2008: “Look at the GOP’s “Circular Firing Squad!  They’re not a big tent!  That’s why they’re in the minority, and always will be!”

2010: “Look at the GOP’s Circular Firing Squad!  They’re not a big tent!  That’s why we’ll, er, get the majority back next time!”

2012: “Look at the GOP’s Circular Firing Squad!  They’re not a big tent!  That’s why this will be the DFL’s last losing cycle, because the recovery brought on by all that spending restraint just can’t last forever!”

2014: “Look at the GOP’s Circular Firing Squad!  You’ve gone and gotten an extremist conservative  elected governor!  Now you’re screwed!”

Question For Supplemental Discussion:  The party that lost both chambers of the legislature, and only leads the governor’s race by a cat’s whisker with the aid of a 2:1 spending disparity and an in-the-bag media that refused to discuss Mark Dayton’s record or pathologies, is yakking about the GOP’s internal politics after an election season where their endorsed gubernatorial candidate lost the primary, and where their party operations are reported to be in financial disararay.

A little bit of projection and displacement, maybe?

Merry Christmas, DFL.  Enjoy the holiday season.  Your 2011 is going to really suck.

I have to believe that many Republicans and possibly even some fiscally-conservative Democrats are quietly hoping to themselves that the gubernatorial recount might actually drag on so long as to allow current governor Tim Pawlenty to preside over a Republican Legislature…if for even fifteen minutes.

It’s not without risks…

A lawsuit from Tom Emmer offers one obvious benefit. It likely would keep GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty in office beyond his appointed term, giving the party more power when the state’s Legislature convenes next month under Republican control for the first time in decades. But some worry that it also risks damaging the party’s image if the lawsuit appears to be nothing more than a stalling maneuver to keep Dayton out.

Several influential Republicans are warning that unless new information emerges to question the integrity of the election, Emmer should concede soon to avoid hurting the party. It’s not an easy decision, especially in a polarized political environment where both sides had legal teams in place even before the election to prepare for a contested outcome.

…but imagine what could be accomplished.

And even if Emmer doesn’t prevail, that’s not really the point as long as you care about the integrity of the electoral process.

“This egregious disregard for election laws calls into question the integrity of one vote per person,” Emmer said, “and is, I believe, an assault on the very principles of the American voting system, diluting every legally cast vote. Again, that’s when you have more ballots, than supposedly you have people that voted in the election.”

So I will come right out and say it, I’m all for expediency in the electoral process but let’s take all due care, and maybe a smidgen of undue care to make sure that the final tally reflects each and every voter’s sentiment.

In the end, even Democrats know full well that in the likely event that Mark Dayton becomes the bona fide winner, the Republican legislature is going to bounce Dayton around like a volleyball, which is to say for lemonade-loving conservatives this is something of a win/win scenario.

Republicans now outnumber Democrats.

Of course, we have to win the war to define what “Republican” means, but that’s all doable.

Some of my liberal readers have been asking what I think about the Tom Hackbarth story.

My response; I can’t think much, since there’s really not much story. KSTP-TV’s piece reads, pretty much in its entirely:

State Rep. Tom Hackbarth was carrying a pistol when he told St. Paul Police he was jealous and looking for his girlfriend.

Officers took the gun from him calling his behavior “borderline terroristic.”

We’ll come back to what the police said and, more importantly, did.

The House GOP leadership reacted quickly and, under the circumstances, appropriately, suspending Hackbarth from his slated committee chairmanship for the next sessoin pending some sort of resolution.

Now, predictably, the regional leftymedia is in full dudgeon over this story.  As is their wont, they are filling in the blanks with a whoooole lot of innuendo, supposition, and flat-out fantasy.

As PJ O’Rourke once said, “I’m not a liberal, so I’m not an expert at stuff I know nothing about”.   I’m not going to pretend to have answers.  Indeed, all I have are questions.

Everything Is Stalking:  The accusations against Hackbarth aren’t all that clear; he was accused of “stalking-like” behavior by the always-articulate Saint Paul Police Department.  No charges have been filed.

That last bit is rather vital; no charges have been filed.

Remember – in the world of domestic law, including “abuse”, “domestic violence”, “stalking” and the like, men are considered guilty until proven innocent.  If the police had had anything beyond suspicion, they’d have come up with something.

Was Hackbarth doing something inappropriate?  It’s possible.  Very, very possible.  Hackbarth is separated, after 25 years of marriage.  Being “separated” is an emotional Cuisinart set on “mangle”;  a lot of hitherto-buried emotions run very close to the surface; people do things that they’d never normally do in real life (and I’m pleading the Fifth Amendment at this point).

So what did Hackbarth do?  We don’t know; not at all, other than “not enough for the SPPD to charge him with anything at all“, but apparently enough to draw their interest.  We’ll come back to that, too.

That complete lack of known facts hasn’t stopped the regional leftyblog brain trust from jumping to conclusions like a bunch of synchronized Shamu clones at a rhetorical Sea World.

Conservatives – Guilty Until Proven Anything At All:  The City Pages’ Hart Van Denburg gets the “who, what (sort of), when, where, why and how”, in his piece on the incident – and still manages to squeedge in some innuendo to fill in the factual blanks:

Republican state Rep. Tom Hackbarth went looking for a date the other day in a Highland Park alley, with his Smith and Wesson .38 strapped to his waist.

Innuendo; as Ven Denburg himself notes elsewhere in his story, Hackbarth has a carry permit.  Connecting his “stalking” and carrying a gun is convenient, and connecting the two certainly fits the institutional left’s narrative about conservatives, shooters and social interactions.  But it’s an innuendo unsupported by any actual facts – like, say, arrests or charges or any indication of intent that’d link the two factoids.

Which takes us to innuendo number 2:

The Most Important Right Of All:  Van Denburg continued:

He chose an odd place to park his pickup truck, too: The Planned Parenthood clinic lot, where security cameras caught him on tape.

Saint Paul’s pro-abortion community has come to regard all of Ford Parkway as its private property.  While the building itself doesn’t jump out at you, once you do know what you’re looking for, it’s hard to escape the fact that there is more going on in the neighborhood than just a baby-disposal mill.  There are apartments, stores, the Highland Park library, houses…people all over the place.  Ford Parkway is not all about Planned Parenthood.

But you’d never know that from the leftymedia’s reaction.  Was “near the Planned Parenthood Clinic” an “odd” place to park, as Ven Denburg called it?  Or was it a place to park his pickup, that happened to be near Planned Parenthood?

A justifiably skittish guard at the Ford Parkway clinic called the cops to report an unidentified man carrying a gun on the property. No surprise there.

More innuendo.  “Justifiably” skittish?  Planned Parenthood’s “justifiable” skittishness has led to a “justifiable” suspension of large chunks of the First Amendment within eye-and-earshot of the clinics in Saint Paul and elsewhere around the country.  And now, apparently, the Second Amendment as well; being seen with a firearm that is legal and permitted under Minnesota law “justifies” Planned Parenthood’s rent-a-cops calling in the heat?

