Obama, after tittering and poo-poohing the notion of going to Iraq with Mac, is thinking about it after all.

(Presumably he’ll need a Pashto interpreter).

Why would that be?

To:  Scott McClellan

From: Mitch Berg – unpaid hack

Re:  Interview

Mr. McClellan,

Since you’re on a big honking book tour anyway, I’d like to invite you on the Northern Alliance Radio Network one of these next weekends.

It seems you have some explaining to do, and it’d be nice to get you into a forum where you’d actually have to do that explaining.

Have your people call our people Ed or I.

That is all.

Look – this fall is likely to be another rough one for the GOP.  It’s possible we can retain the White House if we all pull together.  But Congress is looking grim; indeed, if the Dems get less than 80 seats in the Senate and 330 in the House, it should be considered a crushing defeat.

But if nothing else, we’ll get a few years of watching the Tics eat their own:

Former President Bill Clinton said that Democrats were more likely to lose in November if his wife Hillary Clinton is not the party’s presidential nominee, and suggested some people were trying to “cover this up” and “push and pressure and bully” superdelegates to make up their minds prematurely.

“I can’t believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out,” he said at a South Dakota campaign stop Sunday, in remarks first reported by ABC News. “’Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.'”

Well, to be fair, the media has more important things to cover up.  To be fairer – huh?

The former president added that his wife had not been given the respect she deserved as a legitimate presidential candidate.

Sixteen years of fawning, and this is all the thanks the press gets from Slick Willy?

Gavin Sullivan has been trying to ask CD3 GOP Congressional candidate Erik Paulsen some questions.  The discussion, for whatever reason, isn’t going well; Sullivan isn’t getting answers, Paulsen isn’t talking to him, Sullivan carries on an escalating campaign to get the answers, Paulsen doesn’t play along, Sullivan posts Paulsen’s home address on his blog, charges are made that Sullivan is “stalking” Paulsen, it’s noted that Paulsen’s site also has the home address…

…in  other words, a typical day in the Twin Cities blogosphere.

Let’s come back to that fracas in a moment here.  Because Gavin turns the flap into a question that strikes close to home:

A hypothetical: Let’s say I’m your longtime DFL state representative and I’m the endorsed DFL candidate for US Congress in CD3. Let’s say you’re a conservative blogger who resides near me, in the same legislative district. You start emailing questions; I don’t reply. You include my staffers’ email addresses; you still don’t get any reply. You find that whether you ask a policy question or you simply ask me to confirm biographical data, I refuse any interaction with you whatsoever. Eventually, you corner me in a public setting and ask me why I won’t answer your emails; I tell you I refuse to respond because I believe you’re insincere.

Hypothetical?  Sez who?

I’ve gotten the same thing from my city council president, my Congressional representative, Rep. Ellison, one of my Senators – and gotten nothing.  Not even the courtesy of a “f**k off, you hatemongering conservative”.  The reason…

…well, none of them ever gave a reason, but the peanut gallery pointed to my “credibility” (absurdly so; the Northern Alliance is honest about its biases, unlike most of the Twin Cities media) and worries that I’d “ambush” the politicians (a baseless worry – and a hypocritical one at that, since the same people criticize Rep. Bachmann for citing the same reasons for avoiding the partisan local media).

So no, Gavin, there’s nothing hypothetical about your scenario.  Even among my local representation – while Senator Anderson (DFL-SD66) is quite conscientious about her constituent relations, so as much as I criticize her politics, I admire her for that, at least.   Rep. Hausmann (DFL-66B) can’t be bothered; she’s too busy pretending to be an engineer.

So as to Rep. Paulsen avoiding Mr. Sullivan’s blog?  I don’t know; I’d like to get Paulsen’s take on things.

…is that Ron Paul no longer has the “feet stuck firmly in the clouds” vote locked up.

You’ve no doubt noticed – my NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb’s role in derailing the Al Franken senate campaign made it to the Sunday New York Times.

The Times’ writer, Monica Davey, made what seemed to be a game effort at conveying the Minnesota political blog scene, including a half-hour interview with me a few weeks ago that covered primarily the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers and, of course, True North, my other blog.  She seemed genuinely curious – and, within the constraints of space, did a decent job of getting at least some of the basics across.

The good news?  I got into the Times.

The bad news?  From our half-hour conversation, this was the quote she ran:

“We’ve kind of got a center of gravity going on up here,” said M\
itch Berg, one in a group that started a “True North” Web site in 2007.

“…going on up here?”

Oy.  Good thing I didn’t say “Ja, sure, you betcha”, too.

Anyway – Kudos, Michael!

And Scott Johnson gives some of the anti-climactic background to the whole NARN saga…

Just a reminder – Barb Davis White is going to be at Keegans tonight, just in time for the 8PM Trivia round.

Barring any last-minute catastrophes, I’m going to be there – and whether you’re a blogger or not, I hope you can make it down to meet her. 

