Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in Montana with Senator Daines

With less than one week to go until election day, Montana's Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) is bringing two of the US Senate's heavy hitters to the Treasure State. Both Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) and Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) will be in Montana.

Rubio hit Great Falls on Tuesday, while Ted Cruz will be in Billings and Hamilton on Thursday.

I expect Montana Democrats to attempt to criticize the appearances by Cruz and Rubio and pretend that they don't need any of their national party leaders to come to Montana, but let's be honest: they simply want to hide their party leaders and what they really stand for from Montana. I mean, come on, Democrat Senate candidate Steve Bullock was already hosting fundraisers with California Senator Kamala Harris, and "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.

From the Republicans' standpoint, why do these visits matter? Well, obviously they are trying to drive their get out the vote efforts (GOTV) in the final sprint to election day. But they also want to highlight the very clear ideological differences between the candidates. As the Daines campaign told me, the visits "highlight the importance of this race in keeping the senate majority and our freedoms - if we lose Daines, Chuck Schumer takes over."