NARN Live At The MNGOP State Convention

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Join Mitch Berg, Brad Carlson and Ed Morrissey live on the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the Minnesota State GOP Convention in St. Cloud.

We’ll be talking with…:

  • Chris Fields, MNGOP candidate against Keith Ellison in CD5
  • Marianna Stebbins, architect of the Ron Paul surge that’s had such an impact on the MNGOP lately,
  • Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard
  • Former State Rep Laura Brod
  • Brandon Carnack, candidate for HD64A
  • Much much more as the day goes on.

Join us from 1-3PMO on AM1280, or on the webstream!

Heard In Passing

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I got this via email early this morning:

Scuttlebutt from a trusted source who works inside AFSCME Minnesota Council 5 states that there are interesting developments in the Wisconsin AFSCME. Ever since passage and signing of the “right-to-work” laws in our neighboring state to the east, about 80% of those AFSCME members have “opted-out” of paying union dues.

This is from a source I trust on these things, who is – as noted above – relaying third-hand information.

So I’ll throw this out there; anyone else hearing anything from the Wisconsin unions?

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

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It’s Syttende Mai – the 107th anniversary of the day that Norway declared its independence after a bloody war of independence, throwing off the shackles of onerous, brutal Swedish rule.

Norwegian forces had fought a long-shot, underground war against the evil Swedes – a battle which may have been the model for the “Rebellion” in the movie Star Wars – ragtag rebels fighting the Swedes and their Finnish and Danish mercenaries, eventually coalescing into a movement that was able to virtually wipe out the Swedes and drive to the very gates of Stockholm, dragging the Swedish monarchy to the negotiation table, leading to the…

…the…

…oh, I can’t go on.  It’s really just the date the Norwegian constitution was ratified.  Norwegians celebrate the event with childrens parades and the sort of stuff Americans do for, well, Arbor Day.

Anyway – happy Syttende Mai!

Here’s A Question For Minnesota Republicans

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If you are a MNGOP activist, and you live in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th Congressional Districts, I have  a question for you.

What involvement does your district have with your district’s congressional andn legislative races?    How does your Congressional district assist your various campaigns at all levels?

Just looking for info, here.

Just leave me an answer in the comment section.

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION:  And while I do love hearing from all my friends here in the comment section, this post is not intended as a clearinghouse for reasons one is not an activist anymore.

We Can Still Shock The World

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You want bipartisan action that actually benefits the taxpayer?

Here’s your chance.

There is one more chance to stop the Vikings Stadium and send the bill back to the Legislature; convince the Minneapolis City Council to vote against the larceny of their Convention Center budget.

There are two votes that are considered swing-y on this issue:

Ward 1 – Kevin Reich
(612) 673-2201
kevin.reich@minneapolismn.gov

Ward 10 – Meg Tuthill
Meg.Tuthill@minneapolismn.gov
(612) 673-2210

Call ‘em.  Politely ask them to reconsider the organized pillaging of the state Constitution and the Minnepolis city charter by Zygi Wilf and his well-heeled friends.

If we can win this, then we can get this back to the Legislature…

…where we can then tell our GOP legislative leadership to grow some cojones and tie the tax reform bill to the stadium, or not bother coming back to work in February.

There is opportunity, here.  Let’s make the most of it.

Intellectual Snake Oil

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Illuminating: See Andrew Ferguson’s The New Phrenology, in the Weekly Standard. It digs through the history (long), motivations (predictable) and methodology (laughable) of the constant dribble of “social science” that claims liberals are genetically/chemically/socially wired to be good-hearted, open-minded, whole human beings, while conservatives are clenched little demi-humans:

It is a principle of psychopunditry that the political differences between right and left—the differences, in Mooney’s scheme, between those who would fearfully deny reality and those who embrace it unafraid—originate in two personality types. As it happens, the liberal personality, as psychopunditry describes it, is a perfect representation of those traits that liberals say they most admire. Liberals are “more open, flexible, curious, nuanced.” Conservatives are “more closed, fixed, and certain in their views.” But don’t get the wrong idea: Mooney insists he is not saying “conservatives are somehow worse people than liberals.” That would be judgmental, and Science is clear: Liberals aren’t judgmental. “The groups are just different,” he goes on amiably. Indeed, he warns that the truths he reveals in his book “will discomfort both sides.” Fairness requires him to be evenhanded. On the one hand, conservatives won’t like the scientific fact that they tend to deny reality and treat their errors as dogma. On the other hand, liberals won’t like the scientific fact that all their well-meaning attempts to reason with conservatives are doomed.

