To: The MN DFL
From: Mitch Berg, Deplorable Peasant
Re: Positioning w/r/t “The Law”

DFL,

The other day, your social media intern reiterated a chanting point the entire left was prattling lasdt week:

“Nobody’s above the law” – with the apparent exception of the following:

• Hillary Clinton
• Nicole Mitchell
• John Thompson
• Hunter Biden
• Epstein and his clients
• Julie Blaha
• Every group favored by the left that blocks freeways
• Campus antisemites
• Rioters at Ben Shapiro, Riley Gaines and Turning Point USA events.

Circumstantial evidence indicates they are, indeed, “above the law” .

That is all.

Governor Klink – or his social media intern – turned the gas on the living room lamp down:

Biden may be a good man – signs say “no, not really” – but the “steadiness” of his “leadership” have left the Middle East and Ukraine in flames, and I’m not betting against bad things happening in Taiwan.

But let’s focus on Klink’s other bit: how Trump is “fascinated with dictators”.

Governor Klink:

• Set up a snitch line
• Presided over setting up a “badthink” database with no public visibility whatsoever
• Classified people as “non-essential” – along largely political grounds
• Enriched his and the Democrat party’s donors while squashing small business
• Hid the math by which he justified his “emergency powers”…
• …which, speaking of which, he kept for a solid year after the “emergency” was over.

I’m no Trump fan – but Klink is the one who actually cosplays dictator in office.

Heather “Lawnmower Barbie” Edelson, beat Marisa Simonetti, 54-45.

In other words: A woman with near 100% name recognition, especially among people who come out for special elections, beat someone nobody had heard of three weeks before the election.

By nine points.

In a district Keith Ellison won by 20, and Governor Klink by 30:

There’ll be another round in November.

While the district is a little less “blue” than most of Hennepin County, this can’t be great news for the DFL headed into the fall

Trump is going to speak at the Lincoln/Reagan dinner – one of the MNGOP’s big annual fundraisers.

The DFL thinks they’re onto something.

It’s so cute that the DFL thinks that most Trump voters don’t know this – I know many who stopped holding their noses and switched to full-face respirators to vote for him.

But we – especially if “we” are working class Minnesotans whose paychecks are 20% smaller than they were five years ago, and whose food budgets have gone up by half – might be willing to give it another shot at this rate.

Why do Democrats have such problems with cognitive dissonance?

A new KSTP/SUSA polls says Minnesota voters aren’t enthralled with “the Trifecta“:

When likely voters were asked if they’re “generally more inclined to vote” for a Republican, Democrat or candidate from another party, 45% said they prefer Republicans, 44% prefer Democrats, 8% were undecided and 3% preferred another party.

Minnesota Republicans are taking encouragement from this – as they should.

The same poll shows Trump and the First Potato in a dead heat:

According to our latest exclusive KSTP/SurveyUSA poll of Minnesota voters, Biden leads Trump 44% to 42%, with 11% saying they’ll vote for another candidate and 4% undecided. The poll has a credibility interval, similar to margin of error, of ±4.9%

“When you have a 2-point race in a presidential year, you’ve got a competitive state,” Carleton College political analyst Steven Schier said. “One that both campaigns will probably pay attention to.”

I’d urge a little caution along with the exuberance:

• See that11% “Other Candidate” and 4% in the Presidential poll (and 11% between “Other” and “Undecided” in the House race)? I’m going to guess that, among the Legal Pot and Libertarian and Ventura Party dross, that involves a lot of “Uncommitted” DFLers. Democrat intraparty squabbling is like a couple of bull hogs fighting for the best patch of mud – but being essentially herd animals, Democrat voters almost always “come home”.
• The numbers in the House poll refer to generic Republicans versus generic Democrats. It’s contingent on coming up with candidates who are better than generic. There is a strong undercurrent in the MNGOP of the same crowd that made Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Tayor Green into powerbrokers. Someone needs to teach some Minnesota GOP voters what legislatures are for. On the other hand, it shows that for exceptional candidates – people cut from the same cloth as Harry Niska, Eric Lucero, Pam Scott, Walter Hudson and Mary Franson – there is immense opportunity.
• The Conventional Wisdom in 2016, when Trump came without two points of toppling Hillary!, was that Trump didn’t “almost win”; Hillary!, being a terrible candidate, almost lost. We’ll see if Trump has increased his cachet, but it’s entirely possible the First Potato is a worse candidate than Hillary! was.

