The upcoming Minnesota Senate race, say some, is a foregone conclusion.  A-Klo in a walkover, says the conventional wisdom.

The MNGOP has three candidates vying for the nomination, so far..  Former State Representative Dan Severson is, by most accounts, the front-running.  Joe Arwood and Tony Hernandez round out the field of applicants so far.

I’ve interviewed Dan many times; in a just world, he’d be the Secretary of State today.  Hernandez ran a tireless State Senate campaign last fall in Saint Paul – which is like saying “the Light Brigade sure charged with energy!”, sure, but Hernandez is an amazingly sharp, capable guy.  And I met Joe Arwood over the weekend; I think he has a future in politics, too.   I could vote for any of them, after any of them gets nominated.

But let’s spitball for just a moment here.

What, according to the “conventional wisdom”, does the GOP need to win the Senate race?

The candidate has to be…:

• Someone with some name ID.
• Someone with some fundraising mojo.  That’s huge; with the departure of Bill Guidera from the race, I’m personally not seeing a fundraising superstar in the line-up.
• Let’s be honest – conservative.  A-Klo has done a good job of fooling Minnesotans into thinking she’s “Center”-left, although she’s feeling confident enough in her chances that she’s actually come out and co-sponsored some Obama-blessed legislation – something she’s eschewed (along with most work of any kind) so far in her career in the Senate; she’ll have the media to cover for her and shade her to the center.  The GOP loses nothing by presenting voters a real ideological alternative.
• Female.   Hey, it counts.  Minnesotans, I suspect, are hooked on the idea of their Senate delegation being a mixed doubles team.

So as I was thinking about this the other day, someone said “what do you think about Bridget Sutton?”

Sutton – a businesswoman who is currently on the Inver Grove Heights school board, is the wife of MNGOP chair Tony Sutton – which would be a two-edged sword, not only as a shrieking point for the DFL and media (pardon, as always, as always, the redundancy) but with elements of the MNGOP that are not happy with the current regime.

On the other hand, Sutton is smart, savvy, and would mulch Klobuchar in a debate.

So what does the assembled multitude think?

And who are we missing here?

If you’re a conservative and live in Saint Paul, you need to get to the polls today and vote for Elizabeth Paulson, Pat Igo and Kevin Huepenbecker for School Board.  There is a crying need for common sense on the SPPS Board; we have our chance!

Also, Cynthia Schanno is running for City Council in Ward 2, against Dave Thune.  The City Council is doing a terrible job; there needs to be a change.

Finally – if you live in Bloomington, Hans Anderson is running for Mayor.  He’s a solid conservative, an engineer by training, and he can help defuse the fiscal time bomb facing that city.

Get to the polls!

I thought yesterday – should I write something about Herman Cain?

I am, frankly, depressed at the way Cain and his campaign responded to the Politico hit piece.  Partly because it was so very, very predictable – the media will find any bit of dirt they can to hang on a conservative, especially a minority or female conservative.  I mean, have we learned nothing from the Palin candidacy?  (And spare me the “Romney or Perry leaked this” palaver; even if it’s true, it’s the media that will romp and play with the story).

Beyond that, though?  Cain’s response was straight outta amateur hour.  Cain knew that this story was coming; Politico contacted Cain’s campaign over a week ago on the story.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

I saw Herman Cain on Fox News this weekend, discussing the sexual harassment issue. He blew it.

He said he’d never sexually harassed anybody and that if the Restaurant Association settled a claim, he didn’t know about it and he hoped they didn’t pay anybody because he never did anything wrong.

Now it appears there’s an out-of-court settlement involving two women who got a year’s pay each.

It’s never the offense that sinks you, it’s always the cover-up.

He should have said: “I was accused of sexual harassment when I worked for the restaurant association 20 years ago. I denied I did anything wrong at that time, and I deny it today. We ended up settling out of court because it was cheaper to settle than continue paying the lawyers. Both sides agreed never to discuss the details of the settlement and I’m sticking to our agreement. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Wise words for every politician, to say nothing of every non-traditional conservative.

That would have been honest and believable. Most people would said “huh” and moved on. Now, it’s not the accusation that troubles people – hell, lots of people get falsely accused of stuff and have to settle or take a plea to avoid losing everything in litigation – it’s the lying about it that troubles us. Next, he’ll play the race card and compare himself to Clarence Thomas. When that doesn’t work, he’ll probably enter sexual harassment training for a weekend and have Billy Graham pray for him. When his wife stands beside him on stage saying she’s always believed in him, that’s the death knell.

It won’t work, Herm. It’s never the crime that voters resent. It’s always the cover-up.

And there’s the lesson, again, for all you minority conservatives who want to get off the liberal plantation, just as the Palin candidacy should have been a teaching moment for conservative women who want to put on some shoes and get out of the kitchen; just being as good as your detractors isn’t enough; you have to be better.  You can’t get by being smarter than they are; you have to be smarter than they are depraved, patrician and nasty. And with the Dems’ oppo-research and smear machines, that is going to have to be smart indeed.

Ask yourself, tax code, do you feel lucky? Do ya, punk?

 Rick Perry stabs the tax system in the heart.  But under the plan, is it dead or simply pining for the fjords?

Steve Forbes must feel like he’s stepped into a time machine.

The 1996 & 2000 GOP presidential candidate briefly electrified the denizens of political wonkdom with his conception of a national flat tax to simplify – and eliminate – the current overcomplicated tax code over 15 years ago.  Forbes’ idea of broadening the tax base while reducing the individual tax burden proved a temporary hit – too much of one as most of his 1996 rivals embraced similar policies.  Unfortunately for flat tax advocates, the only candidate who didn’t rush towards the concept was nominee Bob Dole, and since then the tax as languished as more theory than practice despite its success in many former Soviet bloc countries.

That is until now, as Texas Governor Rick Perry has revived the concept, winning Forbes’ praise and liberal scorn.  The headlines have screamed about Perry’s new tax rate of 20%, but in most reports, the lead has been buried:

“The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20 percent or their current income tax rate,” Perry writes. “The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.”

 

The plan also drops the corporate tax rate to 20 percent and will temporarily lower the rate to 5.25 percent to promote companies working overseas to move to the U.S. along with implementing a “territorial tax system,” which will  tax in-country income.

 

The plan will eliminate the death tax and end taxes on Social Security, which would help an estimated 17 million Americans receiving benefits today. It would also cut taxes on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains.