Depressing:  Googling the list of psychopundits and setting how many leftybloggers take the word of the likes of Theodor Adorno seriously.  Or how many NYTimes columnists – Thomas Edsall in this case – cite the infamous ““Power, Distress, and Compassion: Turning a Blind Eye to the Suffering of Others” study as actual hard science.  Or the number of leftybloggers that think Chris Mooney is an actual scientist:

A young psychopundit called Chris Mooney has just published a book entitled The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, which seeks to explain the Republican “assault on reality.” He is a very earnest fellow, and an ambitious one. He glances over an array of conservative political beliefs and sets himself a goal: “to understand how these false claims (and rationalizations) could exist and persist in human minds.”

His list of false claims is instructive. Along with the usual hillbilly denials of evolution and global warming, they include these, to grab a quick sample: that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 will increase the deficit, cut Medicare benefits, and lead to the death panels that Sarah Palin hypothesized; that tax cuts increase revenue and that the president’s stimulus didn’t create jobs; that Congress banned incandescent light bulbs; and that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.”

The list of errors is instructive because they aren’t properly considered errors, though the misattribution is in keeping with the modern ideologue’s custom of pretending that differences of opinion or interpretation are contests between truth and falsehood. It’s perfectly reasonable for conservatives to assume that offering health insurance to 43 million people will cost a lot of money, and thereby increase the deficit; and it’s perfectly reasonable to distrust notoriously mistaken budget forecasters who say it won’t. The act redirects vast sums away from Medicare, which should require cuts in service. Palin’s “death panel” was a bumper-sticker summary of a rational expectation—that the act will transfer the unavoidable rationing of health care from insurance companies, where most of it rests now, to the government, which will be forced to bureaucratically reshuffle the vast sums spent on end-of-life care. Mooney is right that Congress did not ban the incandescent light bulbs that most of us are used to; but it did ban their manufacture—a distinction without a difference. As for the Christian nation: The country was founded by Christians who nevertheless resolutely declined to create a Christian government. Mooney’s conflation of the American government with the American nation is an error that conservatives are less likely to make. Studies show.

It is a principle of psychopunditry that the political differences between right and left—the differences, in Mooney’s scheme, between those who would fearfully deny reality and those who embrace it unafraid—originate in two personality types.

Someone needs to do a “study” on why liberals are so insecure that they need to constantly puff up their own sense of intellectual entitlement with hack “science”.

But Let’s Be Honest Here

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Over the past couple of days, I’ve been listing a few reasons conservatives should take some limited encouragement from the outcome of the stadium vote.  The “Tea Party” freshman class largely did the job they were sent to Saint Paul to do.

But there’s an (heh heh) elephant in the room.  Every Republican in MInnesota knows it.

While Republicans coming off of epic Tea Party-driven victories elsewhere in the country are fighting the battles that come from being ahead of the bad guys – Walker apparently beating back the recall, Republicans in Indiana,  dispensing with the past-his-shelf-date Dick Lugar and the ones in Utah perhaps on the edge of doing the same with Hatch, thinking about taking the House and the Senate, making some serious headway against the Democrat/Union machine in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania – the sorts of things you can do when you’re focused on expanding on the gains like we got in 2010.

But here in Minnesota?

I remember in the early days of this blog describing Minnesota Republicans as “battered spouses” – people who are used to being dominated, controlled and abused, but think if they just give a little moreˆ, work a little harder to be a better partner, maybe it’ll all be OK.

I, like all Minnesota conservatives, had hoped that that had changed.  But this session was a trip back to the future.

I’m not going to say that the  GOP leadership  in the House and Senate spent tthe session pining for the approval of Lori  Sturdevant, or blithely hoping that iif they just gave enough, the DFL would come along and act like responsiblee adults,, or believing that acting in good faith with the Governor Dayton would cause him to act as anything but an office temp for Alita  Messinnger and Elliot Seid…

…but if I try to answer the question “if they were doing all of that, how would  they have acted any differently?”, I don’t have much of an answer.

The DFL is calling the past session a “Do-nothing” legislature.  And it’s a sad fact that the  best we can say about it is that it really wasn’t; as I noted yesterday, they weren’t.

But they dropped the ball on “Right to Work” and “LIFO” – as if giving in to the unions’ threats would keep the unions from working tirelessly against them?

