all I want for Christmas is a silver lining

 kcar wrote: 
I'm glad someone finally pointed this out. But, given a totally clean slate, you think the House would take Trump? Out of anyone they could name? I think they'd take Ryan.

 kcar wrote: 
At this point, I'll grasp at the thinnest of straws.

 kcar wrote: 
Still prefering the snake above the rhinoceros?
 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Dramatic headline but the kicker is in the last lines of the piece: "If anti-Trump electors manage to whip up enough votes against him, the decision would then go to the GOP-controlled House." Which would then vote for Trump. Thud. 

Trump won 306 electoral votes, according to the article. As far as I can see, his electoral college vote total would have to drop below 270 to effectively block Trump from becoming President.  

 Lazy8 wrote: 
That's exactly it.
 
I read somewhere that he bucked the recent push to "return" federal lands to the states. That might win him some defenders from the environmental side.

Harvard professor says GOP electors are close to blocking Trump win

Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump

Department Of Energy Defies Trump, Won't Name Climate Change Workers

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

He's pro-fossil fuels, but it's a Republican administration and we mine coal in Montana so hey.

As far as wildlife management issues go he has a decent track record. Nobody who isn't a rabid partisan calling for his head. Reasonably smart, reasonably well-informed on the issues involving federal land management. We could do a lot worse, and I'm kinda surprised we didn't.

Denise Juneau got the Democratic nomination because she ticked off the right boxes: woman, native-American, gay, lawyer, endorsed by the teachers unions—she had been elected as Superintendent of Public Instruction twice, but that job almost always goes to a Democrat. Her political career wasn't terribly distinguished (and the teacher in the family was deeply unimpressed by her tenure) but no big ugly scandals.

Reliably liberal, far more so than the general electorate would have been happy with had she won the rep seat. She lost the house race by a solid 15% margin against Zinke, whose biggest accomplishment is not being Denny Rehberg (his predecessor) who almost nobody liked.

Where you may luck out is that neither party has a terribly deep bench of centrists. If the Democrats can come up with a candidate who isn't out on the left fringe of the party (for Montana that is—the left fringe here would be center-of-mass in, say, Massachusetts) there may not be a Republican answer.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Damned by (very) faint praise.

 islander wrote: 
Yep.

Now we need Xeric to chime in on his Interior Sec choice. Ryan Zinke, US Rep from Montana.

I posted on some other website On a 1-to-10 Trump-scale of deplorable, he's a 5. The good news is: He was going to run hard against Jon Tester for the Senate in 2 years, so now the party's going to scramble to find a candidate there. And his seat in the House has to be filled by election (bad news: if it had been a Senator, the D governor could have nominated someone). But I think the woman the Dems got to run against Zinke did very well, considering she started from a dead stop. Overall he's been a crappy legislator but it's possible he'll be more rational than the Sarah Palin wing of the party. Possible. I don't think he's James Watt. But he's still a steaming pile.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
And wasn't the department of Energy the one  he couldn't remember during his debate "oops" when he was pledging  to eliminate federal departments ?

all his buddies are getting jobs except,...
.
 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Outgoing energy secretary: Nuclear physicist. 
Incoming energy secretary:
 

Donald Trump chooses Rick Perry to be energy secretary

drainin' that swamp... 

Wow! Back in the late 60's and early 70's  I was searching for Russian submarines in the Pacific Ocean because they were a threat to the U.S. interests, I believe we should looked into Trump's politics back then when he was making deals with Russia. All that money, time, and fellow sailors (we ditched some military aircraft in the pacific) spent searching for the Russian submarines, now they seem to be in Trump Plaza all this time. Heil Trump!!

 aflanigan wrote: 
And looking for the irony that is lost on them, as well.  Perhaps it's in the Costco Lost-and-found?

Apparently the CIA having "testified" that the Russians meddled on behalf of Trump is not a problem for Trumpsters.  Wikileaks is a "foreign entity" too, for that matter.  I can easily imagine the yuge outcry had the election's circumstances been reversed.

 aflanigan wrote: 
It was all in the prescient movie, man.

 

 kurtster wrote: 
I so declare, with all the power vested in me, that Hillary Clinton shall no longer be invoked as we try to understand our President-Elect.