What other civil liberties does Planned Parenthood get to selectively excise?

Worse, naturally, are the “Feminist” bloggers.  “Red Sonya” from the always-incontinent Shakespeare’s Sister tries Hackbarth and finds him guilty based on…well, you guessed it, more innuendo:

Who the hell decides that, after meeting someone for coffee, you are immediately entitled—nay, obligated—to make sure that she’s not with another man?! Oh, stalkery entitled douchebags with unchecked privilege and no sense of boundaries who believe that women are their property and have no respect for their autonomy, that’s who!

Perhaps.

Or people (male and female – it swings both ways pretty equally) whose senses of boundaries are temporarily (one hopes) warped by their current circumstances.

Or both.  We don’t know – because “Red’s” take is based entirely on filling in the factual blanks with a whole lot of PC filler.

While stalking is frightening enough, the loaded gun makes this even scarier. Hackbarth does have a permit for concealed carry, so his actions weren’t illegal.

Buuuuuuut…

But since he began his controlling behavior immediately after meeting this woman, I’m skeptical of his ability to shrug off this event—and, from his twisted perspective, her “lie”—without having a douchetantrum of massive proportions.

What a wonderful world, where people can issue the binding diagnosis of “douchetantrumitis” (let me check the DSM-IV for that one) while knowing zero facts whatsoever.

When guys like this escalate, altercations easily become fatal with the addition of a loaded gun to the mix.

And they much more easily don’t.

Look – it goes without saying that stalking – or even just being excessively clingy after less than a whole lot of dates – is a bad thing.  And it doesn’t excuse any bad behavior to add “don’t discount the weirdness that comes with the whole emtional bumper-car ride that goes along with divorce, because everyone reacts differently, and most everyone does something that they’ll wind up regretting one way or another, whether it’s getting married to the first person you sleep with or blowing all your money on strippers maybe just having a real hard time getting used to the differing expectations people have in the dating world after being off the market for most of three decades”.   Readjusting to single life can be a real bitch.

[Side note to conservative grownups in the audience; watch some idiot leftyblogger take that last sentence and run a post entitled “Berg Excuses Stalking”, ignoring that bit at the front where I said “It doesn’t excuse bad behavior…”.  It’s pretty much inevitable – Ed.]

The Victorian Vapours:  Oh, yeah – Hackbarth had a gun.  After his run-in with the SPPD, it was confiscated.  And then, after all was said and done, he got it back.

But the presence of a firearm – especially in the hands of a conservative, anti-abortion Republican who is engaged in liberal innuendo-fodder – acts on leftybloggers and lefty journalists like a green-and-yellow cape does on a Vikings fan.

The normally sensible David Brauer left a comment in a Facebook thread:

[O]f course, it seems like creepy potentially violent stalking, but then again, these gun dudes carry their pieces around everywhere. it’s like their wallet. and of course, he was in scary, scary Highland. It’s no Cedar, Mn!

Well, doy.  It doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have it with you when you need it.

And check out the leftyblogs (rhetorically, mind you – don’t actually read then) for the number of references to the fact that the revolver was “fully loaded”.   Huh?  You’d carry an empty gun?  To what – butt-whip a robber?  Or a half-loaded one?  For what – impromptu games of Russian Roulette?

Grrr. I’m sorry.  Dumb people bug me.

Oh, yeah – let me reiterate; he got the gun back when the episode was over.  Which may not be any sort of testimony to Hackbarth’s alleged actions or state of mind, but it is a pretty good sign that he did nothing remotely illegal – and that’d be in an area of law where telling a woman that those pants do make her butt look bigger is fifth-degree domestic assault, a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and a $10K fine.

(The above sentence is intended as satire.  The first idiot leftyblogger – and I’ll stipulate that that isn’t entirely a redundant phrase – that tries to run that into “Berg advocates stalking and makes light of domestic violence” will both incur my disinterested wrath and be lying, anyway.  Just don’t go there).

Berg’s Seventh Law?:  Remember – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.  The leftymedia is romping and playing with the Hackbarth story because somewhere out there there is a video of a DFL legislator standing outside an elementary school in full S&M garb, bellowing expletives at a first-grade teacher that spurned his advances, waving a katana.

No, I can’t prove it.

Any more than any of the innuendoids above can prove any of their stuff.

But it’s a law, after all.

UPDATE: Welcome, “Developers are Crabgrass” readers.

Which is sort of like saying “hey, look at all the leptons”.  Both of them are at present largely hypothetical, abstruse constructs.

Oh, yeah – read my piece above.  Zaetsch is lying, as usual.  The guy wouldn’t know “factual” if “factual” spiked his Metamucil.  Read my actual post – something Zaetsch, or whomever sent him the link, clearly didn’t do – and decide for yourself.

Better yet, leave a comment and engage in the discussion.  If you’re used to the level of conversation over at all the blogs that are part of the “Stillwater Asylum” – “Lloydletta”, “The Dump”, “Crabgrass” and wherever Bremer is ranting and whatever pseudonym Weiner us using these days – you’ll find things are a whooooole lot more rational here; you have to bring some intellectual game, in a way you’re not used to .  Give it a shot!

To: The New GOP Majority in the Legislature

From: Mitch Berg, once-bitten Conservative

Re: The 2011 Session Agenda

Dear GOP House and Senate Caucuses:

Congratulations on the big win two weeks ago.  

Now, we gotta talk.

You have a historic opportunity here; not only do you have the most power of any group of Republicans in recent Minnesota history, but you got there for all the right reasons – atop a swave of populist conservative discontent over the policies of Barack Obama and the Minnesota DFL.

Better still, even if we lose the recount, we’re up against a governor that’d be in a weak position even if he were Hubert H. Humprhey.  And Mark Dayton is no Hubert H. Humphrey.  I’ll be frankly amazed if we’re not reverring to “Governor Prettner-Solon” by 2014; in any case, you have the opportunity to drive this car.

So drive.

I’m just a schlemiel voter.  But since the holidays are coming up, I’d like to give you my legislative wish list.

Go Deep.  Tom Emmer ran on a zero-based budget promise.  It was a great idea; follow through on it.  Pass a budget – over the (rhetorically) dead bodies of the DFL left in the Legislature, if need be – that slashes the fat, initiates zero-based budgeting for the big entitlement programs, guts the pork, and holds the line on spending.  Freeze state worker employees’ salaries until the revenues start picking up (meaning all the rest of us are getting raises again).  

And then, let Dayton – or whomever – veto it. 

And pass it again, with just enough changes to make it fly.

And let him veto it again. 

And pass it again.

And let him veto it, and risk shutting down state government. 

Because the people who sent you to office aren’t the ones that are going to rebel over a government shut-down.

But the ones that sent Dayton to office – real or imagined?  They will.  So when that happens?  Dayton loses.

So do it.

Fix The Election System:  Adopt Voter ID; require some form of identification.  You know the drill – make identification safe, cheap and available – but require every voter to present an ID, and make sure that ID is enterered as part of their signing-in process.

And kill off vouching.  Now.