And they bobbled the tax bill, letting the governor veto it twice while caving in on the stadium, giving the Governor a trifecta of cheap victories almost, it seems to the outside viewer, without having to break a sweat.

I’ve heard a few conservatives – angry business people – say they may not support the GOP this cycle, hoping to “teach the party a lesson”.  I think that’s a huge mistake – this state can not deal with two years of absolute DFL hegemony.   And I think most businesspeople know that.

But I think the takeaways from this past few weeks are::

  1. The Tea Party class of freshmen – obstreporous and savvy, with no real desire to win the Lori Sturdevant/Keri Miller “Good Bipartisan Schnook” seal of approval – are what we need more of.  They are genuine conservatives, and provide a genuine alternative to the DFL.  Collegiality with the DFL comes in well behind doing what they were sent to Saint Paul to do.
  2. The leadership has to change.  If it doesn’t, there is no reason to give the GOP any credibility as conservatives if they can’t work like they have a majority - which, after this session, we will have to work like hell to  hold.

Just as the MNGOP administrative operation needs to overhaul its financial opperation, the GOP caucus in both chambers needs to change its approach, and act like a majority caucus.

The DFL War On Small Business: Communique From The St. Paul Front

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Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

After nearly killing Cupcake on Grand, the city is finally considering whether Mega-Mall-style parking lots are really necessary in St. Paul.

The City Council wants citizen input on the parking rule change, so a public hearing will be held at 5:30 in the Council Chambers in downtown St. Paul.

Because that’s a handy place for people to meet. Plenty of convenient parking. Easy to get to. Easy to find. Everybody knows where the council chambers are, and how to get there, and where to park, and how much it costs . . . during rush hour . . . right?

Look, if you want the public’s opinion, you ask the public at a time and place where the public is likely to show up, not just P&Z staffers. If you don’t actually want our opinion because you’re going to do whatever you want to do anyway, the cut out the nonsense and get on with it.

Businesses like Cupcake who plan to invest tens of thousands of dollars in St. Paul will roll with the punches or they’ll go somewhere else. And then you can have all your precious street parking for non-profit welfare agencies and low-income apartments.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Manipulating public hearings is a DFL oldie but goodie.

My favorite example:  back in 1987, when then-Senator Alan Spears was proposing a ratcheting-up of gun control laws, they scheduled public hearings on the bill.

And then proceeded to move it, constantly, so that outstate human-rights supporters could come and testify against the orcs – or at least stand up against them and be counted.  The DFL counted, then as now, on being able to manipulate the system to keep as few dissenters as possible from attending.

Real Minnesotans still outnumbered the orcs 600-24 – but that was state-level Second Amendment legislation, not Saint Paul parking.

Plan on the City Council being able to say “The public told us they hate having enough affordable parking”.

Of Interest To Ocean-Front Property Owners On Grand Avenue

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Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Mayor Chris Coleman once said in his State of the City Address that the greatest threat facing St. Paul was global warming; hence, the need to build refrigerated outdoor ice rinks.

Here’s an interview with an actual scientist talking, not a politician. It shows.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Joe hasn’t gotten the memo; Libs only care about “science” that ridicules the GOP.

Good Thing I’m Usually In Such A Good Mood

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Evolutionary news: scientists show facial hair makes guys look meaner:

…men (women, too) viewed bearded male faces as more threatening when the pictured males adopted an angry look.

Facial hair, the authors wrote “may intimidate rival males by increasing perceptions of the size of the jaw, overall length of the face, and by enhancing aggressive and threatening jaw-thrusting behaviors … . The current study is the first to show that the beard augments a threatening behavioral display as bearded men with angry facial expressions received significantly higher scores for aggressiveness compared with clean-shaven faces … . This suggests that the beard plays an important role in intermale signaling of threat and aggression.”

Do you feel lucky, punk?

Chanting Points Memo: “Do-Nothing”

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Speaker Zellers and Senator Senjem had barely brought the gavels down on the session when the DFL’s paid PR organs – Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and the unions – and their unpaid ones in the media started chanting the meme: it’d been a “do-nothing” legislature.

That is, of course, objectiively wrong.  The GOP went into the session with big plans, and threw itself into carrying them off.

The DFL and Governor Dayton went into the session with smaller plans:

  • Run out the clock
  • Veto everything they could
  • Hope redistricting would pull their chestnuts out of the fire come November.

It’s not a bad strategy, really; it ties in seamlessly with the DFL’s strategy this past several elections: “lie about everything convincingly enough to sway the stupid vote”.