A journey of a thousand miles – which is truly what winning the Fifth District is – begins with a single step.  Make sure you take that step with a large, raucous group of friends and a pint of Smithwick’s!

To: Ron Paul supporters

From: Mitch Berg – former Big-L Libertarian, now Republican

Re: Welcome to Saint Paul

Ronulans,

Welcome to Saint Paul – my city. I hope you have a good time here.

Now, as I’ve written in this space in the past, I’m not among the ones crying “foul” that you are coming to our caucuses and conventions and making “us” – the “insiders” who’ve been working within the party apparatus for years – work to defend the status quo, because I used to be one of the “outsiders”, too. And I’ve been frustrated dealing with what I thought was a hide-bound, old-boys-and-girls club. And being in Saint Paul, south of County Road C, I do feel like an insurgent in my own party sometimes.

So I’ve defended you (even as I’ve argued with, let me be frank, some of you more nutbar friends; the people who came to caucuses with sheaves of resolutions about the North American Highway and GATT and so on), because I thought it was good for the party.

Provided, of course, that you were sincere about being fundamentally interested in being in and working with the GOP, even to change it – as opposed to seeing it as a vehicle to forward a personality cult.

So stories like this perk my ears up:

“I have a busload of Ron Paul supporters on the way to Minneapolis-Saint Paul for the National Convention, along with an expanding army of volunteers from more than 1500 locations coast to coast. We are resolved to make these next few months count. We look forward to the list of speakers. We will converge on Minnesota regardless of whether you invite Dr. Paul, but we would prefer to stay in hotels and attend the convention as members of the Republican Party rather than stay at the YMCA and protest outside as disaffected ex-Republicans. The choice is yours.”

Look; you’ve infiltrated the party. You’ve gotten elected to delegate slots – perhaps not enough to pick the nominee, or to drive the Convention Committee’s decisions on which speakers to invite, but you have arrived.

Your choices are these:

1. Prove it’s not a flash-in-the-pan personality cult: Find more candidates that believe as you (and to some extent “we”) do, especially down-ticket. Stay involved; get more delegates elected for more races. Remain a factor in the party, and extend your influence. The biggest problem “third parties” have is that they are made up of purists; people who are impatient to see their “perfect” solution right now. That’s not how politics works; it took Ronald Reagan (and his supporters) two tries! You have to show everyone – not just the GOP – that you are serious about reforming politics over the long term, which in politics means the long term.
2. Prove it is a flash-in-the-pan personality cult: Find out that Rep. Paul isn’t speaking, walk out in a huff, and stomp around the streets bitching about the party that, after one election cycle, isn’t carrying you (who are, after all, a minority of delegates) to the podium on its shoulders.

So what’s it going to be – influential faction, or petulant personality cult?

That is all.

Molly Priesmeyer in the Minnesoros Monitor today:

What if Hillary Clinton said, ‘I don’t want your racist votes?’  In CNN exit polls conducting last night in Kentucky, about 21 percent of voters said race played a factor in their decision. Nine out of 10 of those voted for Clinton, according to the exit polls….David Gergen discusses the data…and  begs an important question: “What if Hillary Clinton were to say, ‘If you want to vote against him because he’s black, I don’t want your vote?'”…now would be a time to address the fact that, if anything, the contentious campaigns have served to make obvious the country’s long-suffering ills caused by racism and sexism.

Wow.  Molly Priesmeyer opposes racism…

…after she wallowed in it!   Ms. Priesmeyer in the City Pages, 2005:

Is it really white in here, or is it just me?…En route to the Power Line/Center of the American Experiment Dan Rather retirement party, I rode in an elevator filled with white men in suits…These were received with hale-fellow-well-met white-guy laughter that abruptly stopped when the elevator doors opened to reveal a group of young black men in Roc-A-Wear gear who were apparently not attending the same event. Then the elevator doors closed and took the bunch of us back to 1952 for an event that felt like a dinner at a segregated country club in the days when Perry Como ruled the airwaves…That’s not exactly correct: Inside, I spotted a total of three non-caucasians, and one of them was hunched behind a television camera recording the event for history’s sake.

Wow.  What if all three candidates said “we don’t want your racist votes?”   

To:  Al Franken, Senate Candidate

From:  Mitch Berg, common schmuck

Re:  Profile in Courage

Mr. Franken,

It has to look bad now; your tax problems are becoming a pop-culture punch line to the point where even some of the people who drank your kool-aid are trying to toss you under the bus.

This has to be the dark night of your political soul.

But I urge you, Al – fight the tide!  Take those who are trying to throw you under the bus, and body slam them like you did that senior citizen who was heckling Howard Dean.  Rhetorically, I mean.

Let’s face it, Al – you were “swiftboated” [*]!