The drop in corporate tax rate would put the U.S. as the lowest in the world (among major competitors; there are a number of nations with no corporate taxes).  And with most foreign economies unable or unwilling to respond in-kind with similar corporate tax rate cuts, the U.S. could be looking at an immediate repatriation of up to $1.4 trillion with the addition of a “territorial tax.”  Does that mean an immediate increase in jobs?  Not exactly, but a similar “repatriation holiday” for overseas corporations in 2004 spurred massive investments in capital and employment.

Lost in the corporate tax discussion has been Perry’s proposal to cap federal spending to 18% of GDP, or what would be roughly $2.54 trillion.  That’s under the projected 2012 revenues of $2.627 trillion and significantly under the Obama adminstration’s desired $3.729 trillion of spending.  Perry is obviously expecting that projected $1.4 trillion to soften the blow as increased income would (hopefully) spur GDP growth, raising Perry’s 18% beyond projected 2012 revenue levels.

The chief compliants from the right, much like with Herman Cain’s “999” plan, are that Perry’s flat tax doesn’t go far enough.  Indeed, both leading economic fixes from the GOP field disembowel the current tax system but keep it wrapped together in some fiscal Eraserhead policy nightmare.  Both Cain and Perry’s proposals have foreign models to work from – Cain’s VATesque vision which has hindered Europe; Perry’s opt-out Hong Kong-like system which has worked well despite the complication of individuals being potentially able to switch back-and-forth from flat tax to the current system year to year.

Ultimately, Perry’s flat tax needs to be seen as the beginning of a new policy discussion, rather than as a destination.  A total overhaul of the tax code, while popular in spirit, likely polls poorly when the roughly 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal taxes figure out they might be forced to actually contribute to the system.  As proposed, few Americans will find themselves benefiting from the policy, but I think critics are thinking too short term and too little on the potential corporate effects of the plan.

It’s 5:30, and the straw poll has been underway for half an hour.   Results are due out at about 6:30.  I’ll be here for the scoop,when it happens,

6:30 – Sutton is on stage w/the results.

• 0.2% Johnson
• 0.9% Huntsman
• 2% Santorum
• 3.3% Gingrich
• 4% Rick Perry
• 10.7% Paul
• 11.1% Romney
• 12.2% Bachmann
• 52.6% Herman Cain!

A few weeks ago, when I was in Minneapolis to speak at the SD61 special endorsing convention, I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Fields, who is running for the GOP endorsement to run against Keith Ellison in the Fifth.

And as Nancy at True North discovered, Fields is an imposing guy with a compelling story:

Fields grew up poor in the South Bronx and said he made “horrible choices” in his youth – including accidentally burning down his home while playing with matches at 5, and taking up smoking at 13.

And a conservative grew in the Bronx:

He lived in Section 8 housing and during that time his 24-year-old stepfather bought 3 buildings for $1 each, creating a co-op with the help of donations and volunteers. Fields says that investment now holds over $45 million in assets. He learned a valuable lesson from his stepfather — that anyone can make a positive difference.

After working on Wall Street, Fields joined the Marines and retired an officer after 21 years. Having served in the Middle East, he offers first-hand knowledge and perspectives of the complexities of fighting terror and maintaining a military presence.

It’ll take a confluence of several things to unseat Ellison in a district like the Fifth:

1. A wave of discontent with the Democrats and DFL so immense that nobody, not even Ellison, is invulnerable.
2. A GOP organization that goes against decades of history and gets hordes of volunteers out on the street.
3. A solid outreach to the minority vote that has become so important in both of the Twin Cities (an area where the DFL has been falling increasingly short, as they basically assume those votes are in the bag from the word go).
4. More fundraising than any Republican has managed in the Fifth in forever.
5. A Fifth District that’s been diluted (possibly)
6. A really good candidate.

…you might be thinking – “36% increase in property taxes?  Huh-wha?”

That’s why you need to get to know Hans Anderson, GOP candidate for Mayor of Bloomington.  My people met his people last Saturday at the MOB summer party.

We’ll be talking with Anderson live at the MN State Fair.  Stop by and say hi!

What goes better with beer than side orders of liberty and freedom?

Citizens for Fotsch will be throwing a Beer and Cheese tasting party!

Come out to the B-Dale club (County B and, you guessed it, Dale Street – the address is 2100 N. Dale Street in Roseville) tomorrow night starting at 6PM and running til 8PM.

There’ll be no charge for attendance; there’ll be a cash bar, and donations to the Citizens for Fotsch will be gratefully accepted.

(Borrowed from the new MNCD4 GOP website!)

Hamline University poli sci prof Dave Schultz is a perfectly fine human being.  But it’d be a stretch to say he’s got the pulse of the GOP, much less its’ best interests in mind.

Over at Schultz’s Take, he writes about the straw poll:

Bachmann wins, Pawlenty is out. What do learn from the Iowa straw poll? Whatever political moderation existed in the Republican Party, it rapidly disappearing as the GOP is being remade in the image of Palin and Bachmann.

Schultz says that like it’s a bad thing.

OK, seriously, now?  Schultz is betraying just a bit of parochialism, here.  While personalities do indeed move the needle in politics – there’s a reason Michele Bachmann is a serious presidential candidate and Harry Reid isn’t – conservatism isn’t about personalities.  It’s about ideas.

So it’d be more accurate to say that the GOP is remaking itself in the image of Hayek and Goldwater.

And the talking heads who are moaning about the “death of moderation” in the GOP are being myopic at best, disingenuous at worst.

We’ll come back to that.

Schultz recaps the dynamics of Bachmann’s campaign and future outlook – you can read that over at his blog.

I called this post “Kael’s Take” for a reason:

Look beyond Bachmann. She received 28.6% of the vote, Paul 27.7%–together they accounted for 56% of the straw poll. These are two candidates who represent perhaps the most extreme agendas among the GOP field. Add to them Santorum who polled at 9.8% and one finds that nearly two-thirds of the straw poll went to what would appear to be non-mainstream candidates. Pawlenty, perhaps the most mainstream and establishment candidate who participated in the field, polled barely 14%.

Schultz, who teaches at Hamline, which is a reliably “progressive” echo chamber in the middle of Saint Paul (aka “Chicago on the Mississippi”) might be forgiven for thinking that Bachmann and Santorum aren’t “mainstream”…among Iowa Republicans who care enough about politics to drive to Ames on a gorgeous Saturday to vote. And Paul, nutter though he is, has at the core of his campaign plenty that resonates with an awful lot of mainstream libertarian-conservatives, myself included.