But in addition to being a really really cynically ofay political strategy, it’s just plain not true. Here’s a sampling of what the “do-nothing’ legislature managed to get past a sluggardly DFL minority and a Governor whose only activities this past session were vetoing legislation and kissing Roger Goodell’s ass:

  • Brought the deficit from the “nearly seven billion” of two years ago to a billion dollars and change in surplus today.
  • They passed a Voter ID Amendment, which promises to help make MInnesota elections less like Chicago’s
  • Furthered policies that led to the creation of 41,000 jobs – almost making up for the 47,000 jobs lost jn 2009 and 2010 when the DFL controlled the legislature.
  • Brought Health and Human Services spending increases down from the double digits under DFL mismanagement to just over the rate of inflation.
  • King Banaian’s “Sunset Advisory Commission” did something I do not believe any DFL government has ever done; eliminated government offices that had outlived their usefulness.
  • Tort Reform
  • Changes in school choice laws.

Oh, yeah – and they passed a ton of other bills, which Dayton then vetoed.

Put another way:  a legislature elected by over 50% of each district’s voters was stymied by a governor elected by barely over 40% of the people.

But that matters not to Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, and its new astroturf spinoff, “Alliance for a Better Legislature”.  WIth nothing to show for their own session, the DFL and its astroturf partners’ only really strategy is…:

  • Find a big lie
  • Tell it constantly
  • Peel off enough stupid people…
  • …or fake and duplicate people to flip the Legislature while they still can.

They are about to dump more money into this state than we’ve ever seen – which is, of course, why they’ve spent the last year whinging about  the “American Legislative Exchange Commission”.  It’s Berg’s Seventh Law:  ”When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.

It’s going to be a busy six months for conservative bloggers and talk radio – the only counterbalance the media and DFL (ptr) and all of their Rockefeller money have in this state.

 

The Dayton Dustbowl: The Veto Scorecard

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Dayton and his minions in the paid PR racket – and I count the editorial board of the Strib among that crowd – are doing what they can to label this past legislature a “Do-Nothing” one.

It’d be more accurate, naturally, to call it “The Sandbagged Legislature”.  Now, I’m not going to say all of “Governor” Dayton’s vetoes, even for bills with astonishing bipartisan support, even for bills Dayton himself had claimed to support, seemed to run according to some kind of script or another.  But I will say that if you look at the video closely, you can see strings attached to his hands and jaw, being pulled by Alita Messinger, Elliiot Seid and Javier Morillo.

But let’s take a moment to go over the winners and losers from this past few weeks in the legislature:

Losers

  • Small businesses – who lost out on the front-loaded sales tax exemption, the angel investor tax credit, and reforms to Minnesota’s dismally-high business property taxes.
  • Students – who, if you accept that the “Shift” that has been a centerpiece of DFL budgetary policy for over a decade actually harms them, surely must have been hurt by Dayton’s veto of the GOP plan to accelerate the repayment of the “borrowed” money.  Right?
  • Private sector workers, whose businesses needed the tax help, and whose jobs are in that much more jeopardy today than they were six months ago.

Winners

  • Zygi Wilf – The resale value on his real estate investment has just gotten plumped up astronomically, on the backs of you, the taxpayer.  Especially in DFL-addled Minneapolis.  Hey, all you foreclosed DFL-voting homeowners on the North Side – hope those warm thanks from Zygi Wilf and Jared Allen keep you warm when the Sheriff’s moving y our stuff out on the lawn!
  • Minneapolis and Saint Paul - who got a slew of little plums and bailouts.  Thanks, all you outstate rubes!

That’s a start, anyway.

Filed Under “Things I Never Do”

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I never endorse candidates.

Partly it’s because I can’t imagine anyone really cares what a schnook blogger from the Midway thinks.

Partly it’s because on the off chance I do have even the faintest shred of clout about these things, I’d rather use them to help people think for themselves.

Partly it’s because my vote really doesn’t matter; I’m sixth alternate in a district with ten delegates of whom nine have been pretty disciplined about showing up for conventions.

So I don’t believe I’ve ever endorsed anyone on this blog.

I’m not entirely going to go back on that today.

———-

I could vote for any of the three significant (sorry, Harold Shudlick) GOP Senate candidates with a clear conscience.  I haven’t always been able to say that during nomination battles.