Because if you depart the race, what is the DFL left with?  A dozey addlepated pseudoprofessor from a “peace studies” “program” (St. Thomas adopted the program because it didn’t fit National American University’s standards of academic rigor), and yet another lawyer.  Norm Coleman’s a lawyer, for crying out loud; they’re practically kissing cousins!

So you have to stay in this campaign, Al.  You have to!  Because…er, you owe it to the children!  Only you have what New York needs.

Minnesota. Only you have what Minnesota needs.  Sorry.

Anyway – stay the course, Al! The Strib’s hard at work gundecking all that “tax” folderol, anyway – you can ride this out, with a little help from your friends at 425 Portland (occupant moved, no forwarding address)

You can do it, Al!

That is all.

[*] “swift-boat-ing, v. To tell inflammatory, incriminating stories about Democrats that happen to be documentably completely true.

As I’ve written about in the past, there were many things that pushed me to the right, from the dozey McGovern-style liberalism (at least in terms of domestic policy) I believed in when I was in my late teens and early twenties, to voting for Reagan in ’84. Books (Modern Times, The Gulag, Crime and Punishment, Republican Party Reptile), events (the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet chicanery over the SALT talks), personalities (the amazing Reagan versus the comical Carter, the room-temperature Mondale, the loathsome Gary Hart)…

…but the key log in the logjam was Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech, in which a fiftysomething who’d been rewarded far out of proportion to his talent personally (so it seemed to me at the time) told me that I, a fifteen-year-old kid in the middle of nowhere, that I was going to inherit a much crappier American than he’d gotten, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

And that bothered me; even though I didn’t really expect a whole lot at that time, being told to just go and suck it bothered me enough that my adolescent certainty about liberalism started to crack around the edges (although I chalked most of it up to Carter, not the movement itself, initially).

Of course, “The sky is falling” is a key mantra of liberalism – and Obama isn’t just the leader…he’s a client!

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

Now, on the one hand I get the context here – he’s reacting to criticisms from India’s prime minister about American environmentalists and politicians demanding concessions on growth from their growing economy (and yet still highly impoverished society).

And yet behind it there’s still the sense of liberal guilt, that the US doesn’t really deserve its success; that the people who didn’t feel proud of America until Barack Obama became a candidate really do believe that the only thing holding back the still-socialistic economy, ossified social structure and corrupt government of India is American imperialism.  That they dont’ know that while the US does use much of the world’s power, its productivity per unit of power used is vastly higher than most of the world, and our pollution per unit of productivity is lower.
Oh, there’s some real context as well:

Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

Leaving aside Obama’s usual audacious vagueness (what “new technologies”?  Are you going to develop them by decree?  Or perhaps buck your own nutroots and embrace nuclear power?), it shows a stifling ignorance of the real issue; the only way to solve the problems of pollution and third-world economic stagnance is growth, not shrinkage.

Just as it was for the last cataclysmic problem India faced – forty years ago, when the likes of Paul Ehrlich predicted that overpopulation and famine would soon render India a wasteland.  Liberal politicians of the day suggested we needed to “triage” India and the other nations threatened with overpopulation – and, like the global warming crisis today, highly-publicized scientists were absolutely certain, and wrote libraries full of peer-reviewed papers proving that the world was doomed unless government took decisive action to limit population – although it was already too late.
Fortunately, the Indians “followed our example”, and embraced economic growth – which, inevitably, curbs population growth.  The only thing “triaged” was Paul Ehrlich, who went on to make a series of other absurd comments that were largely obsoleted by more economic growth.

So the examples that we need to set for the third world are:

1. Pelt Paul Erhlich with rocks and garbage
2. Respond to the ecological crises (real or manufactured) the best way there is – via the free market.
3. Send Barack Obama back to Illinois.

Let’s get on it!

At the very end of a piece in the Minnesoros Monitor yesterday, Molly “Is It White Here, Or Is It Just Me” Priesmeyer asked:

Oh, what can it all mean!? What can it all mean!?

If I were her editor, I might have asked that myself.

Let’s start at the top; Priesmeyer seems to be covering the “What insignificant websites are saying about s**t that doesn’t matter” beat for the mSM. She asks:

On Friday, an Etsy.com seller added this handcrafted button (pictured) to her collection of items for sale. It features Mr. Monopoly, or Rich Uncle Pennybags, the easily loathed super-rich fellow who giveth and taketh away in the board game of capitalism. The button made little sense on Friday.

Or, um, today…?

This “Etsy.com” is, what – a political aggregator? A center of thought for people in the know about the Tics’ deeply-undemocratic delegate system?

(Searches casually). No, it’s sort of an “Ebay” for handmade tschotschkes.

To quote the sage, “Oh, what can it all mean!? What can it all mean!?”, indeed.

Why would a super delegate be associated with Rich Uncle Pennybags?