Wanna appear “bipartisan”?  Keep same-day voting.  With a valid, cross-referenceable ID.  Because if accessible same-day voting is what the DFL really wants, provided we can keep it accountable and fraud-proof, why not?

I don’t think that’s what they really value in same-day voting, but that’s just my opinion.  So far.

And if Dayton wants to get into a fight over the right to carry out invalid, fraudulent elections, so be it!  Let him veto that bill too! Let the DFL stand and fall, statewide, over the right to game the electoral system.

You have a huge opportunity here.  Let’s use it. 

That’s why we sent you there, after all.

UPDATE:  A highly-placed GOP source whom I will not name at the moment writes:

NO Photo ID until every name on the voter registration list is checked for citizenship. There are names on the list of people who are not citizens. They are supposed to be challenged: “Challenged: Citizenship” is stamped right next to their name. Make everyone who gets a voting photo ID card prove citizenship; make it a renewable card every 5 years; the renewal cannot be tied to a driver’s license renewal. The Dept. of Public Safety must clean up all citizenship issues: temporary (those who are supposed to have “status check” on their ids; permanent residents who are not citizens). MN Constitution requires citizenship to vote.

 Yes, eliminate vouching and eliminate same-day registration – zero compromise here…  

Yes, play hardball; show backbone; appeasement doesn’t work – the Dems will never appease – we hold the majority, use it.

Well, it was a rough draft. 

Like everything else on this blog.

John “Not Jon” Stewart, of the official Clan Stewart blog, Night Writer, finds an analogy I wish I’d beaten him to; re-staging Braveheart with Michele Bachmann as William Wallace, and John Boehner and the GOP establishment as Robert the Bruce and the Scots nobles:

In 1297 the central players in an uneasy alliance were William Wallace, the upstart rebel who shocked and demoralized the English with a dramatic victory in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, and Robert Bruce, the scion of a wealthy and politically powerful Scottish family. In 2010, Republican lion and presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner plays Robert the Bruce to Michelle Bachmann’s Wallace. Bachmann was out-front for the burgeoning Tea Party movement, driving her enemies to distraction and helping spark a historic Republican rout that changes the balance of power in much the same way that Stirling Bridge did. Her decision to now run for a leadership position in the Republican caucus has been greeted coolly by her nobles. I know there are those who will raise an eyebrow or a guffaw at equating Michelle Bachmann with a figure as historically significant as William Wallace but at the heart of the matter there are similarities.

Bachmann is derided by her enemies (both in and outside the Republican party) for being out-spoken, outrageous and deliberately provocative. That’s pretty much how Wallace was presented in Braveheart: coarse, blunt and sometimes appearing to be making it up as he went along. The way the Scottish nobles fought the English in those days is also not too different from the way the Republican leadership has historically contended with the Democrats: a show of force before the battle which merely sets the stage for a parley in the center of the field that ends in negotiation. When Wallace showed up — nearly unwanted — before one battle he was told to hang back and be quiet. When he rode forward to be part of the parley anyway someone asked him what he was doing and his response was “picking a fight.” The passion and taunts of Wallace and his men discomfited the “civilized” combatants who weren’t expecting to be mooned or to be told that their general could bend over and “kiss his own arse.” Similarly, Bachmann and her unwillingness to “play nice” is barely tolerated by the party elite, while the passion and populism of the Tea Party rallies and town halls has shaken the political professionals and pundits who hope it is an aberration and not a new fact of life.

Rrread the whooole thaing, Jimmeh.

Did you ever wonder why Big Gay spent so much time and effort trying to demonize Target for donating to pro-business (ergo pro-Republican) PACs? 

Well, it certainly wasn’t because, as they claimed, Target was “anti-gay”; even in religiously-“progressive” Minneapolis’s business community, Target has stood out for decades in its support for “progressive” ideals; it’s been one of those “good corporate citizens” that the left always barbers about wanting companies to be.

Partly, of course, was that it didn’t want Twin Cities companies to get the impression that they’re allowed to leave the DFL reservation.  Dictators know you have to keep the peasants in line lest they get uppity.

But at least partly it must be due to the fact that Democratic hold on gay voters juuust might be slipping away from the left:

Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals who self-identified to exit pollsters made up 3 percent of those casting ballots in House races on Tuesday, and 31 percent of them voted Republican. By itself, that number is amazing, especially when you consider that way too many people think being gay and voting Democratic are one in the same. But that percentage is ominous news for a White House viewed with suspicion by many gay men and lesbians, because that’s four percentage points higher than the change election of 2008.

Self-identified gays have been slowly sidling up to the GOP for a while now. In the 2008 presidential race, they made up four percent of the vote and gave 27 percent of their votes to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) against then-Sen. Barack Obama. In the 2006 midterm elections, when the House and Senate flipped to Democratic control, gays made up three percent of the electorate with the Republicans snagging 24 percent of their ballots. And in the 2004 presidential elections, President George W. Bush got 23 percent of the gay vote. They comprised four percent of those polled.

There’s no point in embroidering the fact that one wing of conservatism – the southern, social variety – isn’t especially pro-gay.  The other two wings are much more live-and-let-live about social issues – either through culture or libertarian bent.  

Either way – the idea that gays are finding increasing traction with the conservative message, even despite the inhopitability of one wing of the movement, has got to have Big Gay scared out of its mind:

Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of the gay conservative group GOProud, is heralding the uptick in votes from gay men, lesbians and bisexuals for Republicans.

“The gay left would have you believe that gay conservatives don’t exist. Now we see that almost a third of self-identified gay voters cast ballots for Republican candidates for Congress in this year’s midterm,” continued LaSalvia. “This should be a wake-up call for the out-of-touch so-called leadership of Gay, Inc. in Washington, D.C., which has become little more than a subsidiary of the Democrat Party.”

It’s an exit poll, of course, with a large margin of error.  But those polls have been creeping upward, margins and all, for most of a decade.

So now we control the Legislature in Minnesota, and the House in DC.

So what do we do about it?

Yesterday, I said the new GOP majorities need to “go on the attack”.

Let me be clear; I don’t mean that in the Chicago Democrat/DFL sense of the term.

The GOP was sent to DC and Saint Paul, both, on an epic wave of popular focus on principle – small-government, lower spending, more accountability.

• The GOP in Saint Paul needs to tell the DFL where they can stuff their $38 Billion wish list.  The Dayton “budget plan” needs to be scuppered; a plan similiar to Emmer’s – pared back to current spending plus any increases in revenue that comes from growth, not tax hikes – needs to be pushed.  Hard.  As in the first week.
• And when Dayton vetoes it, they’ll need to pass it again.  As nearly unchanged as possible.  And keep passing it.  Over and over and over.  What are they going to do?  Is Dayton going to cave in – fatally weakening himself with his base (and likely causing him to close down the governor’s office and flee to Vail)?  Or shut down the government, fatally weakening himself with his base and making the GOP go “waaah, waaah, waaah” in mock mourning?
• Vast swathes of state government need to be privatized.
• The budget process needs to be converted to a zero-based sysem – especially heath and human services.  Our current system takes the previous budget, adds the projected increase in need, and factors in inflation – basically a recipe for nothing but budget increases.