It’s because GOP activists, now, a year and a half away from the election, are doing what I wrote about three and a half years about in this space; staking out what they absolutely, positively want out of the party in 2012.  At this stage of the race, politics isn’t a horserace; it’s a tug of war – or rather, eight of them.  And the goal at this point of the campaign is to grab the rope that represents what you believe, and want out of the GOP, and to pull like hell.

Which is what Iowa Republicans did on Saturday.  They drove to Ames, and grabbed the ropes marked “cut taxes”, “repeal Obamacare”, “pro-life”, “get the state off our backs”, “Balanced Budget Amendment” and such, and they pulled like mad.  They pulled so hard that Tim Pawlenty, seen as more “moderate”, dropped out of the contest (and John Huntsman would, too, if he had any sense).

The GOP has moved to the right.  Why do you suppose that is?

Schultz:

This is a party that has moved dramatically to the right of the one that picked Romney as the Iowa straw poll winner and McCain as their nominee in 08.

And why does Professor Schultz suppose that the GOP would move away from a tack that lost in a near-landslide?  One closely tied with the ideological, inside-the-beltway rot that led the party to the debacles of 2004-2008?

That worked so well for us before.  Perhaps that’s what Schultz wants – it’d be understandable – but it’s hardly rocket science.  Perhaps Schultz thinks Republicans are stupid – but even we know that rejecting the “moderate” GOP was behind the wins in 2010.  The mood of the nation, to say nothing of the party, has left Schultz’s “moderate” GOP in the dust (with Pawlenty as collateral damage).

The GOP had redefined itself. It is–as I have argued for months–no longer the party of Ronald Reagan.

Dave Schultz has stolen Ronald Reagan.  I’m here to steal him back.

Schultz argues:

Sarah Palin successfully remade the party into one captured more firmly by the Tea party and owing much of its ideological allegiance to a blend of Barry Goldwater, Pat Robertson, and Ayn Rand.

I have to ask – what does Schultz think Reagan was?

More “moderate” than Bachmann?  Perhaps in some rhetorical terms – but in his era, he had to remake the GOP itself from a moderate-left to a moderate-right party.  Still, the left – and Schultz himself, I’d imagine – responded to Reagan’s calls to limit government, and to face down Communism, in terms no less rabid, foamy and Alinski-ite than they do Michele Bachmann today.

And Schultz is aiming at the wrong target – because there is no battle between a “moderate” and a “conservative” GOP; the battle is between Northeastern conservatism (pro-business, socially-moderate, comfortable with big government – think Romney, Huntsman, George HW Bush), Southern conservatism (socially conservative, fiscally all over the place; think everyone from Pat Robertson to Mike Huckabee) and Western conservatism (fiscal hawks, social libertarians – which includes everyone from Goldwater and Reagan to the Tea Party and its candidates), and a few candidates that try to split the difference (Pawlenty being a great example).

And so Schultz’s argument is wrong; the Tea Party is the Reagan legacy – if you leave off the edges to that legacy that Schultz has sanded off to make it fit his premise.

Schultz concludes:

Within a party of vanishing moderates, Bachmann can win.

And within a nation that’s moving to the right – the Western, small-government, sick-of-utopian-promises-that-are-leaving-our-grandchildren-in-debt-from-whatever-party right – any conservative can win.  The “moderate” GOP is irrelevant to that goal; even Romney is going to have to tack to the right to stay in contention.

Because that’s where the party – and, I argue, the nation – is.

And that’s the message from Ames.

Cue the Bachmann Derangement Syndrome ward!

And cue the conspiracy theorists who will be wondering how Ron Paul could possibly lose an open straw poll…

No, the title’s not bad grammar on my part.  It’s a great Steve Earle tune, from 1985 or so:

But yeah – since we’re on the subject, Dave Mindeman at mnpAct sniffs that “Minnesota Conservatives Are Not Satisfied“.

The conservativve [sic} wing of the Minnesota Republican Party is never satisfied. Shutting down the state government and a budget which focuses on massive cutting is not enough.

(It’s also fiction; the budget rose, the only things that got “cut” were for the most part the projected increases that the DFL-dominated bureaucracy demanded in 2009, and Dayton shut the government down, engineering it from the very start.  But let’s just let that slide for now).

Can you believe it? They are upset with the House committee chairs and are talking (get this) about subjecting some of them to primary challenges.

That takes cajones. (sic)

Well, think about it. If you’re a conservative, you spent a lot of time and energy working for Tom Emmer and a big slate of Republican candidates; though you were outspent by at least 2:1 by Big Labor, Big Oligarch and Big Dayton, you almost won the governor’s office, and you flipped both the House and the Senate.  You busted your butt, you wore out your shoes and your dialing finger.

And what did you get?  You got a GOP majority that…

• …raised spending, using the money from the February forecast, first, rather than making Dayton negotiate like hell for it.
• …dealt away Voter ID, Cornish’s Stand your Ground Law, and Zero-Based Budgeting, and…
• …to be fair, won a lot, and deferred some provisions important to conservatives ’til the less-charged, out-year session.

Politics in Minnesota put together an article that focused on the conservative angst. Three chairs in particular are mentioned:

They direct their anger at three high ranking House Republican committee chairmen in particular: Reps. Jim Abeler of Anoka, Pat Garofalo of Farmington and Steve Gottwalt of St. Cloud.

I was also interviewed in the piece – more on that in a bit – and while I haven’t read it (because I’m not a PIM subscriber), the bits I”ve seen made me sound a little more the zealot than I tried to present (not to knock Charley Shaw, the reporter, who does a great job with these things).

More on that in a bit.

Abeler has never been forgiven for voting for the gas tax override.

As I pointed out to Shaw, Abeler needs to earn his forgiveness.  He made a start this session.  He has a way to go.

As to the other two potential primary challenges Shaw mentioned – Pat Garofalo and Steve Gottwalt – I’ll believe ’em when I see them.  I operate under the phrase “perfect is the enemy of plenty good enough”, which drives some conservatives nuts, but that’s life, and Garofalo and Gottwalt are both imperfect and plenty, plenty good enough.