Kurt Bills is a smart guy with stances I largely agree with.  He’s one of the good legislators, a freshman, so while he doesn’t have the longest voting record, it’s a good one.  He’s been polluted with some delegates, I think, by the tit-for-tat retributive onslaught of the Ron Paul supporters that have carried him to front-runner status, which obscures, I think, an excellent candidate.   If he gets the nomination, I’ll work for him without hesitation.

Pete Hegseth is untried – at least in legislative bodies – but is a blazingly smart guy and an excellent organizer.  His association with “Vets for Freedom” gives him some big advantages (big fundraising potential)  - and Pete is a great candidate who is, I think, headed for a great future in politics at whatever level.  If he gets the nomination, I’ll be there.

But this week, at the convention? I’m supporting Dan “Doc” Severson.

Part of it is the experience.  Dan spent eight years as a legislator, he knows how that’s done.

And as Andy Aplikowski points out, that’s a two-edged sword.  Any legislator who’s had to balance the waves of special interests, in Saint Paul as well as back in the home district, against principle is going to wind up with a few regrettable votes.  Dan has a few.  So will Bills if he stays in the legislature.  So will Hegseth if he wins.   Dan’s got a few.  He’s also got a long record of fighting the same fight the conservatives fought in 2000, that the Tea Party fought two years ago, and that the Paul crowd at least in part fights today – the fight to try to limit government – from an actual seat in the legislature.

Dan’s not perfect, but he’s been plenty good enough in a place and time that’s counted – in a seat in the legislature, after getting worked over by all those interests.

But Dan’s done one other thing that may be the single most visionary effort undertaken by a Republican leader in recent history in this state.

This state is a toss-up state.  Where does the GOP think its new voters are going to come from?   We’ve already mined the good GOP districts for every vote they have.  How many more votes are we going to get from Maple Grove and Benton County?

No.  While there may be pockets of un-reached Republicans out there, the long-term future of the Republican party, in Minnesota and nationwide, as a vessel for the conservative movement lies in the tens of thousands of Minnesotans who have come here recently from places like Laos, Guatemala, Eritrea, Mexico, Vietnam, Russia, Somalia…

…from places with strong traditions of family, faith and honor – things the GOP is supposed to uphold, although which it seems to do imperfectly lately – and whose way forward in this country, like all previous immigrants, is hard work and entrepreneurship.   Which are values where the GOP has a good track record, and are  values the DFL holds in sneering contempt.   These are people who are conservatives, and who vote DFL because the DFL has successfully painted the GOP as racists who want them all rounded up and sent back home.

I’ve railed at GOP candidates – from Mark Kennedy through Tom Emmer – for failing to poke their noses into the city, for not meeting with charter school parents (who in the city are mostly minorities, and who mostly vote DFL, and mostly don’t know that the DFL will kill charter schools before they kill cockroaches), or with H’mong leadership, or with Latino groups to discuss their view of immigration reform (to Emmer’s credit, he did this.  And hint: it’s a lot harder-line than most Republicans are).   My railing has been met politely, and ignored.

But Dan Severson has led the way on this.  He’s forged links with immigrant and ethnic communities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul that are a first in Minnesota Republican politics, and may be nearly unique in the US outside of Florida and the heavily-Latino southwest.

And that is the first step on the way to the future of the GOP and conservatism in Minnesota.

Also because Cathy Jo Severson will kick my butt if I don’t write this.

So I’m supporting Severson for Senate.

Governor 1%

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It’s become clear this past few days what “Governor” Dayton’s only real goal has been this past session: provide chanting points for the DFL and its paid messaging service, Alliance For A Better Minnesota.

Well, that and providing Wilfare.

Yesterday, Dayton vetoed a tax bill aimed at helping jump-start small business:

The plan would have given tax breaks for research and development, investment in new businesses, historic preservation and the Mall of America expansion. Tax rebates on capital equipment purchases would have been replaced by upfront tax breaks to small businesses purchasing capital equipment. Included was a provision Dayton sought: giving tax breaks to employers who hired veterans.

And in this lies the three biggest lessons of this entire fiasco of a session. They are simple, but apparently not simple enough to penetrate some moderate Republicans’ heads:

  1. The DFL – and especially the media that supports them – loves “bipartisanship”.  Provided it’s solely on the part of Republicans.
  2. The DFL’s goal isn’t improving Minnesota, or making a better life for Minnesotans.  It’s getting and keeping power.
  3. To get the power back that they lost in 2010, the DFL is engaging in a Big Lie – really, a series of small lies, aimed at winning over the votes of the naive, the addled, the stupid, the ingenuous, the disingenuous and the illiterate.