One thing the GOP must not do; try to become popular with Lori Sturdevant, Keri Miller and Nick Coleman.  Or compromise with the DFL without exacting two pounds of budget-cutting, spending-slashing, entitlement crushing flesh in return for every pound they give up.

You have the power now. Make it matter, or we’ll find some legislators who will.  We’ve done it once now; we can do it again.

It wasn’t the outcome I expected.

In some ways, it was better.

Top stories from last night:

No Tails: Lord Fauntelroy will spend his term – one, singular – holed up in the Governor’s office, facing a legislature that is not only GOP, but is focused way beyond Mark Dayton.   Holed up in the office, quivering in fear and supported only by the media, will be his cronies; Mark Ritchie, whose few remaining shreds of legitimacy got double-counted in Hennepin County last night, once they finally got the ballot-counting machines to work; Lori Swanson, who is going to have a day of reckoning with Darrell Issa shortly; and Rebecca Otto, a “there” where there is truly no “there”. And he’ll have to try to enact his vapid, untested agenda against a Legislature controlled by a MNGOP…

This Is Not Your Grampa’s Minnesota GOP: …that really doesn’t give a rat’s ass how the Independent Republicans “reached across the aisle” forty years ago.  The GOP caucus that stood on the stage with Tony Sutton last night was young, smart, and the product of two successive waves of rebirth in the MNGOP – the Ron Paul surge in ’08, and the Tea Party, neither of which “took control” of the party, per se, but both of which energized it, culled it of some deadwood, and gave it a focus that it has lacked at a party level for quite some time.

The West Is Red: Remember all that talk about the Third District being too blue for Erik Paulsen, and that the Third would punish the freshman Rep for being “too conservative”?

That’s all getting filed under “yesterday’s news” along with “Representative Oberstar”.  Paulsen won by – adjectives fail me – 21 freaking points.  I predicted 10 or 12, and “knew” I was being a point or two hyperbolic.

Twenty one points!  Twenty one freaking points! Twenty one howling flag waving red-white-and-blue-waving moon-landing carpet-bombing .44-magnum-shooting tax-slashing points!

Suck it, Lori Sturdevant.  The Third District is Red.

An Analyst Would Say You Have Twice As Much Glass As You Need For The Water: King Banaian won by 28 votes last night.  Some call it “a razor thin margin”.  I call it “impeccable economy of effort”.  Put him on the budget committe, stat.

Michele, Our Belle: Point this at your whackdoodle ultralefty friends: Michele Bachmann has power power power power power today.  Watch them jump with fright, and maybe wet their pants.

She’s in the majority.  Better yet, she is to the new GOP majority what Mike Singletary was to the ’86 Bears defense; the face, the soul, the wit and the teeth.  There it is, DFL; after four million your PAC dollars and Soros Bucks, you have helped make Michele Bachmann the Top Mama Grizzly.  And she’s coming for you!  BOO!

Take that, Michele Bachmann’s many whackdoodle lefty detractors.  The more deranged you get, the bigger she becomes.  The more clogged with hate you become, the more powerful she gets. The GOP has created the perfect conservative swing-state politician; someone who feeds and grows and becomes stronger on her opponents’ hatred!

Ritchie Stock – Strong Sell: Worst. Election. In. History.

So far.

Yes We Can: Organize from the grassroots better than the DFL?  Two words: Representative Cravaack.

Note to the MNGOP: Before Cap’n Cravaack departs for DC, braindump his system.  Find some former Chief Petty Officer to go through the First, Fourth, Fifth and Seventh districts to put it into place.  Be ready for 2012.

I’m at the Sheraton for the GOP’s victory party.  Early word – unconfirmed – is that turnout in Duluth and the Twin Cities is a little low. I haven’t gotten any but anecdotal confirmation that turnout in “red” Minnesota is high, but the anecdotal feedback is good.

We shall see.

Liveblogging will be a tad light, but I”ll do what I can here…

7:35: TV guys are firing up.  Early results are looking good so far.

7:47 – Bandwidth is tight; hard to update Twitter.

UPDATE 11/3:  And then our bandwidth situation went from bad to ridiculous, and a bunch of stuff happened, and we took control of the US House and flipped both chambers of the MN Legislature and Bachmann and Kline won by one point more than my optimistic predictions and Erik Paulsen shredded Jim Meffert by 21 and proved that the “conventional wisdom” about the Third District is bullpucks and then Chip Cravaack pulled ahead and stayed there and Tom Emmer ended up so freaking close it hurts, and then we went home.

The U of M College Republicans are going to be protesting the President’s pep rally for Lord Fauntelroy at the U of M today.

Via Luke Hellier at MDE, the details:

The College Republicans at the University of Minnesota, along with Students for a Conservative Voice, and other grassroots activists from the metro area will protest President Obama’s visit to the University of Minnesota October 23rd in support of Mark Dayton and the rest of the DFL ticket.

“While we recognize the historic nature of President Obama’s visit to campus as the fourth U.S. President to visit campus, we cannot sit idly by as he promotes an agenda of higher taxes and unrestrained spending that will drive jobs out of our state, and make it more difficult for college graduates to get jobs after graduation,” said Phil Troy, chair of the University of Minnesota College Republicans.

The protest is planned to take place across from the entrance to the University Field House from 12:00 PM until 1:30 PM. After the protest, Troy said participants will make GOTV calls at the 5th Congressional District Victory Office located above Chipotle at 800 Washington Ave SE, and attend a rally and cookout in Minnetonka with gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer and Representative Erik Paulsen.

“College students have a clear choice,” Troy went on to say, “The choice is between lower taxes that encourage job creation, and increasing debt and higher unemployment. College Republicans have been working fervently to elect candidates that will make sure college graduates have a job after graduation, and tomorrow will be no different. Tomorrow is about showing college students that there is an alternative to the lofty rhetoric and broken promises that we heard two years ago.”

It’s when I’m on the air today, so I can’t attend.  It’s a shame…

…but I urge people to call in during the show (651 289 4488 from 1-3PM), or email me photos from the protest at the yahoo email address “feedbackinthedark”.

I’ll post ’em.

When I saw last Friday that Randy Demmer was five points behind Walz in the First District (the southern tier of counties), I thought it was good news.  Walz’s last challenger lost by 30-odd points in the middle of the Obamascension.

And seeing that the poll surveyed 36% Dems and 32% Republicans in what is generally considered to be a slightly GOP-leaning district in normal times…

…and add in the fact that these are not normal times, with Walz’s buddies in the Obama Administration gutting Medicare, favoring Cap ‘n Tax policies that’ll shred agribusiness, and turning the district’s major industry, the Mayo, into a Minute Clinic in a strip mall along Highway 52…

…and I have to suspect that the poll is a tad pessmistic for Demmer.

Again, just a hunch.

Let the “you are teh stooped Fauxmusen suportar” comments begin.

