Turnabout and fair play. Riding for the brand, working for community, and the Western television political ad.
Here recently, and elsewhere recently, and again coming up once more soon, I've posted on the Western phenomenon of ranching in political ads.
I'll admit that I am not a fan of this genre of ad for a variety of reasons, part of that being, frankly, that I'm cynical. When ever somebody tells me, as a Wyoming native and whose first ancestor in this region came into the 1860s, well I get crabby about it.
And I really don't like it when locals adopt some slogan introduced by some Wall Street dude or when people who move in here suddenly declare loudly and frequently what it means to be a Wyomingite. It's one thing if somebody from Nebraska or Montana does that, but unless you are a native of a Rocky Mountain or bordering Plains state. . . you don't know what it means to be a Wyomingite.
Heck, for that matter, people from Platte County and people from Sweetwater County are different, and that's just one example.
Anyhow, in honest short video snippets with a ranching themes, I still think this takes the A+ for honesty.
If there was an ad like that, I'd listen to it.
Anyhow, Wyoming native Harriet Hageman, who does come from a ranching family, has this recent Wyoming ranching setting television ad.
I'm not going to comment on the political positions themselves, but rather on the back theme to this.
As far as anyone can really tell, there's no real difference between the politics of Hageman and Congressman Cheney. As one recent local politician and former primary opponent of Cheney stated, Ms. Hageman's complaint about Ms. Cheney is that Ms. Cheney doesn't love Donald Trump enough.
That'd be reducing the dispute between them to an over simplistic level, but there's something to it. As far as politics go, there really isn't any difference between them, or at least not an obvious one. What brings this primary dispute up is that Cheney is taking a principled stand for democracy, and the local GOP has bought off on the "stolen election" theme.
I don't know if Ms. Hageman believes the election was stolen, but I sort of doubt it. She's extremely intelligent and probably knows much better. For that matter, she's a former opponent of Trump's.
That gives us an oddity in which Cheney, who never opposed Trump's running in the first place, is facing a candidate who opposed Trump running the first time he did and who called him some choice terms. So if not loving Trump is a political crime, well I guess they've both committed at some point.
Now, of course, Hageman is using the "ride for the brand theme", which is scary frankly as it comes pretty close to the old SS phrase. "my honor is loyalty" phrase. I'm sure nobody, perhaps other than me, has taken it that way.
Loyalty is in fact not honor. Loyalty must be earned and earned again to be kept. And if your brand is proposing to ride into a neighbor's place and scatter their cattle, you ought not to be riding for them.
For that matter, in the 19th Century, from which that phrase supposedly stems, most career cowhands were riding for themselves. Top hand took part of their cattle so that they could start their own places. The brand they were ultimately riding for was the one that they hoped to apply to their own cattle, which may be what Ms. Hageman is really suggesting.
Most hands only worked from the spring through the fall. They rode for the brand then, and then were let go. Not an ideal model, really.
Anyhow, she's released the ride the brand video, with lots of cowboy hat wearing relatives, so we know she's an authentic Wyomingite, which she is of course. Cheney we know is not really from here (the majority of Wyomingites aren't from here either), which bothered me when she first ran, but it's a little late now to complain about that, particularly if the dispute is the degree to which we're loyal to democracy itself.
Indeed, in another irony, when she ran the first time I pointed out to one of her door-to-door boosters, whom I've since learned was pretty high up in the GOP, that she wasn't from here and one of her opponents, whom I was going to vote for in the primary, was, and that person insisted that Cheney was in fact from here, as she attended some part of grade school here. Given what I know of that person's politics, I'm pretty sure she's now in the anti Cheney camp.
These things are fickle.
Anyhow, down in the big rectangle to the south of us, Colorado, the whole western ranching theme and native them has been turned on its head:
Donovan is the underfunded Colorado Democrat from Vail. She's a Colorado native, from Vail, something that's also a rarity, and a graduate of Notre Dame. Her grandfather was in the 10th Mountain Division, which is pretty darned cool.
Her ad takes on Western themes as well, as well as community, which is frankly probably quite a bit more authentic than "ride for the brand.".
Up to our north, Democratic Senator Jon Tester had a series of ads from his campaigns emphasizing that he's a farmer, and he is a farmer. Not from a farm, but farming. It's harder to get more authentic than that. His ads even poked fun at his very old-fashioned crew cut.
The point?
Well, I don't know that there is one, and then again there is. Maybe the reader has to ponder that, however, to discern that.
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