(Insert “George Soros” joke here)

Then yesterday came word from Huffington Post that Haim Saban, the super-billionaire entertainment mogul and one of Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters, offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America if the org’s two uncommitted super delegates were to pledge support for Clinton…Suddenly, the image of Sir Pennybags in a free fall makes sense. Try, try, try as he might, he just can’t seem to pay everyone off.

Uh. Huh.

I’m not sure if this is good news (the left is wasting money publishing this sort of thing) or bad (the left has enough money to waste publishing this sort of thing).

Let’s establish in advance; I’m a conservative.  The state of the Republican Party today – spending enough to make the party of Tip O’Neal think they can ding us on fiscal responsibility, defending earmarks – bothers me.  It bothered me in 2000, when we few, we very few, we Forbes supporters ran up against the Dubya juggernaut.

The only thing that bothers me more is the notion on the part of some conservatives that if “we” lose this election, it’ll be a good thing in the long run,

Ken Taylor at Red State tackles this lunacy:

Many Conservatives believe that allowing Democrats in the White House with a Democrat Congress will be such a disaster that the President will be a lame duck after only two years and the GOP under Conservative leadership will become the Majority in 2010 with a Conservative President to follow in 2012.

Look – I was one of the first, I think, to compare Obama with Jimmy Carter, and we all know how that turned out.

But one is a fool to put ones faith in parallels.  An Obama Presidency along with a Reid/Pelosi Congress would be a disaster, to be sure – but big government is addictive, and the addicts’ votes count just as much as ours do.   It took four years to expel Jimmy Carter – but the Carter years weren’t a self-contained event with an beginning, middle and end, independent of other context, Carter was in fact the last symptom of the disease of the New Deal/Fair Deal/Big Deal – forty years where government so ingrained itself into American culture that Republicans basically differed from Democrats only in cosmetics (and, to be fair, Demcrats were largely responsible and capable at defense, the Constitution and foreign policy, until 1972), a conversion so complete that it left classical conservatism so far in the wilderness it took a Ronald Reagan to move it back to center stage.

There are no Reagans in the wings.   And the symptoms of that age live on; America’s cities still mainline huge government and untrammeled spending; the farm belt is structurally addicted to government intervention.

With a Democrat President like Hillary or Obama and a Congress giving them their entire Socialist agenda, the damage that it will cause in even two years may not be able to be reversed. How many government programs once legislated and funded have ever dropped of the books ? NONE. Two years of total Democrat Socialist control will add massive programs and taxes that will be near impossible to reverse even with a Conservative President and Congress.

And, almost worse than the programs themselves, the addiction that they cause.

I’m afraid that conservatives who think the nation can try a four-year experiment with aversion therapy are, ironically, way too optimistic.

Now, bear in mind that if you look in the “politics” bookshelf for received wisdom, you are likely to be disappointed,  Most of what’s on the “politics” bookshelf is the equivalent of bad talk radio; button-pushing mixed with selective self-adulation.  I don’t take much of the genre all that seriously, even when I agree with the author.

But Al Franken’s “Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell” was particularly galling, since the “lies” were, in many cases, disagreements, differences in interpreting things – the usual stuff that comes from “communicating about complex things with humans”.   By slapping the word “lies” on every disagreement, Franken set the already-sorry state of American communication back by decades.

So yes, I’m happy to see RedState’s new piece, “Bearers of False Witness and the False Witnesses They Bear”, which I link via Brodkorb (and is in turn driven by Michael’s work on Franken’s tax records):

You may think that’s an odd title for a blog post about comedian and Senate candidate Al Franken, but those are his words. In his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken attempts to paint anyone who disagrees with him as a liar or worse. Ironically enough, this book has put the failed radio host on a path of lies and deceit, due to his failure to pay for workers’ compensation while the book was being written and researched.

Franken’s defense…ignorance. While this may apply to Franken in most cases, it is a hard sell in this instance. In order to believe Franken’s claims of ignorance on his corporate governance problems you must believe totally disregarding reality:

Read the whole case.  Er, thing.

We’re into election season – and when you’re a conservative blogger, one of the highlights of the season is the “Minnesota Poll”.

The poll has a long history of comic inaccuracy – inevitably in favor of Democrats.

Now, in 2006 they didn’t get a lot of focus, because the elections themselves went to solidly Tic everywhere.  This covered up the fact that the polls seemed to the not-so-casual observer to have spotted a couple of points to every DFL/Tic candidate in recent memory; if the final Minnesota polls before the last several elections had been correct, we’d be talking today about Senators Wynia and Mondale, Governors Humphrey, Moe and Hatch, Representative Luther and Wetterling…

So this next bit from the latest poll is probably good news for John McCain:

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton enjoy comfortable leads over Republican John McCain in Minnesota, a state widely expected to be a hard-fought battleground in November.

A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found that Obama leads McCain 51 percent to 38 percent among the state’s registered voters. Clinton leads the Arizona senator 49 percent to 40 percent.