Being a wanna-be wonk who writes a political blog and does a show at a talk radio station whose audience is frighteningly well-informed and follows politics pretty obsessively.

And while they didn’t obsess on the subject, I certainly grew up in household where politics was an occasional subject of discussion.  I have been more or less aware of politics and how they work for a long, long time (albeit I didn’t become aware enough to be a conservative until I was 20 or so).

So it’s always a mild culture shock to realize not everyone is the same.  In an intellectual sense, I know this, because probably 90% of the people who actually bother to vote at all make up their minds about their decision in the weeks, if not hours, before they go to the polls.

Still, it astounds me how out-of-touch some people are.

No, not the people who don’t follow politics.  I’m talking about those of us who do.

I was talking with a business associate the other day.   He’s a small businessman – one of the people at whom the Dayton tax hikers are directly aimed.   He’s successful at what he does. He makes over $150K a him and his spouse  for a couple of thousand dollars a year.

And he asked me what I thought about the campaign.  And who the GOP candidate was.

Now, some wonks would roll their eyes – but I know business people  who work 70-80 hours a week, and raise families, and try to save a little some mental headspace for themselves; politics doesn’t make the final cut on their schedules, any more than following the NBA or the PGA does on mine.

And so I told him all about Tom Emmer – especially what’s in it for small business people if Emmer wins.

Now, there was little danger the guy was going to vote for Dayton.  He remembers Dayton’s disastrous run in the Senate.  And he’s gonna vote for Emmer in two weeks, and I suspect his wife will too.

But I walked out of there thinking that it’s a travesty that there is so much as a single small businessperson in this state that has been left in any doubt which candidate is going to help them, and which one is going to screw them blue.

The MNGOP and the Emmer Campaign have some work to do.

I’m live at the Ramada in Bloomington to cover Tom Emmer’s appearance with Mitt Romney. I’ll be doing a joint live-blog with Luke Hellier at Minnesota Democrats Exposed;click on the player below to watch and participate.

In and among the Pioneer Press’ drearily-predictable chain of DFL endorsements (which seem largely to be based on the idea of bringing more state pork to their respective districts) came this news yesterday; they endore Doug Wardlow over DFL incumbent Mike Obermuller in House District 38B.

Doug Wardlow said he wants Minnesota to be a “bulwark against encroachment by the federal government” and to assert its rights as a “sovereign government.” He said Minnesota should join the suit seeking to challenge the new federal health reform law and said he would seek to balance the state’s budget without a statewide tax increase. “We need to figure out how to do more with less,” he said.

Obermueller said legislators cannot go to St. Paul with their “mind made up” on critical issues. He said he tries to listen carefully and be a “bridge” between the two parties. He argues for a “balanced approach” the budget deficit and cautions against anti-government rhetoric.

Two capable and articulate candidates make this a tough call. We give a slight advantage to the challenger, Doug Wardlow, whose impressive resume includes work on international trade issues in Washington. We endorse Doug Wardlow for House District 38B; his conservative voice will be a welcome addition to the diversity of opinion at the Capitol.

We’ve interviewed Doug on the NARN, and I’ve appeared with him at fundraisers for Diane Anderson (who is in her second run for 38A against Sandra Masin, in a race where the PiPress declined to endorse – which has to be a cold, decaying slap in the face for Masin in and of itself).  While this blog does not “endorse”, I concur completely; let’s get Doug into the House!

In this past week, Minnesota has been presented with four different polls on the Minnesota governor’s race; the risible Minnesota poll, the oddly-disconnected Humphrey Institute Poll, the Rasmussen Poll (which may or may not have overpolled Republicans, as opposed to the MN and HHH polls, which certainly overpolled Democrats) and, late last week, the SurveyUSA (SUSA) poll.  These polls showed a smorgasbord of results.  You can pick the one you prefer, really – as, indeed, most Minnesota political junkies have done.

I prefer Rasmussen.  Not because it showed Emmer in the lead – that fact made me happy, but then so would a “Berg Institute” poll that showed Emmer leading 100-0; the BI poll has no real track record, so I’d put no real stock in it – but because Rasmussen has been the closest pollster on the past couple of elections.

Still, the SUSA poll sort of splits the difference between the two.  It shows Dayton with a lead just outside the margin of error.

But it shows two other things that should be hugely encouraging to the Emmer campaign.

Peoples’ Hearts In Right Place – With Their Wallets: While the poll shows Emmer slightly behind, it asks the question “how should we resolve Minnesota’s budget deficit?”

And here are the answers:

Minnesota likely voters – however measured -prefer raising taxes over “not sure” by less than the margin of error.  38% favor some combination of spending cuts and tax hikes.  And 53% favor cuts in spending.

Given that there is only one candidate who favors getting government spending under control, the target of Emmer’s next two weeks should be fairly clear; reaching the 53% of Minnesotans who support Emmer, but just don’t know it yet.

Is The Big Break Here?:  The week before last, I reported on the landslide taking shape in District 32A, Kurt Zellers’ district in Maple Grove.  The DFL’s been targeting that district all year, but it’s just not working – Zellers is clobbering Katie Rodriguez by 24 points, even though Margaret Anderson-Kelliher proclaimed the district to be prime upset territory bare weeks earlier.

But the real development in that story, as I noted, was that independents – people who are non-GOP-affiliated in that GOP-leaning district – are breaking toward Emmer by a 4-1 margin.

And in this SUSA poll, we see for the first time in this cycle that Independents are trending toward Emmer, 37-35 (with 19 for Horner).  Independents tend to make up their mind at the last possible moment; this next two weeks is Go time.

It’s inside the margin of error, to be sure – but it’s trended up in since the last SUSA poll, while Dayton’s support has trended down.

So how does Emmer win this thing?

Show them that he’s got an actual plan: As this campaign has progressed, it’s become painfully clear that Dayton’s budget “plan” is nothing but wishful thinking; its entire focus is on taxes (barring a few ludicrous putative spending cuts that flunk every stink test from here to MPR), as opposed to the spending cuts a majority of Minnesotans favor.  Emmer’s plan is real, it’s rational, the numbers check out (unlike either Horner’s or Dayton’s).  Emmer must hammer this.  53% of Minnesotans, say SUSA, are ready and waiting.

Point out that Dayton and Horner’s “plans” are vaporware. There is no there there.  The plans don’t pass any fact-checks.  And Dayton’s is utterly dead on arrival with the legislature.  (“But so is Emmer’s”, the leftybloggers bleat, ignoring the fact that Emmer’s plan can virtually pass on pure inertia, as opposed to Dayton’s, which will require a legislative miracle – and to paraphrase Monsieur Ferrari, the Tea Party has outlawed legislative miracles that involve hiking taxes or spending).  In a legislative cycle where voters want things to get done, Dayton and Horner’s plans are both complete wastes of time, doomed from inception.

He Rides The Tide: It’s not just a, er, shot in the dark on my part.  Rasmussen notes a bit of recent history:

“And by two-to-one, voters say they prefer a congressman who will reduce overall spending to one who promises to bring a ‘fair share’ of government spending to their congressional district,” the veteran pollster said, adding that a plurality of Texas voters backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent decision to turn down federal dollars a program because federal strings were attached to it.

