Jefferson County Republicans gathered in East Helena Oct. 15 for their annual Fall Harvest Festival, their spirits buoyant from what many consider a successful state legislative session and, more immediately, from the prospect of a change in leadership in the U.S. Congress.
“When I was in the Legislature, all we did was play defense,” said Scott Mendenhall of Clancy, a former state representative and now deputy director of the state Department of Revenue, launching the evening as master of ceremonies.
Pointing to tax cuts and rebates among other bills passed by the 68th Legislature this year, Mendenhall said, to broad applause: “That’s the reason why we elect Republicans.”
The event at The Kleffner drew 175 people for a barbecue dinner catered by the Hardware Cafe, among them Secretary of State Christy Jacobson, State Auditor Troy Downing, House Speaker Matt Regier (R-Kalispell), Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, and a small host of legislators including Clancy’s Marta Bertoglio.
U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale was there, too. After helping to engineer the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy two weeks earlier, Rosendale had chided his Congressional colleagues for taking the weekend off in the midst of selecting McCarthy’s successor: “I am disappointed that my colleagues have decided to adjourn,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
But granted time off, he took the opportunity to spend the evening with his party faithful, reflecting on the recent turmoil in the nation’s Capitol.
“Congress is broken,” Rosendale told the gathering. “The way you witness that it’s broken is the consolidation of power that’s taken place over last 15 to 18 years, so the vast majority of members were not able to participate in the legislative process — the Speaker and the Rules Committee making all the decisions about what legislation was going to come forward and how it was going to be amended.”
Rosendale said that the nation’s mounting debt — now at $33 billion — had become a tipping point for the House Freedom Caucus, formed in 2015 by a group of conservative representatives. Their concern about the debt burden, he said, drove the fractious and historic proceedings in January that led both to McCarthy’s election as speaker and to restrictions on his function.
Rosendale explained: “There was a bunch of us that said, we’ve got to change the rules so Congress starts functioning the way it was supposed to. So when you saw the Speaker’s battle in January, that’s what that a lot of that about. We had a whole set of rules put in place to restore Congress the way it used to function – 72 hours to review all language in bills before we were asked to vote; and single-subject legislation.”
The House passed a debt ceiling bill in April. But “before the ink dried,” Rosendale said, “McCarthy went to the President and struck a deal and increased the debt ceiling, basically exposing us to another $4 trillion added to the national debt. And that’s when we said, we’ve got a major problem.”
When, by August, the House had failed to pass appropriation bills, Caucus members sensed that McCarthy “was setting us up to so that we would have to pass a continuing resolution to fund government,” according to Rosendale. “We saw it, we knew it, and we’re not going to tolerate it.” That led to a showdown and, ultimately, to McCarthy’s ouster.
Rosendale concluded, to an enthusiastic ovation: “Folks ask me now if I’m upset now or wish I hadn’t [joined in the ouster movement.] I say no, I’m not disappointed at all. Because I’ll tell you folks, we are this close to having Jim Jordan, a Freedom Caucus member, as the next speaker of the House of Representatives.”
Rosendale’s remarks were followed by a recorded message from Sen. Steve Daines, and then by Nick Adams, an Australian-born author and speaker who has gained some measure of attention, and an endorsement from President Donald Trump, for promoting American greatness, opposing “woke” political correctness, and espousing the need for civics education.
“There are people in America working for its destruction,” Adams told the mostly appreciative crowd. “For 60 years, the left in this country has wanted to destroy it more than we have wanted to protect it… This is a war we did not start, but a war that we have absolutely no choice but to finish. [And] there are more of us than there are of them.”