But here’s the part Mindeman doesn’t get; it’s none of his business.  It’s inside MNGOP baseball!  If the conservative wing of the MNGOP wants to flex whatever muscle it has, and either try to nominate more conservative candidates or drive the ones we have farther to the right, that’s our affair.  If it’s the wrong choice, electorally?  Well, Mindeman should be happy about that.

He’s not, and either is anyone else – because the conservative brand is waxing, and Obama and liberalism in general have coattails shorter than Daisy Duke.

Mindeman:

The logic of conservative thought processes is difficult to understand. The election was, in theory, all about jobs. But conservatives are most concerned about ideology.

It’s hard to know what Mindeman means by that. Does he believe that creating a healthier, free-er market – hence, jobs – isn’t part of our “ideology?”  Or doesn’t he believe that a bunch of competent adults can pursue fiscal issues and chew non-fiscal gum at the same time?

So no.  I, conservative, am not “satisfied” with the GOP today.  I’m happier than I was four or eight or twenty years ago – but we have a way to go.

And I’m having a lot more fun getting there than I used to.

That is satisfying.

Ahem.

At the risk of dispersing some of this blog’s usual decorum:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(breathe)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m not usually one for end-zone happy-dancing.  But after all the “you are teh racist/sexist/anti-worker/anti-middle-class/teabagger!/Koch-sucker/crap all of us conservatives have had to sit through since the last election, frankly, I think we’re entitled.

Last night’s victory in Wisconsin, like the “budget compromise” in DC and the Minnesota state budget, weren’t unalloyed victories – but in this case, it wasn’t even as close as it looked for the Wisconsin Democrats.

Think about it, “progressives”; you just spent $40,000,000 of your unions members’ dues – twice as much as the entire campaign for the entire Wisconsin State Senate cost in 2010.

Twice as much as the GOP spent.

You did it, you said, because you just knew Wisconsinites, deep down inside, were a bunch of liberals!  Not without reason; Barack Obama won every single one of those districts in 2008.

You – every damn one of you – just knew that you’d flip three, four, maybe even all six seats!  Because – you just knew this – Wisconsin just BLEEEEEEEDS “progressive”!

Or at least you had to hope so – because this, along with this autumn’s vote in Ohio on a slate of reforms similar to Walker’s – could mark the beginning of the end, not of public unions, but of public unions as a critical, game-ending force in national politics.

Because in a few years, with more stories like this floating around out there, even more voters will see what a crock of crap you “progressives” have been selling for so long.

Your platform – which, when you strip away all of the happy-talk, is “we will force private sector workers to work ’til they’re 72 so public union members can retire with full benefits at 55” – just isn’t working anymore.

And what did you get for your tens of millions?

You got two – one that everyone knew we were going to lose, and one squeaker against a guy with lots of personal electability issues,  The rest of them – even the Darling-Pasch race, which started the evening’s returns with Pasch winning – weren’t even close.

And Shelly “MAKE NO MISTAKE, WE ARE IN A WAR” Moore?  Yep, you were in a war.  And you were Italy.  And even with all that union money for those obnoxious, “A Better Minnesota”-style TV ads, and all those union people trawling the streets, and all those Twin Cities “progressives” coming across the river to help out?  Not to gloat, but that was the sweetest victory of them all last night, at least for a Twin Cities conservative who got to watch that race close-up from across the Saint Croix.

Sixteen points.

And the Democrats’ Holperin seat is looking kinda squishy in next week’s round of recalls.  Your two pickups could very easily turn into one by this time next week.

Scott Walker has been affirmed; Barack Obama has been refudiated.

You want to call this a war?  You know how those end, right?

At its very, very best, watching the Twin Cities mainstream media covering inter-party politics between the DFL and MNGOP is a zen-like experience; you hope, in the best of all possible worlds, for some rudimentary balance.

To wit: Bob Von Sternberg over at The DFL Casserole The Strib’s “Hot Dish Politics” blog tips his hand as re his editorial sympathies, just a tad (with emphasis added):

Members of a legislative budget commission met for the fourth time Wednesday, for the first time moving past their shopworn soundbites as they picked through the details of Gov. Mark Dayton’s just-released plan to shut down state government if a budget deal isn’t reached by July 1.

Hm.  Wonder if any of Dayton spokesbot Bob Hume’s “soundbites” – which, on Twitter, read exactly like a chron job executing a Perl script – qualify as “shopworn soundbites” to Mr. Von Sternberg?

And in something of a role reversal, Republicans — whose budget-balancing strategy relies entirely on spending cuts…

Nope.  No bias there.

On the other hand:

…accused the Democratic governor of proposing the shuttering of government services that will deprive Minnesotans of essential services. They cited his plans to shut off the flow of aid to public schools and halt payments to health and human services providers.

“Whose budget is more draconian,” demanded Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, using the word Dayton has often employed to describe the GOP’s spending cuts [albeit not, apparently, a “shopworn soundbite” – Ed.]; she called his shutdown plan “complete hypocracy. [sic – Ed.]”

On the one hand, it’s the first coverage I’ve seen in the regional mainstream media of the accusations that Dayton has been staging the shutdown, and seeking to amp up the “pain”, at all.  That’s good.

On the other hand, I have this strong sense that it’ll be the only coverage the Strib spends on it – tucked safely away in a blog that only wonks read.

After the commission meeting House Minority Leader Paul Thissen returned Dean’s fire. “I am stunned about the Republicans’ concern about the delay in the delivery of certain government services as a result of the shutdown, but have shown absolutely no concern about permanently and devastatingly cutting those same services,” he said. The GOP’s health and human services cuts “are what I would call breathtaking,” Thissen said,

Note to Rep. Thissen; then perhaps you and your party should have advanced a budget of your own…

Republicans also used the hearing to resume their drumbeat of criticism [Let me guess – a “shopworn” drumbeat? – Ed.] of Dayton’s negotiating style, complaining that he has remained aloof from the process.

“We had a meeting a week ago, I guess, and the governor didn’t attend that,” said Rep. Keith Downey, R-Edina. “I’m just curious in the last week, the last couple days, do you have any information you can provide to us[about] how many meetings the governor has actually been in on the shutdown versus how many meetings the governor has been in on the detailed grunt work of negotiating a budget agreement versus how many meetings the governor has been in on the Vikings stadium?

“That might be telling to us [to show] where the governor’s priorities are, based on where he’s spending his time.”

Yes.  It does, doesn’t it?

