TESTER v BURNS-- A REPORT FROM THE NORTHERN FRONT

If you don't remember DWT Montana correspondant, John Rodwick, please take a look at his May 26 post, "Tester Time-- A Man Who Can Make Big Sky Country Proud in The U.S. Senate". John and his family are up in a log cabin for the summer with no internet access but they do have a TV and this evening he got by a cafe with wi-fi so he could send us a report on the Tester-Burns debate.

My wife, son and I watched the debate this morning between Jon Tester and Conrad Burns and it was great to watch Jon dance circles around Conrad! Conrad's verbal skills and ability to think on his feet are on a par with W's so sometimes the camera would cut to Jon while Conrad was responding, or trying to, and Jon was just chuckling and I could almost hear him saying to himself that this is like taking candy from a baby.

Conrad used, endlessly, the same old tired phrases like "you liberals" and "the other side of the aisle" has prevented us from doing what we need to do etc. But at one point he said he had voted for tax increases, then corrected himself, looked a bit sheepish and then uttered some other silly homily. I almost felt sorry, or at least embarrased for him and emabarrased that we would even be having a debate about who is more qualified. I felt like someone should have just stepped in and said, "Excuse me Conrad buit you need to step down right now, no waiting for an election; you are a doddering fool."

Tester speaks his mind so well and he just kept hammering home his main point about how there needs to be some vision and a plan, whether we are talking about Iraq, energy independence or border security. When they were sparring about spending Jon laughed again and told Conrad that he spends the people's money "like a drunken sailor." It was perfect.

Conrad got in to asking if Jon would open up ANWAR and Jon was great when he started talking about how short sigted that is at that, once again, we need a vision that looks into the future instead of the next 5 years.

That's about it from the front. I'd like to be hopeful and say that the elction is a lock for Tester but like my wife said when I was talking about how any fool could see who the better man is, that other people, Republicrooks she said actually, probably watched it and thought Conrad did a great job. I just don't know how many of those folks there are around here but I'm looking forward to finding out in November.

UPDATE: YOU BE THE JUDGE

You can watch the whole Tester-Burns debate for yourself and see if John's wife got it right-- that anyone, no matter how brain dead could have thought Burns did well-- here. And here's the second 10 minutes of the debate: