Viewpoint: These Republicans are not conservatives

Corey Ellis

Growing up my dad would always say he was “conservative not Republican.” He argued that Republicans could be corrupt “like all politicians” and that it was conservative values he believed in. Last month I sent a letter to our delegation and to papers around Montana that asked, “Would the real Republicans please stand up?”

I was asking if they would stand up for conservative values such as limited government, states’ rights, checks and balances, rule of law, individual liberty and constitutionalism. I was asking if they would stand up to the flagrant abuse of power coming out of the Trump administration.

The answer (or lack of answer) has been a resounding NO. I’ve received no answers along with the rest of Montanans. I suppose the lack of response is understandable since by all accounts their offices are overwhelmed with calls and letters about the terrible job they are and aren’t doing.

Our delegation is not listening to its constituents. They have not attended or held a single town hall where they would have to face voters and explain their complacency. In fact, they seem to be doubling down on the worst of this administration.

Ryan Zinke went on TV and celebrated the likely illegal dismantling of The Department of Education, where Montana education gets about 20% of its funding. Sheehy and Daines, meanwhile, posed for pictures with proponents of transferring our public lands.

A study from the University of Montana found that a whopping 95% of Montanans use public lands annually. A Colorado College State poll found that even “69 percent of MAGA voters in the West oppose funding reductions for federal public lands and conservation agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”

The delegation has also not condemned the recent misguided proposal to transfer public land for HUD housing. Our delegation has also been mostly silent on DOGE (also unconstitutional as only Congress can create agencies) gutting the various agencies that manage these lands and the massive cuts to conservation programs that keep these lands healthy and in multiple use.

This, despite the fact that the UM study found that across the political spectrum 84% of Montanans say strong conservation policy is desirable in their elected officials. Again, they are not listening to their constituents.

But perhaps the most egregious, astounding and hypocritical act from the entire delegation, as well as Governor Gianforte, is their support of Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport supposed “gang members and terrorists.” I say supposed because there has not been any evidence shown that they received due process.

Of course, the courts immediately ruled that it was illegal, but that didn’t stop this administration from doing what they wanted anyway. The law couldn’t be clearer. We must be at war with a country to invoke the Act. We clearly are not at war with Venezuela, and more importantly, it requires Congress, i.e. the body that our delegation is supposed to be loyal to, to declare war.

I, like most Americans, support a strong border, deporting non-citizen criminals but not at the expense of our democracy and constitution. It doesn’t matter if the end is right when the means threaten the very foundations of the nation. What if Harris had won, claimed we were at war and started deporting people without process? How would we know that they weren’t simply members of the “far right?” Owners of “assault weapons?” Or her political enemies? Trump, in effect, declared himself a wartime king with this act and Republicans stood silent, forgetting their oaths to the constitution.

So, will our delegation stand up? I guess we have our answer.