Of course the poll’s methodology or raw numbers are nowhere in evidence; the MNPoll has been caught grossly oversampling Democrats for as long as I’ve been following it.

And that’s just important when you’re dealing with politicians whose entire strength is among the “base” – which it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to note isn’t Mac’s game anyway:

Independents, who will almost certainly be crucial to victory in November, may still be largely up for grabs, as none of the three candidates can claim majority support among that group.

It’s another season; it’s another chapter in the book “How Worthless is the MNPoll?”

…but I’d like to direct you to the campaigns of our two NARN2 guests today – Barb Davis White, who is the GOP-endorsed candidate for Congress in the Fifth Congressional District…

…and Tom Effertz, who is running to win back District 54B, in the north-east ‘burbs of Saint Paul.

By the way – I got flak from both sides over my post last week asking for CD2 Republicans to peel off a couple of bucks for the likes of candidate White in the Fifth and Ed Matthews in the Fourth. 

The flak from the left – as with this post from leftyblog Cardiopulmonary Patient in a Red District – was pretty ludicrous stuff, essentially saying “Republicans should just give up, since we’ve won these districts every election since the Truman Administration”.  Sorry, Blue – I don’t believe in sinecures, and I do relish a good fight against a self-satisfied, smug, overconfident foe, since it makes the eventual victory all the sweeter.

Some of the flak from the right hit a little closer to home; little birds tell me that some of the CD2 leadership wasn’t happy with me.  They’re right not to give in to complacency – it’s a lousy year for any Republican in Congress to feel complacent, even when up against a train wreck like Al Franken (or, maybe, a punchline like Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer).  But let’s do be realistic; even Democrat talking heads are advising “sell” on Sarvi.   And Michele Bachmann is going to go over Elwyn “E-Tink” Tinklenberg like it’s a prison shower-room beatdown, and that’s even if “Dump Bachmann” isn’t a high-profile voice in the campaign (and if they are, tack on another point or two for the incumbent).  

Minnesota will never really join the 21st century until the GOP contests the urban 4th and 5th Districts.  Now – with sharp, articulate candidates like White and Matthews, who will shred the hapless-outside-of-friendly-rooms Ellison and the brittle, incoherent McCollum in debates and on policy – is as good a time as any to start trying.

G. R. Anderson – a writer who apparently spent his career at the City Pages rehearsing to be the next Doug Grow, building a career on soft-core DFL flakkery – gushes about MN Senator and and DFL hatchetwoman Tarryl Clark.

Did I say gush?  Yes, I did – like three times.

Well…?

Mid-session Fridays are sometimes a ho-hum affair at the Capitol. But media conferences are held on that day to review the past week and preview the week ahead, something the DFL caucus often does by putting Tarryl Clark in front of reporters.

One Friday morning last month, Clark, a state senator from St. Cloud, readied to meet the press before a polished wood conference table in a hearing room. The media savvy Clark always banters with the assembled scribes, talking heads and camera jockeys before getting down to official proceedings. (She’s also normally dressed in some shade of blue.)

Note to Mr. Anderson; I’m told she also likes walks in the rain and hates shallow people.

On this day, murmurs around the Capitol were that Gov. Tim Pawlenty had hopped a flight out of town, presumably to Washington, D.C.

Clark, who possesses a sharp tongue and tenacity, rarely misses a chance to take a loyal oppositional swipe at the governor, and she uttered something about a “super-secret” trip by  Pawlenty in a tone that suggested a wink and a nod: Surely you guys will report on this, right?

Surely he will.  In a reporters notebook festooned with scribbles; “G. R. Clark.  Mr. G.R. Clark.  Mister G.R. Clark”.

A cynic might see a ploy here — a leader of the less-than-moderate Minnesota DFL Party trying to position herself as a moderate who can work both sides of the aisle, unite Minnesotans, yadda, yadda, yadda … But Clark appears sincere.

Maybe a few hearts doodled around the margins.

King Banaian is a little less lovestruck over Senator Clark:

MinnPostToasties runs a long, gushing review of Sen. Tarryl Clark, repeatedly bringing up “she could be governor”. It does its best to portray her as moderate; I’ve heard her “my daddy was a Republican” pitch before. Those of us familar with her views on taxes, what bills we try to pass in response to a bridge collapse, stadium taxation without referendum, or denying access to a business development tool preferred by businesses in her own district, might not be as in awe of Clark as the Post is.

Let’s go back to that “I started out as a Republican” pitch. Anderson:

“I grew in a Republican family, and I voted Republican when I first started voting,” Clark admits, saying that she was hewing to her family members’ core beliefs.

I’d like to know, of course, what Senator Clark thinks that means – or, more importantly, what it’s supposed to mean to voters.

After all, I used to be a liberal!  What did I take from it?  (It’s fodder for another discussion).