I was out at Grand Old Day yesterday.  I took a stroll down the avenue from Fairview to about Victoria, and then back.  With about 200,000 people out there in high-80s heat and tropical humidity, it was warm out there.

But the Saint Paul GOP booth was set up in a nice bit of shade a block or so east of Lexington.  I stopped by to chat with the crew there, including the St. Paul GOP’s school board candidates Pat Igo, Lizz Paulsen and Kevin Huepenbecker.

Now, when you’re a Republican in Saint Paul, you expect a certain amount of flak; most of it rote and unimaginative, some of it just plain weird.  It’s normal, I suppose, when you’re in a one party town where the majority have never had to defend their assumptions.

It was, apparently, no exception on Sunday.  There were lots of people out on the avenue, and most, not unexpectedly, didn’t care about politics at all.  And most that did were perfectly polite.

Oh, there were some of the usual crowd, the ones we get at the fair; the ones that chant a few chanting points (“Single Payer Now!  Single Payer Now!”) and scamper away before anyone can engage them. And there was one nutter, apparently a former DFL candidate who’d lost an election, who came to the booth, sputtered for a bit, and when challenged, interrupted; “I’m not here to discuss with you; I’m here to tell you!”.

But while I was standing there, a couple of women – drawn, dessicated, haggard-looking fiftysomethings who’d clearly had a couple of Bud Lights at the beer garden – brushed past me.  “You people are cray-zee“, said the first woman, wearing a beer cap and a beer T-shirt.

“Really?”, I responded.  “How so?”

The woman, standing on the other side from me of a family, with a couple of small children, bellowed “you can’t run a government with no f***ing money!”.  Before we could point out that the GOP is offering to raise the budget, her and her friends waddled away, waving their arms like they were guiding aircraft in to a flight deck.  “You know, there’s kids here”, I yelled after her.  “Might wanna, y’know, watch the language…”

But they were gone.

And I thought – was this yet another symptom of the St.Paul DFL’s approach to everything?  Their ends justify their means?  Gotta break eggs to make a vegan omelette; your mania trumps everyone else’s rights?  If you wanna yell, then you’re gonna yell, and screw anyone in the way?

Or was it just a couple of drunks, babbling?

I kept 0n walking.

A while ago, I was back visiting my parents in North Dakota.  While I was there, I visited a friend of mine from high school and college, who works as a campaign manager for Democrat-NPL (that’s NoDak talk for “Democrat”) legislative candidates in the central part of the state.  She told me to meet her at her office, and we’d go out for a drink.

I met her at her office, behind a vacant burger joint on the East Business Loop.   She was wearing sweatpants and an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt stained with ketchup.  It was 11:30AM and she reeked of cheap vodka.

“Um, hey, Fee”, I said.  “How ya doing”.

It almost looked like tears were going to well up in her eyes.  “How the f**k do you think, Mitch?”   She fished in her desk and picked out a half-empty bottle of Phillips vodka and two much-used styrofoam cups.  “I am a Democrat in…” she paused, filling both cups to the rim “…North Dakota”.   She handed me the first cup.  “We lose every election by 80-to-30 or even worse…”, she said, stopping to take a swig, “and that was in 2008, when we could get all twenty-teen Demcorats in town to actually come to the polls”. she slurred.

She poured another as I furtively emptied my cup into a long-dead potted plant.  “So”, I started, “how’d your campaign go?”

A bit of animation flashed across her worn face as she lurched forward in her chair to grab a folder. “Here’s my big drop piece”, she said, talking about a piece of literature volunteers drop at peoples’ doors.  A plain white piece of paper, obviously printed on a cheap printer that needed a new toner cartridge, read ”

“Vote for Steinkampf-Bjornson, so our campaign manager doesn’t take an overdose and choose the sweet release of death over managing turd campaigns that have no chance in hell of winning in North Dakota, you f****ng rubes“.

“Seems a little…”, I started, waving the bottle away as Fee tried to refill my cup “…downbeat, maybe?”

“Hah!”, she blurted as she tried and failed to stifle a fume-rich belch.  “It worked, didn’t it?  I didn’t f*****g kill myself, did I?  Huh?  Anyway – nobody saw it, because we had no volunteers to hand ’em out…”

“It must be hard to be a Democrat in North Dakota”.

“Oh, God, Mitch”, she said, a tear welling up and she slouched on the side of the desk facing me, putting both hands on my arms in that too-familiar way drunks do.  “My next campaign slogan may be “Vote Dem-NPL.  I mean, F**k it, why not?”  I mean, I can at least keep people on message!”.

We went to the Wonder Bar, just off main street – an old railroad bar that hadn’t changed much in the past sixty years or so.  I had a beer.  She banged through five or six boilermakers.  I ended up dropping her off at her mom’s house, where she lives, because being a full-time campaign organizer for the D-NPL in North Dakota pays about as well as being a paper boy.

And as I drove away, I thought “it is totally fitting that she runs hopeless campaigns with an air of hopelessness.  Why should she act like she’s doing anything that will ever affect politics?

And I smiled.  It’s good to be king.  Of another place, anyway.

———-

Twin Cities “progressive” blogger “Phoenix Woman” – who probably isn’t from Phoenix, and I’ve got suspicions about the other bit – tweeted the other day, for not much reason:

@mitchpberg So Mitch, how was the @CopelandFor66 victory party? #ohwaithelostto #maryjomcguire http://goo.gl/M3i3B #p2 #MNGOP

Which struck me as a bit of a reach.  I mean, no kidding – the Senate District 66 Special Election was not a victory!  Far from it – Mary Jo McGuire held one of the safest DFL seats in the state by an 80-20% margin.  Which, if you think about it, isn’t exactlty “man bites dog”.  It’s not even “dog bites man”.  It’s a “dog licks dog” story.  The DFL elected another career apparatchik, and the GOP had a lousy result.  Not exactly shocking.

Now, I’ve written about this in the past – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the GOP in Saint Paul, as in Minneapolis, faces an uphill battle.  Not only is the DFL powerful – it really is their only power base in Minnesota – but decades of getting trounced in local, legislative and 4th CD Congressional elections means that Republicans really only turn out at all for Senate, Gubernatorial and Presidential elections; there, you can see as much as 30-odd percent of Saint Paul voting GOP; for local elections, where conservative-leaners are used to their vote not really counting for anything, the numbers are lower.  In Senate District 66, 8,000 people voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin, and over 7,000 for Tom Emmer; just under 1,000 turned out to vote for Copeland.