The Republicans’ strong position three weeks before midterm elections began, Rasmussen recalled, “when every Republican [in the House] said they would oppose the stimulus package…And support for it never recovered.”

“And by two-to-one, voters say they prefer a congressman who will reduce overall spending to one who promises to bring a ‘fair share’ of government spending to their congressional district,” the veteran pollster said, adding that a plurality of Texas voters backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent decision to turn down federal dollars a program because federal strings were attached to it.

So that’s how Emmer wins this thing; show that 53% of Minnesotans that he’s got the answer.

We can all, help, of course. Pass the word.  I don’t remotely believe that the major polls’ likely voter models accurately predict likely voter turnout – but there’s no reason not to make sure everyone gets the facts.

Emmer’s going to win this thing.  Suck it up and let’s make this happen.

One of the state legislative races the DFL’s been hitting hardest this cycle has been 32B, in Hennepin County. It’s Kurt Zellers’ seat.  Zellers is the House Minority Leader – one of the MNGOP’s pack of young conservatives, Brod and Emmer and Seifert and the others that have made such an impact at the State House this past couple of sessions.

So getting Zellers’ head on a plaque would be a huge spiff for the DFL in what is likely to be a trying year.  They’ve been pouring money and time into Katie Rodriguez‘ campaign.  More than that, they’ve been pouring prestige into it; last week at a fundraiser in the district, Margaret Anderson-Kelliher proclaimed Rodriguez had the district tagged, bagged and on the slab.

If true, this would be huge, akin to the GOP knocking off Dean Johnson a few years back.

If true.

But according to a poll last week from the Tarrance Group of 250 likely voters in 32B, it’s just not true (emphases added):

The survey, conducted October 3-4, found Zellers leading his DFL-endorsed opponent by 24 points, 57-33, replicating a lead he displayed in a poll conducted in August. Zellers also shows a sizable advantage over his opponent among independent voters, leading by more than four-to-one.

Kelliher’s got some ‘splaining to do.

This little portion of the Third District seems to be getting redder and redder as we go along.

But wait – there’s more.  Tune in right after noon.

Remember the mid-summer of 2009?  When people first started talking seriously about the gubernatorial campaign?  When Republicans just started talking about the race, and when Mark Dayton started pawning his Renoirs?

You remember the phalanx of moderate candidates who came out to the various party get-togethers, like the SD54 picnic in August of 2009, and who tried to give their stump speeches, calling for the return of the policies of Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger, poo-poohing the Reagan legacy and demanding we balance the budget through “responsible” tax hikes?

And the way that they  were rudely booed from the stage by the small conservative minority?  And their supporters, 3/4 of the audience, who stalked away after their candidates were snubbed, leaving the events looking like the after-party at a Vanilla Ice gig?

And the way those same moderates took their campaigns to the State Convention, and fought it out to eight ballots to get on the ticket, flaunting their platform of “Responsible Revenues” and “Getting On Board With Hope And Change”, only getting beaten after a tiny minority of conservatives jiggered the rules to exclude them from the votes?

Of course you don’t.

Because there was no such movement.

And yet to hear the media discussing it, there’s a huge mass of “moderate Republicans” floating around out there, feeling all “disenfranchised” by Tom Emmer, caterwauling about how far the party has fallen, pining for the glory days of Al Quie and Arne Carlson.

But if there were any such movement actually within the party, you might think the would show some sign of, I dunno, existing in the party.  By fielding candidates and making their presence known.

And yet look at the field of serious, and even not-so-serious, candidates that started out the campaign back in the late summer of 2009.  I met them all at the aforementioned SD54 Picnic; all nine of them spoke!  There were…:

1. Tim Utz – who is from the libertarian side of “conservative”.  Not a “moderate” at all.
2. Phil Herwig – who makes Tom Emmer look like Christopher Dodd.
3. Paul Kolls, a thoroughgoing conservative
4. Dave Hann, a solid conservative
5. Pat Anderson, who may have been the closest thing to “moderate” in the field, and I mean that only in the most hair-splitting sense of the term
6. Leslie Davis, who may be a lot of things, but isn’t “moderate”. Or Republican.  Or the leader of a movement.
7. Dave Haas, a former legislator from Bemidji with a strongly-conservative pro-business platform
8. Marty Seifert, who has been a conservative throughout his career, and reiterated that pretty sharply during the campaign
9. Emmer.

That was it!  Among the nine of them, Emmer, Seifert and Anderson may have been the closest to the “Center!”

There was no “moderate conservative” movement in the MNGOP, begging to be heard.

None.

“Well, that’s because the conservative drove them out and marginalized the party!”

Er, did you take a look at caucuses this year?  Or looked at the enthusiasm numbers?  The GOP is blowing the records off the stops.  Congressional races that never raise over $30,000 – the 7th and 8th Districts – are raising ten to fifteen times the usual amounts, with no end in sight.  Even in the DFL gulag, the 4th and 5th, there are active State House camapaigns in districts that have had “warm bodies” (inactive place-holder campaigns) or nobody at all on the ballot for a generation.

So if there was a big mass of “Moderate Republicans” out there that are sitting out this election because Tom Emmer is too conservative, they’ve been concealing themselves for a long, long time.

Oh, there are “moderate Republicans” who are disenfranchised and angry about it, all right.  Arne Carlson.  Dave Durenberger.  Tom Horner.  People who committed themselves to the pre-1980 version of the GOP (that held sway in Minnesota Republican circles well into the nineties), the “moderate”, pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-tax-and-spending “GOP” that gave us the biggest tax and spending hikes in Minnesota history.   People who got left behind when the party moved to the right, and are endlessly bitter about it.  People who are taking out their anger by stabbing the new GOP – the one that had done with them – in the back, condemning their candidates, assaulting conservatism, voting for Barack Obama, making a public spectacle of breaking with the current GOP.

They are a non-factor in the GOP.  If they were not, they would make some kind of showing someplace other than as part of the anti-conservative chanting points of the in-the-bag-for-the-DFL mainstream media.

They don’t.

Christie visits Iowa:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie rallied conservative activists in Iowa late Monday, saying his success in a Democratic state shows his tough-talking, smaller government message resonates with all voters.

Fanning speculation that he’s considering a 2012 presidential bid, the Republican spoke to about 700 people at a fundraiser for former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who is challenging the Democratic incumbent for his old job back.

Christie said Republicans must deliver on their conservative promises if they gain power during the November elections. If they don’t follow through, he said voters will send the GOP “to the wilderness, and they are going to send us there for a long, long time.”

I’d like to see him make Jersey a huge success first – but so far, we could do worse…

If Joel Demos doesn’t win the MN CD5 race – and let’s face it, he’s a dark horse – at least someone should hire him away from his day job to do political ads.

