The short game in Montana politics is not about governing or solving problems. It’s a business model built on fear, anger, and resentment that substitutes fake policy analysis and ideological scorecards for honest debate.
There are several central players in this short game: the Montana Freedom Caucus (MFC), Art Wittich (the Montana GOP’s Florida-based staffer), Americans for Prosperity-Montana (AFP), the Frontier Institute, and the multiple groups they operate under pseudonyms. While differing in style and emphasis, they share a common tactic – simplify complex policy, strip out context, and weaponize misinformation to drive outrage, raise money, and consolidate influence.
A clear example is the Frontier Institute’s repeated claim that state spending has dramatically outpaced population growth and inflation. AFP and the MFC circulate these claims in mailers, emails, and robocalls. The analysis relies on cherry-picked spending figures and includes one-time federal COVID relief that largely passed straight through to recipients. This isn’t serious analysis; it is a rhetorical trick designed to provoke anger. Total state spending is increasing by an extremely conservative 0.35% per year on average.
The same pattern shows up in attacks on property tax reform. Residential property taxes increased and shifted from commercial property over the past four years as outside buying pressure spiked residential home values. Those taxes fund our local communities and schools. Although reforms from the 2025 session weren’t perfect, pretending they are responsible for spending increases or that homestead tax exemptions, which exist in almost every other state, harm most Montana residents is dishonest.
Medicaid is another favorite target. They have promoted claims that most people on Medicaid expansion don’t work or that eliminating expansion would somehow save Montana money. Both claims collapse under scrutiny. Most able-bodied adults are working, in school, or caretakers, but some have gone as far as including kids, without disclosure, in their non-working percentages. Eliminating Medicaid expansion would cost Montana hundreds of millions in lost federal funds, destabilize rural hospitals, and raise private insurance premiums.
Fear and outrage are not neutral tools. When repeated enough, they erode trust in government, elections, courts, and ultimately the rule of law itself. That benefits organizations whose business model depends on permanent crisis. It allows nonprofits to raise more money, pay staff more, and deliver power to a narrow set of donors while the public pays the price.
Montanans value independence, straight talk, and practical problem-solving. We can disagree sharply without lying to one another and demand accountability without manufacturing villains.
There is nothing conservative about deliberately misleading Montanans for profit or power, and there is nothing acceptable about fueling rage at a time when trust in our institutions is already dangerously thin.
The short game may generate clicks, cash, and control, but the long game – honest policy, constitutional fidelity, and respect for voters – is how you actually govern and build a legacy for our kids. That’s what Montanans deserve.
Brad Barker is a Republican state representative from Carbon County.