a 1990’s Democrat. This article is total trash and fear mongering. Just another example of the left accusing Conservatives of what they themselves are guilty of. At the the Wyoming Freedom Caucus can define a woman, until their “Wyoming Caucus Communist” counterparts. Thank Gordon for his war on coal and all of the trash wind turbines littering the State.
Thanks for your attention to the details.
I never thought my Wyoming people would allow this to happen. Is it fear, cowardice or apathy? I don’t know. I do know that Wyomings politics, from the federal level on down, is corrupt. I hope that the people of Wyoming will come to realize their foolishness.