The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came, Denny bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.

“Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Denny.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed downward with its hand. “Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

It gave him no reply… The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Denny advanced to listen to their talk.

“I don’t understand how he could do this,” said the first man, shaking his head in dismay. “Not only did he lose against Tester, but because he gave up his seat in the House, Montana now has a completely Democratic Congressional delegation and he stopped the momentum we needed to carry the state races.”

“It is so hard to understand how such a smart man could risk his political future at such a critical time in the nation’s history,” lamented the next man. The woman standing next to him began to cry. “We could have had victories in both races if he had only acted more selflessly. Instead, he had to unleash his own ambition and sacrifice the conservative momentum we started in 2010.”

The third man joined in, “Why didn’t someone stop him when he started putting those feelers out right after the election? Didn’t he see what the rest of us could – that he could keep his House seat because he was doing a good enough job and finally he had some real power on Appropriations that could further the conservative cause? The Democrats didn’t have a strong candidate to run against him. Van Dyk wasn’t the shining star they hoped he’d be, and Schweitzer was already focusing on a run against Max in 2014. Instead Rehberg crawled out on a flimsy limb that broke under the weight of his record when compared against a candidate with a strong base. He had to have known that, in the end, the left-wing nuts would come back into the fold! ”

Denny and the Phantom came into the presence of another man, just as a corpulent woman slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.

“Who would have thunk it – Denny Rehberg knocked down the dominos for us,” chortled the man in black. “We never could have kept Tester’s seat if he hadn’t entered the race. And with him leaving the House race open, it was a no-brainer for Schweitzer to walk right into Congress. And I don’t think Brian would have considered the House this year if Denny hadn’t left the race open.”

“We couldn’t have designed a better outcome if we tried,” the fat lady warbled as she warmed up for her aria. “After the 2010 elections, it looked like there was almost no chance that we could hold on to the Senate seat, grab the House, and keep the Governor’s office, the SOS, Auditor, and Attorney General too. The momentum was all in the Republicans’ favor for all the top tier races until Denny gave us just the opening we needed.”

The music started to play and the fat lady began singing. “We wouldn’t have had a chance if Jon had had to run against someone with no Congressional garbage, no voting record we could relentlessly attack for two years, day in and day out, someone with no history of misstatements, no YouTube gaffes, no stupid practical jokes about sheep, and no “drinking episodes” that we could drag out, prop up, dust off, and recycle into a sledge hammer that we could use to bludgeon Denny with incessantly. Heck, we were even able to bloody him up with crap that shouldn’t have even touched him!”

She continued her solo. “You’d have thought that, after the way we ‘Abramoffed’ Conrad Burns for two years, that Denny would have been smarter than to give us all that ammunition and two years to beat him with it. Golly, he even handed us a stupid firefighter issue that had no more substance than the one we used against Burns and we were able to pummel him with that too.”

By now, the fat lady was in full voice, hitting every high note on the score. “He had to know that the DNC and Schumer would be pouring bazillions of dollars into the election efforts for Tester. And yeah, Jon had some baggage to haul around: ObamaCare, Bank Bailouts, the second Stimulus bill and his stealth wilderness land-grab. They would have been fatal against a candidate who hadn’t spent years voting for some of the unpopular Bush agenda and flip-flopping around on earmarks. Even though Jon tacked more to the center the after the 2010 election and had our fringe voters’ knickers in knots, where did Denny think the far left was gonna go?”

By now the sound of shattering crystal was a constant accompaniment to the orchestration. “But I guess it’s easy for a guy to start thinking that because he won his last three elections so handily he could take on a real opponent. Cripes, he hasn’t had a decent competitor since his first race against Nancy Keenan. Kelly, Velazquez,and Lindeen hardly gave him a race, but Driscoll and McDonald were nothin’ more than token place holders. He must have gotten the impression that he was some kind of unbeatable candidate. We suckered him! He started to believe his own press and he got his head – not to mention his whole party – handed to him on a platter. I do love it when the Ozymandias Effect kicks in and the mighty crumble.”

At this point the fat lady’s singing was getting to be more than a little annoying to Denny and he turned to the Phantom.

“Spirit,” he said, “this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go.”

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head. A churchyard. The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced towards it trembling.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Denny, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only? Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.”

Denny crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave…

“Here lies the hopes of Montana laid waste to the ambition of a single man.”

Fiction? Fantasy? Maybe. Maybe not. But this is the scenario that other Montanans are visualizing. Denny may choose to ignore the wisdom of the masses. He wouldn’t be the first politician to do so. Perhaps he has internal polls that suggest the opposite of what conventional wisdom dictates. He holds the fate of the state’s conservatives in his hands.

In parting, I leave you with this thought as we embrace the dawn of this Christmas Day and what we hope will be a brighter future than the one shown us by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come:

“God bless us, everyone!”

*With gratitude and apologies to Mr. Dickens