Zzzzzz: Strib Sixth CD Endorsement

The Strib, following a script that would seem to have been written two years ago, endorses Patty Wetterling:

But voters who have taken a good, careful look will recognize that Wetterling is the real moderate here -- a compassionate but sensible voice for mainstream Minnesota values.

Uh oh. It's those "Sensible Minnesota Values" again.

For those of you from out of state, that's the Strib's shorthand for the "Sweden Lite" big-government nannystatism that defined Minnesota from the sixties through the nineties - as if Minnesotans uniformly crave cradle-to-grave welfare and government acting as a surrogate mommy (if there were only smart enough to know it, the Strib might lament).

In fact, who let the strawman into the house? Bachmann has never painted herself - could not paint herself - as a centrist! And that's a good thing!

Bachmann has campaigned on broad strokes of low taxes and patriotic ideals. But her career in the Minnesota Senate was built on the narrowest of agendas, chiefly injecting her religious values into the public sphere.

What's so stupid about that statement?

What isn't?

Bachmann has always campaigned as a visionary, not a policy wonk. She's been a driving force for education reform (but not the kind the Strib approves of), but the fact that she leads with her values is her biggest selling point. You can teach any monkey or Ivy Leaguer to be a policy wonk; you can't teach either to go to Washington to uncompromisingly stump for the principles you agree with.

As, it seems, many in her district do.

Her recent testimony to a Brooklyn Park congregation that God called her to run for Congress -- and win -- is an embarrassment

Only if you carefully cut away all context (or are ignorant of it, or wish you readers to remain that way); the notion of God "calling" one is not in the least inscrutable to most evangelical believers, and isn't foreign to serious believers in almost any faith. These, of course, are the exact people the likes of the Strib and the hard left find so "Scary" and inscrutable; as we all know, the end result of fear and ignorance is the sort of bigotry the Strib displays in that statement.

Wetterling, by contrast, is a genuine centrist. She supports a balanced budget and tax cuts for the middle class;

Presented as if the balanced budget were the sine qua non of virtues (it's a good thing, but only if you achieve it by cutting spending, which Wetterling will never do). She'd raise taxes on capital, which will slow the economy, which is not acceptable.

she wants the troops home from Iraq, but would ask the generals how to do it;

"Cut and Jog"

When asked to cite favorite politicians, she quickly names Rep. Jim Ramstad and former Sen. David Durenberger, both respected Republicans.

And both the kind of Republicans that DFL minions like the Strib trot out when they want to appear less like an arm of the DFL.

Posted by Mitch at October 26, 2006 07:51 AM | TrackBack