Now, I volunteered on Copeland’s campaign.  And as someone who did a lot of work for Copeland, I put the best spin I could on the campaign while it was in progress.

For whatever reason, “Phoenix” “Woman” – and the other liberal bloggers and tweeters whose autonomic bleating she’s recycling – apparently believes that, because it’s an uphill fight, ‘Saint Paul Republicans should have moped around like my friend Fee, up above.  That we, the urban conservatived, should gliumpf around like Cure fans and wallow in doom.  Even more…bizarre, “she” seems to think that the fact I projected optimism about the campaign I was working on somehow discredits me.

Well, sorry, logical leprechauns – but the campaign was a victory.

Oh, not in the sense that Greg Copeland is in the Senate – we didn’t come close to pulling that off.

But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step.  The Copeland for Senate campaign was just the first step in a long, long – as in, maybe ten years – effort to make the 4th CD competitive.   And it was a decent start, at least behind the scenes; we had more volunteers than we’ve had in the last five campaigns combined.  The campaign raised a lot of money – and more importantly, the campaign raised money!    We knocked on doors that hadn’t been knocked by a Republican since George HW Bush was President.

There’s a long way to go – doy – but hey, what choice is there?  Mope around like some kind of Oberstar supporter?

A very wise guy who works in politics (and writes occasionally on this blog) once told me one of the key psychological dynamics of working on quixotic, underdog campaigns.

“There comes a moment”, he said, “when you start to think maybe, just maybe, you can pull this off”.  And then reality hits, and you end up with 40, or 30, percent of the vote.

Or less.

I hit that moment, briefly, on Monday night.  We talked with a lot of people – like, every registered Republican in the district.  It seemed like, with the benefit of some low turnout, we could make it happen.

Can’t win ’em all.

Greg Copeland’s Senate candidacy cratered hard yesterday, getting 20% of the vote in the special election to replace Ellen Anderson.

Let’s focus on the good news for a moment.

The Saint Paul GOP – really, much of the Fourth CD, especially the part south of County Road C – has been essentially moribund for at least a decade.  Here in the city, most candidacies, especially for the legislature, but even for Congress – have been paper races; warm bodies on the ballot with no serious effort.  Even the ones that put in the effort – Obi Sium’s race for Congress in 2006 – had no money.  Even the ones that could raise some money had little or no help from the parties – volunteers, phone-calling, database maintenance.  They were on their own.

This campaign was different.  Over 100 volunteers turned out for the race – more than have worked on every other SD66 race combined in the past 10-15 years.  And they knocked on a hell of a lot of doors, and the campaign called every single known Republican in the district at least once.   And the fundraising, while not lavish, was very impressive by the standards we’ve seen.   There were precincts that saw Republican door-knockers (at least on a legislative) for the first time in years.  Maybe a decade.

The hope?  The fact that there is some help available with all the scutwork of the campaign means that, with a little follow-through, we can start recruiting more, better candidates for races all up and down the chain – school boards, city councils, the legislature, Congress, whatever.

And let’s be honest – for all the exultation of the DFLers on the blogs and Twitter, an old-school DFL apparatchik winning in SD66 isn’t man bites dog, or even dog bites man.  It’s dog licks dog.

The bad news?  Whew.  Saint Paul is pretty far gone.  How far gone?  A campaign whose focus was “Do the right thing for Saint Paul – work to keep the money coming from Moorhead and Minnetonka!” got 80% of the vote.

In 2008, around 8,000 people voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin in District 66 – about 30% of the vote. 10,000 voted for Norm Coleman.  In 2010, about 7,000 voted for Tom Emmer.  The Republican Party estimates that there are about 4,000 hard-core Republicans in the district.  Candidates for nationwide and statewide races can frequently pull those kinds of numbers.  The campaign figured, initially, that if they could get 75% of those Republicans out to vote, they’d have won.  And they were right…

…but races for local and legislative offices never quite get to that level.  Copeland got around 1,000 votes.

My theory?  Republicans in Saint Paul are, with a nod to The Boss, like dogs that have been beaten too much.  Most of us know that our votes, in a one-party city like Saint Paul, just haven’t mattered in local or legislative races in decades.  Maybe with statewide or national races – but not in the city.  Not at the capitol.

Before the campaign, I said it’d be a ten year job to rebuild the Fourth CD; to build a human infrastructure of volunteers (and, heaven forbid, paid staff) to do the back-office and street work; to build a fundraising network that can support credible races; most importantly, to build the impression that voting against the suffocating DFL machine has an actual effect.

I said ten years.  I’ll stick by that.

The Donald leads the field.  I blame women and independents.

Are his 15 minutes of this election cycle up yet? 

It may only be a poll of 385 Republicans nation-wide, but carrying the increasingly limited gravatis of CNN as the poll’s sponsor, few news outlets will miss the opportunity to write the following headline: “Trump GOP’s frontrunner.”

CNN/Opinion Research 2012 Republican Nomination Survey

• Donald Trump 19% [10%]
• Mike Huckabee 19% [19%] {21%} (21%) [14%] {24%} (17%)
• Sarah Palin 12% [12%] {19%} (14%) [18%] {15%} (18%)
• Newt Gingrich 11% [14%] {10%} (12%) [15%] {14%} (8%)
• Mitt Romney 11% [18%] {18%} (20%) [21%] {20%} (22%)
• Ron Paul 7% [8%] {7%} (7%) [10%] {8%} (8%)
• Michele Bachmann 5%
• Mitch Daniels 3% [3%] {3%}
• Tim Pawlenty 2% [3%] {3%} (3%) [3%] {2%} (5%)
• Rick Santorum 2% [3%] {1%} (2%) [2%] {3%} (5%)
• Haley Barbour 0% [1%] {3%} (3%) [3%] {1%} (1%)
• Someone else (vol.) 3% [4%] {5%} (7%) [6%] {5%} (8%)
• None/No one (vol.) 4% [3%] {4%} (4%) [0%] {5%} (2%)

Trump may be nothing more in the current field than a name ID with an awful comb-over, but the Trump Brand apparently has some political value – especially with Republican-leaning independents and women.  Trump is the first choice of both demographics in the poll, with 24% and 23% respectively. 