What did Clark take from her alleged Republican background (bearing in mind we’re talking about pre-Quist, pre-Reagan Minnesota Republicans, which is to say “DFLers with better suits”?

“They’re pretty moderate. They believe that it’s important to make investments, but they didn’t like the idea of government being in people’s lives, local control, values I still hold.

Of course, the “value” is expressed by equating “Local Government Assistance” (or, as King notes, “ …on taxes, what bills we try to pass in response to a bridge collapse, stadium taxation without referendum, or denying access to a business development tool preferred by businesses in her own district” with “control”; the comparison works in the same way as “Freedom is slavery” works.

Things I don’t necessarily see the Republican Party doing.”

The biggest failing of the MNGOP in the past two years is that it has so abdicated its role as defender of smaller, more local government that Tarryl Clark can say this without getting hooted off the stage by any objective observer.

Well, not G.R. Anderson.  He’s back in his room, building a photo collage.

Reporters nibbled a bit on Pawlenty’s absence from St. Paul, and Clark was happy to offer some red meat. “The governor’s focus may be a stumbling block,” she said at one point. “Depends on whether he’s here or not.” And, later: “If his words were a bridge, I’d be afraid to cross it.”

Her words were wry, with no hint of anger. And they had the effect of painting Pawlenty as, like Clark often puts it, an “absentee governor.”

At the end, one rumor that was hanging in the air finally came as a question: Have you thought about running for governor?

Al Franken sacks his old “campaign manager”, brings in a new one.

What a difference a change in perspective makes: with the news, Roosh…:

Franken brings on new campaign chief, Minn. native has experience unseating incumbents

I don’t care if she can make Monkeys come out of Franken’s [rear exit]. Franken’s issue is his own dumbassness.

Brodkorb:

Hamline political science professor David Schultz is hardly more kind in assessing the state of the Franken campaign. ‘Is this the classic putting lipstick on a pig?’ he asks. ‘Does Franken have fundamentally bigger problems that changing campaign managers won’t solve?’

Schultz is struck by the static nature of the polls in recent weeks. ‘Unless the Franken campaign can get a bunch of people to rethink Coleman and therefore rethink Franken the race is over.’”

And finally, Doug Grow – for non-Twin-Citians, that means “the most in-the-bag member of the in-the-bagosphere”. I add emphasis:

The Franken for Senate campaign became a little more traditional today with the announcement that Stephanie Schriock will become campaign manager in early June. To date, Franken’s campaign has not had a single person with the title of campaign manager…Franken campaign officials say the hiring of Schriock doesn’t signal any major changes in the organization but is a traditional step in preparing for the race against incumbent Norm Coleman. The hiring apparently assumes that Franken will win endorsement at the DFL convention, which is to be held June 6-8. — Doug Grow

…the Cubs would win the Series, the people of Myanmar Burma would toss off their military junta for their crimes of neglect…

…and the people of the Fifth District would shake their heads, realize “Oh, Crap – Keith Ellison is one crappy representative!”, and carry Barb Davis White to Washington on their shoulders.

But this is the real world – so Barb’s gotta work for it.

Not just a “real world”, mind you, but a “real world” where the local mainstream media is completely in the bag for the DFL.  As a result, GOP candidates can expect boundless hatchet–jobbery…

…while Democrats  can expect to get their message out pretty much as they want to; the Strib, at least on its editorial pages, is a PR firm for the DFL in all but name.

So last week, the Strib uncritically ran Rep. Ellison’s fairly vapid attack on the Supreme Court’s upholding of Indiana’s voter ID laws. 

Barb Davis-White promptly wrote a rebuttal.  And she’s waiting for the Strib to print it.

And waiting.

And waiting…

Well, I’ll print it here – and if you’re a blogger who assails the Strib, I hope you will, too.  I’m not going to inset my comments – but I will add emphasis to parts I think are particularly important:

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion, has ruled that it is not too burdensome to ask citizens to show a picture id when voting.  Now, most people would say that this is common sense.  In fact, a Rasmussen poll found that 82 percent of Americans, including 75 percent of Democrats, believe that “people should be required to show a driver’s license or some other form of photo ID before they are allowed to vote.” The civil rights of every American are violated when the fraudent votes are counted in an election.     The integrity of the ballot box is just as important to the credibility of elections as access to it.

Representative Ellison does not appear to be blessed with the common sense that the legislatures in Indiana and several other states have.  His recent editorial in the Star Tribune spits out in the style of a first year law student accusations of “disenfranchising voters and likens it to a “poll tax.”  He even brings up the concurrence of Justice Scalia, obviously in an attempt to obfuscate the fact that the court’s most liberal justice wrote the court opinion.  As Justice Stevens points out, “Because Indiana’s [identification] cards are free, the inconvenience of going to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, gathering required documents, and posing for a photograph does not qualify as a substantial burden.”   Again, common sense that is lost on Mr. Ellison. 