That third bit?  Right here:

But Dayton said the bill tilted too heavily toward business, to the virtual exclusion of homeowners, renters, farmers and senior citizens…”There is no question that Minnesota businesses have been hit hard by recent property tax increases,” he wrote. “But so has everyone else! … I remain committed to broad-based, comprehensive property tax relief for all property taxpayers, including — but not limited exclusively to — businesses.”

And there’s a Big Lie.  Dayton knows that property taxes are set by local government.  They – accountable at the lowest, most intimate level with their taxpayers – control their own spending.  Dayton, like all the bobbleheaded leftybloggers who also get their chanting points from Alliance For A Better Minnesota, is trying to convince just enough of the ill-informed that this is not to to eke out a legislative victory.

And here’s the message I want to make sure gets out:

After weeks of intense lobbying, state business leaders were unhappy with the veto.

Jobs – real jobs that help the economy grow, not state jobs – come from business.  Now, I’ve heard some business owners say they are disgusted by the performance of the MNGOP in this past session,.

In response, here are  your two answers:

  • Yesterday, we noted that the GOPers that were sent to kick butt for lower taxes have been largely holding their ground.
  • Here, in this veto, you see the bloody conundrum; sending the GOP home this November to “teach the party a lesson” will leave Mark Dayton in complete control.

If you are a Minnesota businessperson, the lesson is clear:  if you are Zygi Wilf, government is here to serve you.  If you are not?  Then government is here to tax you, regulate you, to force you to unionize…

…and eventually strangle you.

Conservative Voters: Step Off The Ledge (Part III)

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Over the past couple of days, I’ve analyzed the votes of the Legislative GOP caucuses on the stadium votes over the past few weeks, and found that if you’re a conservative voter, you have some reason to take consolation; the legislators we sent to the Legislature in 2010 on a conservative platform largely – not perfectly, but largely – stuck with their principles.

How about the DFL?

Heres’ the interesting part:  Look at the DFLers in the House and Senate who voted “no” on the Stadium deal.  Don’t worry, it won’t take long; not many DFLers could bear the thought of not giving Wilfare to a billionaire:

  • Allen
  • Carlson (Lyndon)
  • Clark
  • Davnie
  • Dibble
  • Dziedzic
  • Eaton
  • Falk
  • Greene
  • Greiling
  • Hansen (Rick)
  • Hausman
  • Hayden
  • Hornstein
  • Kahn
  • Laine
  • Lenczewski
  • Liebling
  • Loeffler
  • Lourey
  • Marty
  • McGuire
  • Mullery
  • Murphy (Erin)
  • Pappas
  • Paymar
  • Scalze
  • Torres Ray
  • Wagenius

With the exceptions of Rep. Falk and Senator Lourey, every last one of them is from the metro area.  They represent (or, for some of us, “represent”) the people who will actually be stuck with the lion’s share of the tax burden for all of those purple-clad horn-blowing tail-gating Bud-chugging freeloaders’ “family traditions”.

The rest of them?  From 18-term dinosaur Mary Murphy to first-term carpetbagger Carly Melin, from Eastsider Jon Lesch to suburban grandée Nora Slawik, from Iron Range glad-hander Tom Rukavina to smirky suburban snark-bot and Eddie Haskell impersonator Ryan Winkler, they’re the ones who figured billionaire Zygi Wilf deserves your money more than you and your family do.

Here they are:  Anzelc,Atkins, Bakk, Benson (John), Bonoff, Brynaert, Champion, Cohen, Dill, Dittrich, Eken, Fritz, Gauthier, Goodwin , Harrigton, Higgins , Hilstrom, Hilty, Hortmann, Hosch, Huntley, Johnson (Sheldon), Kath, Kelash, Knuth, Koenen, Langseth, Latz, Lesch, Lillie (Leon), Mahoney, Mariani, Marquart, Melin, Metzen, Moran, Morrow, Murphy (Mary), Nelson (Michael), Norton, Pelowski, Persell, Poppe, Reinert, Rest, Rukavina, Saxhaug, Sheran, Sieben, Simon (Steve), Skoe, Slawik, Slocum, Sparks, Stumpf, Thissen, Tillberry, Tomassoni, Ward, Winkler and Wiger.