(Or whomever is doing the ads for Demos – and as tightly-budgeted as Demos’ bid is, I can’t imagine he’s got a lot of staff on the case…)

So according to the media, when then-Saint Paul mayor Randy Kelly – a moderate DFLer – endorsed George W. Bush for President in 2004, DFLers were right – says the media and the DFL – to repudiate him and chase him from public life…

…but today, when Arne Carlson – who endorsed Barack Obama and pointedly remained on the sidelines on Tim Pawlenty – speaks, we Republicans are supposed to bend a knee in reverence?

Especially since he represents exactly the sort of spend til you drop government that we conservatives are fighting against today?  The kind that Barack Obama and Mark Dayton support?

I haven’t figured that one out yet.

(The question came from regular commenter DiscoStoo, although not in exactly this form).

Vanity starts with an ‘M’ in Alaska’s senate contest.

Like a horror movie villain, the candidacy of Sen. Lisa Murkowski keeps returning from the dead.  Despite losing on election night, losing the absentee ballot fracus, and even conceding the GOP primary, Murkowski’s political ego has shown staying power the envy of Jason Voorhees.  Even the failure of Murkowski’s latest attempt to woo Alaska’s Libertarian Party apparently hasn’t dampered her efforts to return to D.C. short of buying her own ticket.  Instead, Murkowski’s newest bid is to prove the pen is mighter than the ballot with a longshot write-in candidacy:

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is expected to mount an independent campaign for senator after losing her primary, much to the dismay of her Republican colleagues, who won’t back her, according to a senior GOP leadership aide. 

“The entire Republican leadership has endorsed and would continue to support Joe Miller,” a the aide told Fox News on Wednesday…

A National Republican Senatorial Committee official made it clear that more money would be on the way to Miller, and suggested that Murkowski might be going through “the seven stages of grief.” 

“You know, first they concede … then there are the rumors of a write-in candidacy … then you get the acknowledgment that they’re done,” the official said.

If Murkowski does go through with a write-in effort, than she truly is “done”; which may suggest that she’s not Freddy Krueger, she’s Bruce Willis in the “Sixth Sense.”

Murkowski doesn’t appear to be gaining any options as the window for her to make a decision narrows.  The Libertarian option isn’t offically closed as long as endorsee Brian Haase continues to entain the notion of removing himself from the ballot.  But the LP’s executive committee has already voted against nominating Murkowski short of Haase presenting them with a fait accompli with his withdrawal.  And given some of the statements by the LP’s committee, even that scenario might not produce a Libertarian-endorsed Lisa Murkowski.

Only Strom Thurmond has ever won a general election write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate.  Thurmond’s 1954 candidacy was far stranger than Alaska’s current senate tift.  The death of the Democratic incumbent, the Democrat Party’s decision to not hold a primary election, and former Governor Thurmond’s backing by the major players in the party were the only reasons why the endless South Carolina Senator prevailed.  Considering only one candidate was on the ballot – St. Sen. Edgar A. Brown for you political junkies out there – Thurmond’s candidacy was unique in the extreme.  Nothing approaching it awaits Murkowski on the frozen electoral tundra.

No pollster has yet demonstrated the effect of a Murkowski write-in campaign in Joe Miller and Scott McAdams minor league showdown.  While others polls show Murkowski with a narrow lead over Joe Miller (and Scott McAdams trailing badly), all were done with the assumption that Murkowski would actually be on the ballot.  A Murkowski coalition of moderate Republicans, independents and assorted anti-Palin voters could have propelled her to victory in a three-way race.

But a strategy that relies on such deep candidate committment to write-in her name – regardless of the hundreds of thousands of dollars Murkowski still has available to encourage voters to do so – is bound to attract only the hardest of hardcore Murkowski supporters.  It’s also one of the few strategies that could provide a victory to Democrat Scott McAdams.  While Murkowski’s holdouts certainly won’t be the 50% of the Republican electorate that voted for her on primary day, any votes for her will almost certainly be coming out of Miller’s side.  Couple that with even one poll showing Murkowski pulling low double-digit write-in support and the DNC might change it’s mind about bypassing the 49th State.

Murkowski could still be a viable force in Alaska politics – possibly even challenging first-term Senator Mark Begich in another four years.  But the longer Murkowski openly flirts with continuing a candidacy out of a cocktail of ego and spite, the less likely she’ll successfully seek office again.  Much like Charlie Crist, Murkowski’s unwillingness to suffer a present political setback has endangered (or in Crist’s case, likely ruined) her political past and future.

Let’s make no mistake about this; I’m predicting Tom Emmer is going to win this fall’s gubernatorial race.  It’s going to be tight – 3-4 points, very likely less – but he’s going to win.   On the chance – heaven forefend – that he doesn’t?  In the wake of Jesse Ventura and Al Franken, Minnesota will have proven itself a fundamentally un-serious people for all time to come.

But I have more faith in the people of this state than that.

Still, there’ve been some of my fellow Republicans – that is to say, Republicans, as opposed to conservatives – cracking under the pressure of the campaign.  I’ve talked with a few otherwise-stalwart GOPers who aren’t sure that Emmer can pull this off.

I am sure he can and will.  But let’s break it down.

Here’s how Emmer wins this election:

Endure: Dayton’s family and cronies have subjected Emmer to the most expensive, slimy smear campaign in the history of Minnesota politics.  And yet, according to the latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll, Emmer is tied, inside a fairly generous margin of error, and plenty of undecideds in a year with a huge tailwind for the right conservative candidates.  He’s stood up to it well, taking a consistent high road – knowing, I suspect, that behind all the slime, Dayton’s really got nothing.

It’s gotta be hard, sitting and acting like a punching bag for a bunch of dirtballs like “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.  But eventually even bags of slime empty out.  And while the people of Minnesota have long shown a capacity for electing the shamefully bizarre – Ventura, Franken, even Perpich – these mood of the voter is not as dissipate as it was in 1998, and there’s no way Franken would have won without the Democrat tide in 2008.  All that remains, then, is to fill in the vacuum.

With what?

Be Tom Emmer: I’ve been saying it for three months now; when people meet Mark Dayton, they walk away feeling…weird.  On the other hand, when people meet Tom Emmer, even opponents get won over by the guy; if not by his policies, then by his energy and personality and regular-schnook bonhomie.

More importantly – much much more importantly?  When I first encountered Emmer the Candidate about a year ago, in a couple of radio interviews I did with him as both a host and a panelist, I noticed he has a gift that is exceedingly rare among partisans on the right or left; the ability to address a room full of people who don’t start out agreeing with him, and getting them to at least consider what he was to say.  It’s the same gift Ronald Reagan had; the ability to move people from “the center” over to him.

And it shows; in the gubernatorial debates I’ve seen, Emmer has mopped the floor with Dayton and Horner; Dayton comes across as a mumbling, skittery, dissipated professor; Horner, a PR flak who forgot his talking point sheet and is going from a very short list of lines he remembers.

Which is why I suspect you won’t see all that much media coverage of this year’s debates; Emmer, in person, is a dynamo.  The more people know and see that, the better he does.