In a democracy, the voters, through their elected officials, have a right to pass laws to protect the integrity of their democracy.  There are countless stories where ACORN, a liberal activist group, has been found guilty of voter fraud, from submitting false voter registration forms in Kansas City to bribing voters with cigarettes in Milwaukee.  

We face many threats to our liberties, and these right to vote is an important one not to be taken lightly.  But when you watch what voters in most of the world go through to exercise their franchise, including brave Iraqis who defy sniper fire and suicide bombers, is it too much to ask that our voters show an ID? 

Ellison’s reponse is vacuous demigoguery – good enough for a DFL meeting, but not good enough for an elected official that represents a big, diverse district. 

I suppose it makes sense:

Democrats have chosen a blogger from each state to “participate” in the Democratic National Convention in Denver. And the winner from Minnesota is: Minnesota Monitor.

I suppose in its own  way it’s cheaper  than hiring a PR firm, while  being pretty much the same thing otherwise…

I’ve long been convinced that 90% of leftybloggers crib most of their writing from about a dozen original “proto-leftyposts” that appeared on Daily Kos, Atrios and RushLimbaughtomy maybe five years ago. 

If not the entire post, certainly the headline. 

And while that does mean the leftyblogger can dash past the whole “writing a catchy headline” bit – it’s all been done for you, by Kos, back in ’03! – it sometimes leads to some comical lapses.

The other day, I wrote a post about how Republicans in “safe” congressional districts – like Michele Bachmanns’ CD6 and John Kline’s CD2 – should oughtta think about diverting a buck or two to the long (very, very long) term goal of contesting CD4 and 5 (to say nothing of winning the First back).  The reason, of course, is that, whatever Tic nominee Steve Sarvi’s pluses (he’s an Iraq and Kosovo vet, is the former mayor of Watertown, and is not Colleen Rowley), barring a major “oops”, there’s just not that much to worry about at this point.

In other words; nobody’s scared of Steve Sarvi.

So I read “Blue Man in a Red District” this morning, and my first instinct was…

…to call 911.  The guy’s blue.  Obviously a cardiopulmonary problem.

But with that out of the way, his top post this morning was slugged:

Why are the right wing bloggers scared of Sergeant Sarvi?

And I thought “Good question.  After pointing out quite clearly that this right wing blogger – the only one cited in his post – is not scared of Sarvi, why am I?”

It’s a puzzle.

Blue actually does go on to post some information that isn’t the inverse of factual:

CD 5 has not elected a Republican to Congress in 45 years. The last 4 elections, a GOP candidate has garnered no more than 26%.

CD 4 had not gone red since 1949 and no one has come closer than 25% of Betty McCollum in years.

That’s right, Blue.  That’s one of the things you’re supposed to do in politics – change peoples’ minds.  It’s  tall order in my town, but if Brett Schundler could do it in Jersey City, we can do it here.

Bear in mind, I said “change minds”; not merely write a headline; with a nod to Blue, “Why Is The Fourth District Really Republican?”

It’s harder than that.

I’m not someone who enjoys jumping on people for petty little errors. Accidentally restating a few of someone else’s words while talking off-the-cuff in the midst of a gruelling campaign? Flubbing the odd number? Bobbling the state you’re in in the midst of a long trip where you haven’t seen yiour own bed in days (Obama, Obama, Algore)? Truly, I get as impatient with that as I do with people who yammer for years about pronouncing “Nuclear” noo-cyu-lar. Who cares?

I’m even inclined to cut Al Franken some slack over his tax problems (at least, I was when I originally wrote this post; reading Michael’s post this morning, I’m less sure); having done business in more than one state, let me tell you; the tax code is a minefield. (However, while you’re granting slack, please also make you never, ever vote for Franken. Let’s not get crazy here).

Still, Patterico wonders about Obama:

However, the more I think about it, the more it seems like – for a moment – Obama may have believed there are 60 states. Here’s what he said:

“It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”

Thus, Obama has been to “57 states.” He hasn’t been to Hawaii and Alaska – they aren’t big or important enough for any of the candidates to visit – so that’s 2 more states. And he has “one left to go” which makes 60.

It is to laugh.

If you live in the Second District – which includes a big chunk of southeastern Minnesota and the south/southeast metro areas – you are lucky.

Politically, anyway.  No, I have little desire to move to Eagan, and none for Lakeville.

But you have John Kline in the House.  He’s solid, He’s generally conservative.

And he’s safe.  Even the Democrats realize that Steve Sarvi isn’t much more than a warm body to put on the ballot; while he has lower negatives than the insane Colleen Rowley, I also suspect he’ll garner less fundraising from outside-the-district wackjobs.

Indeed, it seems to be an issue:

“Critics say Sarvi isn’t perceived as a threat in the race, with party officials targeting campaigns considered more competitive.