They’re the ones that practice Cy Thao’s classic if inadvertent dictum of “progressive” politics – “when we win, we take your money; when you win, you get to keep your money”. And Larry Pogemiller’s even better “it’s silly to think that the people can spend their own money better than the government can”.

Does the GOP need to get more conservative?  Do its less conservative members need to shape up or get out?  Absolutely.  And hopefully we’re not done with that process this election season.

But let’s not forget who invented “overtaxation” and “subsidizing the 1%” in this state.

Tomorrow – what the MNGOP needs to do.  Says me.

Conservative Voters: Step Back From The Ledge (Part II)

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I’ve heard not a few conservative voters groan in frustration over the stadium vote this past few weeks: “why did we even bother voting for the GOP in 2010?”

And watching the way some “conservative” legislators caved in at the first sign of beer-gutted yahoos and their husbands flouncing about the halls of the capitol with their faces painted purple and the bratwurst-grease stains on their sweatpants concealed by the crocodile tears they were squirting at the thought that the taxpayers would let Zygi Wilf take all their precious family memories to California, it was easy to feel discouraged.

One might feel justified in asking – do any of these people have any cojones at all?

But a look at the numbers from the vote shows there’s a little more than that to be hopeful for.

———-

As I noted this morning, the Legislature voted by a  thin majority to support the stadium.  That majority included a sizable minority of the GOP caucuses.

Most of the GOP caucus did, in fact, vote against the stadium.

But it’s when you break down the caucus by class that you see the real distinction.

Let’s look at the House first.

Of the 71 House GOP caucus members, 33 voted Yes and 38 voted No.   Ten of the votes came from Freshmen Republicans (Fabian, Kiel, Kriesel, LeMieur, Murray (Rich), O’Driscoll, Schomaker, Swedzinski, Vogel and Woodard ) voted “Yes” – all of them but the retiring John Kriesel from outstate.  The other nine certainly owe us some answers.

But 18 of the “No” votes came from first-term Representatives (Anderson (Diane), Banaian, Barrett, Benson (Mike), Bills, Crawford, Daudt, Franson, Gruenhagen, Kieffer, Mazorol, McDonald (Joe), McElfatrick, Myhra, Petersen (Brandon), Quam, Stensrud and Wardlow).   They’re from all over the place; they were a majority of the GOP “No” votes, while the Freshmen were about a third of the “Yes” total.

Put another way?  The “No” voters had served an average of less than 2.5 terms; the “Yes” votes, an average of four terms.

In other words, the average “No”-voting Republican in the House came to office after the debacles of 2006 and 2008, and most of them in 2010; they remember the price of moderate hamsterism, and they rejected it when the chips were down.   The average GOP “Yes” voter has been there a while – in the cases of some of the old-timers, maybe too long.

In the Senate, the pattern holds: of 37 Republicans in the Senate, 15 voted “Yes” and 22 “No”.  That’s 60% of the Senate GOP caucus holding the line (it was 54% in the House).

And if you look at shelf life?

Of the “Yes’ votes in the Senate, only five (Carlson, Magnus, Miller, Nelson and Pederson) were freshmen.

But on the “No” side, of 22 votes, 15 were freshmen (Benson, Brown, Chamberlain, Dahms, Daley, DeKruif, Gazelka, Hall, Hoffman, Howe, Kruse, Lillie (Ted), Newman, Thompson and Wolf).

Put another way, the average “Yes” voter has spent just shy of three terms – almost 12 years, on average – in Saint Paul (and if you leave out the freshmen, it’s closer to four terms on average).

On the other hand, the average “No” voting Republican has been there a little over a term and a half (the seven long-timers voting “No” included indefatigable conservatives like Gerlach, Hann, six-termer Warren Limmer, Nienow, Ortman, Parry and Vandeveer, people who survived the debacles of 2006 and 2008 for good reason).

———-

So what’s the conclusion?

Conservatives can console themselves ever so slightly in the wake the stadium debacle in the fact that legislators elected after conservatives took real control of the GOP did, in fact, vote overwhelmingly conservative during the stadium debacle.

And fortify themselves with the absolute knowledge that we have to get more of the same in Saint Paul.

So what do we do about it?

More tomorrow.

Conservative Voters: Step Back From The Ledge

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One of the worst takeaways from this stadium fiasco has been the wedge it’s put in the GOP – and which, naturally, the DFL are using on Republicans, inside and outside the party.

Which is politics, and to be expected.

But it’s also at least in part wrong.

Hear me out here.