The poll may well represent the zenith of Trump’s 2012 candidacy.  On the same day that Trump may capture headlines with his likely dubious polling “lead”, the real estate mogul of New York City politically shot himself in the foot – twice.  First, by publicly claiming that he’d run as an independent if the GOP didn’t nominate him and secondly, by writing scathing notes to a Vanity Fair blogger over a profile.

Harry Truman once wrote an angry letter that caught the public’s eye.  Of course Truman, writing to Washington Post music critic Paul Hume, was defending his daughter against what he believed to be an unfair assault.  Truman’s critique was equal parts Oscar Wilde and Rocky Marciano in it’s prose.  And to channel Lloyd Bentsen: Mr. Trump, you’re no Harry Truman.

Donald’s “Trumpisms” have only continued in recent interviews.  In addition to his “birtherism” fetish, he’s “only interested in Libya if we take the oil,” “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take over the oil,” and “I would tell China that you’re either going to shape up, or I’m going to tax you at 25% for all the products you send into this country.”

Trump has said he’ll wait until June to make a decision – or perhaps until “The Apprentice” gets off the TV renewal bubble and signed for another season on NBC.

P.T. Barnum runs for president. 

He’s vowed that he’s taking a presidential bid seriously.   He’s sent aides on “exploratory trips” for his nascent campaign.  He’s pledged millions of dollars towards his candidacy.  And what’s more, he’s taken seriously – by the media, the punditry, and the polls. 

Of course, all of that was in 2000.

When it comes to the media’s political fascination with eccentric billionaire millionaire massive debt holder Donald Trump, few could argue that the Donald is the rightful heir to 19th century showman P.T. Barnum.  For Trump’s multiple aborted presidential candidacies, ranging from 1988, to 2000, and now, prove Barnum’s misattributed cultural epitaph that indeed a sucker is born every minute.

Like Charlie Brown convincing himself that this time Lucy will not pull away the football, much of the media has engaged Trump’s third would-be presidential bid with increasing seriousness.  And why not?  Trump polls surprisingly well against the expected Republican field, placing fourth with 11% just days ago in a Fox News national poll.  Even Trump seems to be taking his latest political dalliance seriously enough to risk his most important attribute – his brand – by claiming to seek the nomination of one of the two major parties rather than another circa 2000 independent bid.

What remains harder to fathom is Trump’s appeal in the first place.  For a man known for his super ego, getting to the id of Donald Trump is vexing for many in the punditry.  Some view Trump as a symptom of the weak Republican field.  George Will likewise dismissed Trump as part of the gaggle of “spotlight-chasing candidates of 2012.”  Charles Krauthammer looked pained to even have to discuss Trump’s candidacy.  Others view Trump as the closing argument in their case of the failure of the political class:

Trump is suddenly “winning” as a political figure because the political class has failed. The authority of our political institutions is weak and getting weaker; it’s not that Americans ‘lack trust’ in them, as blue ribbon pundits and sociologists often lament, so much as they lack respect for the people inside them.

There is a lot of crazy surrounding the Trump phenomenon — some excellent, some embarrassing. But the massive fact dominating it all is that never before has such a famous outsider jumped into national politics with such an aggressive critique of a sitting president and the direction of the country — and never before has the response been so immediate and positive.

Um, not quite.

The novelty of Trump 2012 isn’t that novel.  The celebrity politician is nothing new – nor is Trump’s anti-Obama bravado.  Trump’s “aggressive critique” has largely been an ad hoc foreign policy mixing neo-conservative bluster and paleo-conservative isolationism with a chaser of paranoia that Obama is the country’s first super secret Nigerian sleeper agent.  Perhaps the only true novelty of Trump’s “candidacy” is that he would link his image to “birtherism.”  Or maybe Trump is merely projecting and he’s the sleeper agent sent to undermine the GOP.  After all, he did call Nancy Pelosi “the best.”

Understanding how an arrogant, over-the-top self-promoter has risen in the polling ranks of the GOP field doesn’t require searching for some sort of meta answer.  After a number of political cycles in which the presidential race started incredible early, for once the field is not settled nor is any candidate dashing out of the gates.  Trump represents a known name whose actively in the news – for better or for worse.  Few other contenders or pretenders can claim the same. 

The Donald wouldn’t mind being president but would rather use his candidacy as a perpetual trump card whenever his media image needs a boost.  Once the more serious candidates get underway and the early measures of success – fundraising, debate performances, endorsements and volunteers – become the most important yard markers, attention towards Trump will shrink.  With fewer and fewer onlookers to his latest political act, in Barnum like fashion, Trump will fold his tent and move on to his next show.

Tuesday is special election time in Senate District 66.  If the name “Ellen Anderson” rings a bell as your Senator, and you would like to see some productive change to the way our state runs, you need to turn up at the polls on Tuesday.

If you live in the light-gray area on this map…

…or know of a conservative, or potential conservative, who does?  You need to get yourself, or those people, to the polls on Tuesday to vote for Greg Copeland.

(If you thought Anderson was just hunky dory – well, don’t worry.   It is your DFL leadership’s position that they “own Saint Paul”.  Their candidate, Mary Jo McGuire, has had the measurements for the office drapes handed down to her as a matter of party policy.  Showing up at the polls would not only be a waste of time – it’d be a confession that you lack faith in the DFL.  Just stay home).

Anyway – the special election is Tuesday.

Now, if you’re a conservative and/or Republican in Saint Paul, you’re used to feeling crushing discouragement as we put up good candidates – sometimes, as in the last CD4 US House race, great candidates – and lose to mindless hamsters like Betty McCollum by absurd margins.

It’s a fact.  I’ve been there.  And I’ve felt it.  The Fourth CD Republican Party has been in the wilderness for close to sixty years; there is not currently an elected GOP candidate anywhere in Ramsey County, and relatively few in the Fourth CD.

But we can change that next week.  There are Republicans out there.  More importantly, there are conservatives out there – some don’t know it yet, and some have given up on going to the polls after decades living under Saint Paul’s idiot machine.

And if we can reach them, we can shock the world.  Or the city, anyway.

So the Greg Copeland for Senate campaign needs volunteers for door-knocking and, especially, phone-banking.  The campaign has had unbelievable turnout so far – but we need more than unbelievable to win this race.  We need miraculous.

And as We The People found out last fall, we can do miracles.

And naturally, fighting the DFL machine costs money; if you can spare a few bucks, the campaign appreciates every nickel; if Greg wins, you’ll make it back in tax savings…

Disclosure: I’m a volunteer for the Copeland for Senate campaign in the SD66 Special Election.

