Requiem for a movement

The “use by” date for the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is fast approaching, and that day is 8/18/26. After that date, and just like curdled milk or fish that’s starting to stink, the political movement that began with such bluster and bravado will be tossed into the dumpster alongside the wilting lettuce and moldy bread.

The bloom is off the rose for Wyoming’s short-lived Freedom Caucus “grassroots” revolution. And good riddance.

Any celebration would be a tad premature, though, since the primary election is still a few months hence, and voters have yet to speak. But a careful reading of the political chicken entrails, and an ear to the ol’ Sagebrush Telegraph will reveal that most of our friends and neighbors in the Big Empty have had a bellyful of Freedom Caucus lunacy.

We all recall when the Freedom Caucus crept into Wyoming from Who-Knows-Where a few years ago, with flowery promises of a Cowboy State Renaissance and dreams of political power they couldn’t acquire back home. Their populist snake oil sounded good enough to the small fraction of us who actually voted, and we gave them the reins. They gained a majority in the Wyoming House and occupied the Speaker’s chair for the recent budget session.

Then they proceeded to drive the wagon into the ditch with their fantasies of a right-wing utopia and paranoia of chemtrails and UFOs.

Common sense, my ass!

Our budget was passed and other important legislative work got done in spite of — not because of — the Freedom Caucus, when wiser heads in the Senate prevailed against their fumbling nonsense. Their legislative ineptitude and the stigma of the Checkgate scandal will hang around the necks of disgraced Freedom Caucus incumbents like a rotting albatross during their reelection campaigns.

The Freedom Caucus’ slobbering MAGA boosterism cemented the group to Trump. And Trump’s political neuroses have multiplied and compounded recently into some sort of strange admixture of raging senility and psychopathy that has created fault lines in his own movement. It turns out that the scales on our eyes were not permanent and our tolerance for bullshit is indeed finite.

All of this bodes ill for the Freedom Caucus IF we citizens take participation in our democracy seriously.

I detect a sense of panic these days within the Freedom Caucus and its tiny captive media “empire.” Caucus members can read chicken entrails, too. Frantic calls for reinforcements have come from their leadership as the next election nears, like Custer calling for more help at the Little Bighorn.

The abysmally small and self-marginalized right-wing fringe media in Wyoming has upped its shrill vitriol with whiny personal attacks on anyone who doesn’t wear a Chemtrail Caucus secret decoder ring. In so doing, they calcify their core and disgust everyone else. It sounds like fingernails scratching a blackboard on the Titanic. Selah.

As they double down and go all in on their narrow little message, they do nothing but limit themselves as a political force in Wyoming.

To put it in pugilistic terms, the Freedom Caucus movement is retreating to the edges and the murky corners of the political ring. And that’s precisely what my old boxing coach advised: Deny your opponent the center of the ring. Force him to fight against the ropes, or in the corners where he can’t move.

The beauty of this current title fight is that the right-wing goofballs are denying themselves the center of the ring. They are forcing themselves to the margins of the political spectrum where good footwork is impossible, and where all they can do is absorb body blows and head shots.

Their failures are creating a stronger opposition. Candidates with excellent qualifications and electability are emerging from the center to run against the Freedom Caucus in the August primary … enough of them to land a knockout punch. And I predict more will be throwing their Stetsons into the ring as the hard right continues to bleed on the canvas.

I have enough confidence in the clarity of my crystal ball and in the ultimate wisdom of Wyoming voters to have placed several street bets on the outcome of the next election. I’ll pay a hundred bucks for every seat the Freedom Caucus gains in the House, and I’ll collect a Benjamin for every seat they lose.

I’ll cover this same bet with any takers. Show me the money!

With my winnings, I plan to buy a ‘51 hardtail Harley Panhead, complete with springer front end and suicide shift. I can almost hear her pipes growling now!

If we all do our job on primary day, friends and neighbors, in a few short months, we’ll cruise together down the unusually long streets of Wyoming with the wind in our beards, and we won’t have to dodge a single stinking pile of Freedom Caucus bullshit.