‘I haven’t seen any evidence that national Democrats are taking the race seriously — or on the local side,’ said Republican activist and blogger Michael Brodkorb.

Fundraising has been admittedly difficult so far, Sarvi said.

Let’s face it, CD2 Republicans; Kline’s seat is pretty well safe.  We needn’t be complacent, of course; y’all gotta work for the guy.  But barring some scandal favoring the Iraq veteran Sarvi – say, someone discovers that Kline’s bio is faked and that he didn’t actually win four Legions of Merit, his Naval Commendation Medal, a Meritorious Service Medal, a Joint Service Commendation Medal, and a Defense Superior Service Award, serve in Vietnam, serve as an aide to two Presidents and as pilot for Marine One, and have a son who has served as a chopper pilot in Iraq – y’all can most likely look forward to a couple more unchallenged years of good representation in Washington.

So when it comes time to do your political donations, how about peeling off a couple of bucks for where the party needs some help?

I’ve talked with both of the GOP’s “inner-city” candidates – CD5’s Barb Davis White and CD4’s Ed Matthews.  And while I’ve supported all of the GOP’s candidates in both of these offices, I don’t believe I’m disparaging any of them in saying that Barb and Ed are the best couple of candidates we’ve seen for these offices in a long time.  They’re both sharp, articulate, with that combination of solid conservative beliefs and keen understanding of their communities that it’ll take to many any inroads in their districts.

Because let’s face it; while this state has been flirting with being “purple” and on the ragged brink of voting “red” for a decade now, we’ll never really flip this state until we can make a contest of the Fourth and Fifth Districts.

And don’t forget the Republicans running down-ticket from the Congressional candidates!  We have a decent shot of taking back some of the House seats we lost in ’06, and flipping a few RINO seats to actual conservative control.  They need your help too.

If you’re a GOP activist and perennial volunteer, you’re probably used to – and tired of – hearing that every campaign is do or die, make or break, the big one.  Fact is, the only places where Republicans can relax are in places like Utah – where Republicans win everything – or Malibu, where we’ll never make a showing.

Everywhere else?  It’s a battle.  Every two years.

If you’d like to help out Ed Matthews – GOP-endorsed candidate for US House from the Fourth Congressional District – then by all means go to his website.

Since the GOP nomination’s been wrapped up for almost three months, now, the question “Who’ll Mac pick for VP” has been gurgling about the place.

Governor Pawlenty, of course, has been a key contender for a long, long time; young, great approval, decent if not invincible record of success as governor and legislator, conservative enough to not spark a rebellion in the provinces, and he supported Mac when it wasn’t cool to be in the McCain camp.

But as Gary Miller at TvM notes in reversing his own prediction:

The problem is that the GOP has a a dearth of talent in both our gubernatorial and congressional ranks. I couldn’t help but read this Redstate roundtable on possible veep choices and feel discouraged — much like those who participated in the discussion.  The most likely choices all have significant electoral or ideological shortcomings…

Which takes out Sanford, I think, as well.  South is out in the GOP.

Miller:

My reptilian brain stem has been working on finding someone who meets the following seemingly impossible criteria: 1) palatable (if not exciting) to conservatives; 2) satisfactory name recognition; 3) geographic advantages; 4) able to reaffirm McCain’s maverick creds; 5) able to assume the presidency should tragedy strike; 6) not necessarily currently in politics.

Allow me to offer the name of MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough.

Hm.

Hmmmmm.

I had not thought about this:

Scarborough boasts a rock-solid lifetime ACU rating of 95.  Even so, he does not shrink from criticizing Republicans when events warrant so he would help brandish the McCain maverick brand.  He does not harken from, or have any association with, the unpopular Bush Administration or current congressional GOP leadership as he left the House to spend more time with his children in early 2001.  His name recognition is not off the charts but would still probably exceed that of many of the other contenders.

OK.  The affirmative case is there.  The most important thing for GeeEmInEm to do is not blow the case with a complete howler…:

He is obviously telegenic and well-spoken.

Ooof-da.  There ya go.

Now, I’ll cop to the fact that I watch very little cable news and almost no cable talk shows.  But the times I”ve seen Scarborough I wasn’t especially impressed with the “speaking” bit.  I’ll allow that I could be wrong.

Someone convince me.

Miller also noted:

Meanwhile, two of the more exciting prospects, Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, are long on vision but short on experience.

Compared to Obama and Clinton?

I’ll admit I’ve gotten a bit more excited about Jindal lately.  I think his pluses far outweigh his minuses: Young, solidly conservative without the “paleo”, “neo” or “doctrinaire” labels, ethnic, in-but-not-of the south…

…and Catholic.  Michael Medved noted at dinner the other night that Catholics whom make under six digits – a fair chunk of the “Reagan Republican” coalition of 28 years ago – will likely be the swingiest of the swing votes in this election.

Somebody convince me.