Still, two years into the “trifecta”, we’ve had worse news.

Let’s try not to screw this pooch, MNGOP.

Elon Musk illustrated the truth for many in America’s political “middle”:

I’m not in “the middle”, by any means. I used to call myself “center right”, but these days I am proud to call myself a Paleocon, from the “let’s get back to the Sharon Statement” school of paleoconning.

Trump from 2016 to 2020 governed largely, but far from consitently, as a conservative; he secured the border, exerted productive pressure to support US interests overseas, and cut a crap-load of regulations. He also blew up the deficit – just as Dubya and Lightworker before him, and not nearly as badly as Joe “Obama 2.0” Biden have. Never mind his Democrat origin story – I have one too – but he’s a populist standup comic, not an activist. He can, and is, publicly on any side of any issue that suits him. No different than his opposition.

But as the Biden campaign settles in to try to battle back from polls that, at the moment, seem a little encouraging to Trump, it’s worth asking – what is “the center” in America today? Or, more accurately, where are the American people as a mean, and who is closer to it?

Say what you will about the value of moderation; I’m here to pull the conversation to the right however I can.

But if the center decides the election, then Trump might just have a shot.

Joe Doakes, formerlly of Como Park, emails:

Republicans need better advertising to win this Fall.  They need a cartoonist. 

Panel one:  Biden saying “We must make gas more expensive so people use less, to save the planet for our children.” 

Panel two: farmer telling trucker: “The price of fuel went up.  I can’t afford to eat the cost, I’m passing it along to you.”

Panel three: trucker telling grocer: “His cost went up and so did mine.  I can’t afford to eat the costs, I’m passing them along to you.”

Panel four: grocer telling Black woman carrying baby: “Their costs went up.  I can’t afford to eat the costs, I’m passing them along to you.”

Panel five: Black woman holding baby, both looking out of the panel at reader: “We can’t afford to eat.”

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

Conservative cartoonists have a half-life of about one year.

But hope springs eternal.

Another campaign, another flap about Trump vs. NATO:

On the one hand, Trump’s rhetoric about NATO is…not “reckless”, so much as annoying.

On the other hand? At a policy level, Trump strenghened NATO – and his rhetorical, er, “unpredictability” seems to have caused America’s would-be enemies to sit out the aggression and wait for the US to change leadership to someone like, well, Obama and Biden.

But now, as in 2016, the NATO members complaining the hardest are the ones – like Germany – that didn’t get the actual message; hold up you end of the damn deal.

To be fair, Gemany’s spending has risen by something like 30% – although the Bundeswehr has thirty years of sloth to work off; the Luftwaffe’s fighter force at one point was 8% action-ready, the Army is a glorified Boy Scout troop that’s 1/6 of its 1992 size,

(And don’t think we’re not looking at you, Canada, whose Navy is about as old and decrepit as, well, the US’s current leader).

And then on the other hand there are the countries that didn’t need to get the message: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the other former “Warsaw Pact” nations.

I’ve been pretty open about it for going on four decades. I don’t like Donald Trump.

Let me be more clear; I don’t like people with the public persona people like Donald Trump cultivate.

But personality and social media aside, Trump accomplished things.

My biggest problem with Trump?

His personality cult.

Like this particular piece of…work.

PS: Just so we’re clear: everything you can say about personality cults can be said equally about anti-personality cults. The more insipid (to say nothing of deranged) Never-Trumpers are just as bad.

Since roughly the 2020 election, I’ve simultaneously:

• Thought something was amiss about the elections; if not Chicago-style ballot stuffing, at least a world of irregularites with the “legal” changes due to Covid – mail in balloting, and the collusion between the DOJ, the Biden campaign, big media and big tech to “shape” the Hunter Biden story, among others
• Told some of the more extreme election skeptics, especially on the air, “That’s an interesting theory, but until Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani bring an actual case with evidence to court, rather than beclowning themselves, what do you expect we’re going to do about it?”

