Lillehaug: The Rick Kahn of 2004?

Joel Rosenberg has a potentially interesting theory - that David Lillehaug might - low probability, but not unthinkably - be the Rick Kahn of the 2004 election.

The story starts with last month's idiotic ruling by Ramsey County judge John Finley, which declared the Minnesota Personal Protection Act unconstitutional.

There's also some interesting national political implications. This whole stay/reversal is likely going to be seen among gun owners as a DFL operation (and given that it's been spearheaded by David Lillehaug, a major DFL player, and supported by the DFL metrocrat leadership in the state Senate and House, that's a fair cop). Certainly the Republicans will be making that point, repeatedly. Yes, the MCPPA passed in both House and Senate on a bipartisan vote, but that included only about half a dozen DFL senators. Faces -- and the majority -- in the state Senate won't change in November, as the Senate isn't up for reelection until 2006 (by which time, I presume, Wes Skoglund and his friends hope that voters will forget their prancing about the Senate floor in their flak jackets, screeching that the sky was falling).

Minnesota is -- bizarrely, given its history -- actually in play in the Presidential elections (although it's definitely leaning Kerry, at the moment, by about 9%; expect him to get a small bump from the convention, which will quickly dissipate), and it's not at all impossible that a few tens of thousands of angry gun owners could walk into the election booth and vote Republican, pushing Minnesota's electoral votes to the President.

If the MN GOP is smart - and that is by no means always a safe assumption - they will be pounding down the doors of Concealed Carry Reform - whose membership is by no means monolithically Republican - with the facts of this election.

Rosenberg continues:

Minnesota's ten electoral votes could be the tipping point of the election. Right now, according to one report, there's 208 electoral votes leaning toward or solidly in the President's camp, 227 for Kerry, and 108 as a toss-up. But what's most interesting to me is how much of a flux there is; there's been quite a few states that have gone from leaning one way to a tossup, or to leaning another way. Lots of stuff in flux. Give Bush Florida's 27 votes (Rasmussen moved Florida from leaning toward Kerry back to a toss-up recently), Pennsylvania's 21 (ditto), and just one of Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, or New Mexico, and if he could snatch Minnesota, he wouldn't need Ohio (where, right now, he has a 4 point lead anyway).

My own guess is that the election is not going to swing on Minnesota's gun owners -- but it could.

The real wild card is a major terrorist attack. No question that Al Qaeda is pushing for one -- and they might get it. I'm sure that if one happens, we'll be hearing from Michael Moore, John Kerry, and everybody else who's opposed some of what the Administration has done in security policy (like, say, the Patriot Act that, IIRC, Kerry voted for, before opposing it) for not having done enough, or for having deliberately let one through as an election-year ploy. Which suggests to me, at least, even the anti-Bush forces recognize that Americans, after an attack, will be much more likely to stay with the Administration that's been so clearly successful on that since 9/11. I think the conventional wisdom is right on that one. We're not Vichy Spain.

Assuming a lack of something calamitous , more likely is that it'll be issues of the economy, which appears to finally be starting to not only show some improvement, but be perceived as showing some improvement, and, of course, the war.

But it could turn on Minnesota, and this single ruling. Not likely, but possible.

If that happens -- and it could -- it'd turn David Lillehaug into the Rick Kahn of 2004, on a national level.

Wouldn't it be ironic?

Posted by Mitch at August 4, 2004 06:33 AM | TrackBack