———-

Conservative voters have become a majority among GOP activists.  It’s why the GOP has morphed from the party of Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger 15 years ago to the party of Dave Thompson and King Banaian today; the base, and people who vote Republican, want it.

And when the party strayed too far toward being “DFLers with better suits” over the past decade, the voters punished them by staying home in droves in 2006 and 2008, and by voting with the Tea Party and expelling many of the “moderate” hamsters from office in 2010 (to say nothing of many liberals).   They were sent to office with a mission; cut taxes, shink government, get out of the way of job creation, among a few other things.

And they took a good whack at it this session – hobbled by a Governor whose only goal (and job) was to veto everything he could, and the rhubarb at the State GOP (which slopped over into the Senate) they certainly didn’t get it all done.

But the stadium?  That was the bill that’s gotten conservatives exercised, one way or the other.  It’s been amusing to see Ron Paul and Kurt Bills supporters laboriously backtrack to justify spending public money on the single least essential bill government has – Zygi Wilf’s real estate improvements.

The DFL and media (PTR) scarcely need to exacerbate the internecine scrum between Republicans over the stadium (although they are), though. We’re beating ourselves up hard enough.

I’m going to suggest that conservative Republicans have a little more to show for the stadium debate than the DFL, the press and our less sanguine friends may let on.

———-

On the surface, of course, the numbers just aren’t good.  The stadium passed both chambers:  71-60 in the House, 36-30 in the Senate.

The partisan breakdown looked like this (and this is my count, not the official one – I assembled much of this data manually, and errors are very possible – although they don’t really affect the conclusion):

House (and I know, the math doesn’t square with the totals I got from the Strib above – I’ll work on it when I get a moment – and it doesn’t change the conclusion, again):

  • For: 40 DFL, 33 GOP
  • Against: 20 DFL, 38GOP

Senate:

  • For: 21 DFL, 15 GOP
  • Against: 8 DFL, 22 GOP.

So on the one hand, it does make sense – the DFL, yet again, voted in greater measure to pick the taxpayers’ pockets.  Indeed, it’s instructive which Democrats voted no (in both chambers, they included Davnie, Dibble, Dziedzic, Eaton, Falk, Greene, Greiling, Hansen (Rick), Hausman, Hayden, Hornstein, Kahn, Laine, Lenczewski, Liebling, Loeffler, Lourey, Marty, McGuire, Mullery, Murphy (Erin), Pappas, Paymar, Scalze, Torres Ray and Wagenius) – for the most part, the ones whose constituents would actually have to pay for the stadium.  It’s the DFL philosophy writ small; make other people pay for your toys.

But the fact remains that there would have been no publicly financed stadium without GOP participation.

And the GOP voted for it; 15 of 37 Senators and 33  of 71 Representatives; a minority within the caucus, but enough to saddle the taxpayers with the bill.

But as the DFL and media (ptr) remind us, there are really two GOPs.  There’s the “moderate”, pre-Tea Party version, and there are the newcomers who came to Saint Paul in 2011 full of whiz and vinegar and on a mission to change government.  They are in fact the majority of the Senate GOP caucus.

What’s the divide in the vote between the “old’ and “New” GOPs?

More on that at noon today.

Because “First Black President” Was Already Taken

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Barack Obama is “The First Gay President”.

On the one hand, it’s only Andrew Sullivan.  I am only dimly aware that Sullivan was still blogging.

On the other hand?  Well, Jazz Shaw puts it well:

I’m not such a political neophyte as to suggest that this is unique in politics, but the bold faced, brazen machinations and ham handed plotting which have characterized this “evolution” in the President’s position on the subject at hand are rather breathtaking. And I’m not saying that people don’t actually “evolve” in their positions, beliefs or ideology. I know that my own attitudes and beliefs in my twenties were a far cry – in some instances at least – from where I stand in my fifties. Very few of us spring out of the halls of high school fully formed with all of the opinions we’ll hold until the grave.

But these evolutions generally take place over a long period of time, as exposure to new people and different ideas are examined and experimented with. Some are kept, others are rejected. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has gone in the course of less than a decade from full throated support of gay marriage to full opposition on religious grounds, back to full support. Are we really supposed to be buying this?

Ask Tina Brown.

I’m sure she thinks so.

I didn’t think Andrew Sullivan could do more to undercut the intellectual legitimacy of the left than his “Trigger” obsession – his demented notion that Trig Palin was Sarah’s baby.

Happy to say I was wrong.