The Plan:  The left has dusted off an old chanting point.  Last June, they were demanding to see the specifics of Emmer’s plan.   They’ve been doing their best to frame a plan whose details they know very little as yet about.  The chanting points, on the blogs, Twitter and the Strib, are growing increasingly desperate; “Where is it?  Since we haven’t seen it, it must not exist!  It’s probably just tax cuts!  That did SO well so far, didn’ t  it?”

The pace of the framing is picking up because the DFL knows it’s out there.  And, with the likes of Annette Meeks and the rest of Emmer’s policy crew working on it, it’s gonna be a doozy.

What’s in it?  I dunno.  I’m not on the campaign.  Never have been.  Oh, I can speculate – indeed, next week, I will.  In great depth.

But everyone from Emmer and Meeks on down to lil’ ol’ me knows this is the game-maker – and the game-breaker, potentially.  In a year that is more friendly to government reform than any in history, The Plan will be Emmer’s opportunity to throw Dayton and his pathetic “tax the rich” ( who make over $130,000 a year) plan on defensive for good.  A chance to show that there’ll be a grownup at the helm.

It’s a huge chance.

Like all huge chances, it could break good, or break bad.  My bet is on “good”.  Overwhelmingly so.

And that’s what the DFL is betting on, too.  It’s why a candidate like Dayton – rich, with 100% name recognition and “experience” – needs to throw such an incredibly slimy campaign, and call in so many markers from the media to insulate him.

As I noted in my original piece on the subject, Emmer is right to wait on releasing The Plan.  He’s going to be outspent three or more to one, to be sure – but the race, and most of the talk about it, so far has been among the wonks and the political junkies.  And all of them made up their minds about the time I did.

But The Plan should impact right about the time the people who really matter – the undecided voters – start to realize there’s an actual campaign going on and that they should pay it some attention.  And that window starts to creak open in about the next couple of weeks.

Take Back “Miracle”:  This is the big one, as far as I’m concerned.

It was forty years ago that the DFL stole the term “Miracle”.  The “Minnesota Miracle” was huge expansion of the Minnesota economy; it was accompanied by the institution of a huge government wealth-redistribution plan designed to subsidize poorer parts of the state with money from the then-wealthy Twin Cities.   It’s been presented over the past forty years as if the redistribution program caused the blooming of Minnesota as a business, educational and population center, as if Minnesota – a place blessed with immense resources and 150 years as the transportation, commercial, social and demographic hub of the entire north-central United States – would have remained a desultory backwater forever without “Local Government Aid”.

The fossils of the “Miracle” have been perverted over the years into a money-laundering scheme to help the DFL-dominated governments in the Twin Cities and Duluth hide their spending.

This is the “Miracle” at 40.

Emmer realizes, rightly, that there needs to be a new “Miracle” in Minnesota – one that puts government back in its proper role, and otherwise stays out of the way of Minnesotans’ natural industry and energy.

That’s the right message in this day and age.

No matter how much mindless flak the other side puts up.

Alaska’s cold war heads to a boiling finish.

The 2.4 miles that separate the island of Big Diomede and Little Diomede use to be among the most tension-filled in not only Alaska but the world. With Big Diomede part of Russian territory and Little Diomede part of the United States, the small space between Bering Strait islands was called the “Ice Curtain” and one of the frigid locations of the Cold War.

In the wake of Tuesday’s Senate primary, the Diomede Islands may need a new nickname.

The Murkowski/Palin spat, always tense since Palin’s upset victory over then-Governor Frank Murkowski in the 2006 Republican primary, didn’t seem like it could develop into any more of a blood feud short of Lisa Murkowski planting a Fredoesque kiss on the former VP nominee. But despite holding a nearly $1.6 million cash on hand advantage and a seemingly insurmountable polling lead, Sen. Lisa Murkowski has seen herself driven from the Republican nomination, possibly Washington, and probably the GOP. In the process, what was suppose to be a campaign as desolate in terms of interest as Alaska’s frozen tundra has turned into the punditry’s race du jour.

The Palin proxy for this would-be Alaskan dynastic rematch, Joe Miller, has already won the battle of expectations. The closet any poll got to Tuesday’s actual result was an Anchorage Daily News poll that still put the Tea Party favorite 11 points behind. And Miller could still lose as thousands of absentee ballots are left to be counted, to say nothing of a likely recount – which the NRSC appears already to be planning for as it sends lawyers north for Murkowski.

Despite such advantages of incumbency, the math remains firmly in Miller’s favor:

5801 absentee ballots were mailed out to Alaskans requesting the Republican absentee ballot….

In order to win the Republican Senate primary a candidate must have at least 49,094 votes (50% plus 1).

Joe Miller currently has 47,027 votes. He needs 2067 out of the available 5801 (36%) possible absentee votes to win.

Lisa Murkowski currently has 45359 votes. She needs 3735 out of the available 5801 (64%) possible absentee votes to win.

The math could look much better – if Murkowski ran as a third-party candidate. Even as the NRSC attempts to salvage Murkowski’s primary campaign, Murkowski is at least privately flirting with continuing her re-election effort under another party’s banner. This isn’t exactly a Joe Lieberman scenario. While Lieberman availed himself of Connecticut’s odd ballot access laws to file as an independent merely days after losing the Democrat primary, Murkowski would have to convince another party’s nominee to step aside and be nominated in their place.

The precedent has already been set in Alaskan political history. Former Republican Governor Wally Hickel lost the 1990 primary only to win the general election as the Alaskan Independence Party’s candidate. Unfortunately for Murkowski, the precedent isn’t quite precise for her. Hickel, a Governor in the 1960s and Secretary of the Interior under Nixon, was most certainly the more conservative candidate in his 1990 primary defeat. In contrast, Murkowski’s abortion record and last minute commentary in opposition to repealing Obamacare (see below) put her firmly in the moderate camp and squarely at odds with Alaskan conservatives.

If Murkowski does make a third-party bid, the welcome mat has already been extended by the state’s Libertarian Party. While ideologically speaking Murkowski and the Libertarians have about as much in common as Herve Villechaize and Manute Bol, a marriage of political convenience would spare Murkowski the baggage of the secessionist AIP (although it didn’t stop Hickel) and give the Libertarians something as unbelievable as a virgin in a whorehouse – a victory.

Lacking money, name ID with average Alaskan voters, and probably a general election campaign infrastructure, Joe Miller would need an even greater infusion of aid from the Tea Party Express than the $500,000 they spent. With Democrat Scott McAdams reporting only $4,000 cash on hand at the beginning of the month, Murkowski could easily pull Democratic voters into her camp – especially as both sides share the goal of rebuking Sarah Palin. No, Murkowski isn’t likely to pull an Arlen Specter and join the Democrat’s caucus (her 70% lifetime ACU rating is one reason), but she could turn a general election into a two-way race for all intents and purposes.

There’s little doubt that the Senate could benefit from more average Joe Millers than another Murkowski. Unfortunately, Murkowski it seems want to return to Washington no matter how many bridges she burns in the process. One can only hope that if Murkowski does cross party lines, it’s a bridge to nowhere.