I’ve been working with the Greg Copeland for Senate campaign, in the SD66 special election to replace Ellen Anderson.

This campaign is unlike any other Saint Paul GOP legislative campaign I’ve ever seen.  It’s raised money.  Lots of it.  And there are currently more volunteers than I have seen on every Saint Paul GOP legislative campaign combined for the past 15 years or so.

We need more, of course.  Mary Jo McGuire won the primary last Tuesday; she has the entire DFL machine behind her.  It’s David versus Goliath.

So we need more Davids.  An army of them, in fact.

If you’d be interested in volunteering for the Copeland campaign during these last one week and two critical weekends before the April 12 special election, here’s your information.

(And if you are more able to help in the money department, we can use that help right here).

I’ll be phonebanking, as well as my usual stuff.  I’ll hope to see you there!

Sheila Kihne has a request for the GOP and, I suspect, those of us who support it:

One note though to the GOP–Can we PLEASE, PLEASE get rid of this talking point “Government should live within its means.”  The government–via its power to tax– has unlimted means.

That’s true.  “Means” change.  If you get laid off, your “means” change.  If the economy tanks, government’s “means” change as well – or at least they should.

If I were a Dem, I’d throw that back so easily and argue for tax hikes.  They’re doing just that by the way.  I’m on the Organizing for America email list and Obama issued a message today about “government living within its means.”  STOP.  Educate people about the conservative worldview which takes things much farther down the path than year to year, biennium to biennium budget cycles.  When we explain how we think to people, we can change minds.  When we play the Dem game of coordinated talking points, then let’s at least ensure they’re a bit more bulletproof.

That’s the problem with the legislative process – it forces people to think one election cycle at a time.  It’s worse than normal in Minnesota, where our “deliberative chamber”, the Senate, is merely a smaller House that runs a little less often, and is tied to demographic districts just like the House (rather than the US Senate, in which small states get the same representation as the big ones).

The Republicans are chipping away as fast as they can with their little chisels against this monstrosity of a government.  Believe me- I’m frustrated that they’re not using sandblasters because time’s a ticking.  But small victories still matter in the larger battle of ideas.

And that’s the big conundrum of this next few weeks.  Some are getting impatient with the GOP, in St. Paul and in DC.  They want to see the Tea Party Mandate exercised NOW.  And there’s a point to that; John Boehner is almost certainly being too timid in his budget cutting; we’d likely win a budget shutdown this year.

But we took a long time to get into this mess; one budget bill isn’t going to get us out.

This post is for conservative Minnesota voters.  People in other states, and Minnesotans in the “Fantasy-based community”, can skip down a notch.

Question for all of you:  Representative King Banaian – not to mention the other three Republicans who voted “no” on the GOP budget bill in the House last week – is not talking to me at this exact moment, so I didn’t just ask him or anything – but do any of you actually believe that, had the votes not been there to pass the House GOP’s budget-slashing proposal without it, that Rep. Banaian wouldn’t have voted for it?

If so, why?

And before answering that, make sure you read HF2, which he introduced, a bill intended to bring genuine conservative fiscal common sense to government.  And make sure you understand it.

Then bag on King’s conservative cred.

But you gotta go through me first.

The Saint Paul City GOP is having its annual caucus tomorrow morning:

Saint Paul Republican City Committee

Saint Paul Republican Caucus Call

By Greg Copeland, Chairperson, St. Paul City Committee

Saturday, January 29, 2011

8:00 a.m. Registration, bagels and coffee

Registration fee: $5

9:00 a.m. Meeting

262 West University Ave.

Saint Paul, MN 55103

(former Saxon building)

Keynote Speakers: Tony Sutton, Chair and Michael Brodkorb, Deputy Chair, MNGOP

Work for real change in Saint Paul!

Help us elect a Republican City Council and School Board

that will keep spending in line, reduce regulation and create jobs.

Sponsors

American Majority

Minnesotans for Limited Government

Photo ID

Internet Tax Freedom Act

Capitol Republican Women

Citizens Council of Health Freedom

Check the city party out on Facebook.

The RNC bids adieu to its chairman. 

It was only two years ago in the wake of a confidence shattering election that establishment Republicans gambled on redesigning the party’s infrastructure on a foundation of Steele.   As Maryland’s former lieutenant governor and losing ’06 Senate candidate, Michael Steele had few direct qualifications for what was largely a managerial role, save a brief term as the Maryland GOP’s chair.  Instead, Steele (and the RNC members who supported his election in 2009) seemingly envisioned the chairmanship as the role of Promoter-in-Chief.  And after two gaffe-filled years of Steele tickling his tonseils with his heels while racking up Obamaesque debts, the RNC not only parted ways with Steele but likely also with the mindset that elected him.

The laymen’s criticism of Steele’s tenure would be to endorse what the Baltimore Sun wrote of him in 2002, that Steele “brings little to the team but the color of skin.”  And Steele most certainly was an affirmative action hire – but more for his policies than pigmentation. 

With the GOP routed by a supposedly moderate sounding African-American orator, the party was willing to promote a poorly Xeroxed copy of the same qualities.  The mere prospect of improved outreached to independents, young voters and minorities was enough for some to stomach Steele’s more centrist than center-right orthodoxy. 

So what if Steele was pro-choice, was against the war in Afghanistan, insulted the party’s conservative base, and played the race card against his own party when it suited him – he was going to give the Grand Old Party a “hip-hop” makeover.  Steele was so out of sync with the times, he was one giant clock around his neck away from becoming the Republican Flavor Flav.

All might have been forgiven had Steele simply done his job.  But while the zeitgeist of the conservative base was moving away trusting the party appartatus, Steele was trying to buy private jets as the RNC was enduring questions about expenses at bondage-themed nightclubs.  The result?  Fundraising lagged as the RGA became the defacto home of the Republican establishment despite the fact that Steele’s face was on TV more than the RGA’s Gov. Haley Barbour.

In such a light, there’s little wonder the RNC elected Reince Prius.  Reece Priebus.  Reese Pieces.  What’s-his-name or to the voting members, Not Michael Steele.  Priebus saw a tremendous political turnaround in Wisconsin, in part due to the party’s ability to win back the trust of Tea Party sympathizers without alienating independents. 

The task before Priebus is certainly much larger than what he faced in Wisconsin, but unlike Steele will hopefully succeed or fail outside the media limelight.