Mike Lee is like the cook who keeps putting nuts in fudge. You tell them it's an infamnia, but they insist on doing it anyway, and telling you that you'll like it.
"It's only a few. . . ". "They're not peanuts, they're walnuts. . . " "You can pick them out. . . ".
It's disgusting, and you don't want it.
Lee went from aggressively trying to get a public land sales provision in the Big Ugly Bill only to meat a firestorm of opposition, from the right and left, about it. Ultimately he started scaling it back before the Senate Parliamentarian pulled it, either because it was genuinely against Senate Rules or in order to keep people like John Barrasso from having to commit on it.
Lee, however, hasn't give up. He's telling his opponents, which includes nearly everyone (but not Wyoming Congress woman Harriet Hageman) that he's "listened" and is coming back with a bill we'll all like.
Nobody is going to like this.
This is really bizarre at this point. Lee is choosing a massively unpopular bill as his hill to die on, and politically, it might do that. A former Utah Congressman went down in flames and had to resign over similar efforts a decade ago.
What's up with Lee?
Well, I have one theory I'll write another post on, on Lex Anteinternet.
But all the reasons given for this are, well, crap.
Things are changing, albeit slowly, in Utah. Lee's seat is probably safe, but maybe not as safe as he thinks. The seats of other Republicans supporting this idea are not safe. Barrasso has laid low during the storm, Lummis came out for it early on, and Hageman is all in. Hageman may very well have ended her political career by going so.
Suffice it to say, however, until the nut fudge gets thrown up against the wall and the cook loose cooking privildges, somebody is going to try to keep serving it.