Three points.

Imperfection

The first point? I made that a few weeks back, when I talked about why I don’t necessairly think “a judge and jury say so” is completely invariably the dispositive last word on any issue. Long story short – judges and juries make mistakes. And that’s ignoring the fact that some prosecutors play fast and loose with the rules, some defense attorneys have no idea what they’re doing, and some judges just want to make their @$%$#& tee times.

Sometimes it gets caught.

The legal system isn’t perfect, but it beats most of the alternatives.

Which may or may not be good enough.

Second: In a separate, seemingly unrelated topic: in Minnesota, most judges are elected. But the candidate pool is intensely circumscribed because, as a lawyer once told me, running a campaign against a sitting judge in front of whom one will one day have to appear in court is pretty much a one-way trip toward spending the rest of your career chasing people who bounce checks.

Judges, by inference – who are charged with being our society’s stentorian impartial guardians of justice and fairness and due process – apparently have the egos of a bunch of middle school “mean girls”.

Reading between the lines: the reputation and social standing of practitioners among other practitioners is as much a part of the judicial system as due process and gavels and the literal letter of the law.

Socially Rigged

So – did the social pressure among lawyers, judges and everyone else in the legal profession that we discussed above affect the election, or the way the courts approached questions about it?

I don’t know. But this article, among others, certainly seems to brag about the power of the Legal Mean Girl caste to bring Big Law into line. Certainly Big Media isn’t going to report on it.

Let’s just say I can be convinced.

To: The Secret Service
From: Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re: SOPs

Secret Service,

Am I remembering wrong, or wasn;t there a time when “threatening a current or former President” was worth investigating, if not actually chargable?

Just curious – Rick Wilson, NPR’s sole GOP source and former head of an organization that had a bit of a “predators in leadership” issue, was on Twitter the other day:

Call me naive and old fashioned, but this kind of thing seems like your turf.

That is all.

Last week, I asked “why all the hate for National Review?”

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, responded:

I had a subscription to National Review for decades.  I let it lapse when I realized O’Sullivan’s Law applied to his own magazine.  The writers I admired – who stated my views better than I could – were no longer welcome there.

Samuel Francis.  John Derbyshire.  Mark Steyn.  Conrad Black. Theodore Dalrymple.  Victor Davis Hanson.  Some of their names still appear on the website but they haven’t had an article published in years.  The views of the magazine have shifted.  Look at the articles in the last few issues, the most conservative guy is . . . James Lileks.  I love his writing but he’s not the successor to William F. that I would have chosen to write insightful political commentary.   I didn’t leave the magazine, the magazine left me but it’s worse than that.

“National Review is now run by a nest of never-Trumpers,” said Francis Sempa in 2021, and his comment is still on-point today. The man who is far and away the most popular candidate for the Republican nomination for President isn’t classy enough for National Review.   He’s a boor.  He doesn’t lose gracefully.  And those tweets!  He’d never get invited to one of National Review’s cruises.

Neither will I.  My views are too extreme, too conservative.  Like their former columnists and the former President, and the 80 million people who voted for Trump last time and the 120 million who will vote for him this time, I’m not good enough enough for National Review.  Which puts me in mind of Grocho Marx:  “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”

Joe Doakes, former National Review subscriber, no longer in Como Park

Well, I do subscribe to the National Review. Some of my favorites are gone – Derb, Kevin WIlliamson – and others like Charles CW Cooke and Andrew McCarthy remain.

“Never Trump?” Some are. Some are, like me, Trump skeptics, or from the “what have you done lately?” crowd. Not sure if Trump isn’t classy enough for the NR, but I’ve never gelled with his personality, even back when he was a Democrat.

I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. I did in 2020, although his behavior between the election and Biden’s coronation was almost as stupid as, well, the system he fought. I’ll be in Team Ron ’til the bitter end, but I won’t be voting, directly or indirectly, for a fourth Obama term. Make of that what you will.

But the Trump era is going to end – next summer, next November, or perhaps in January of 2029. And I want the GOP that picks up at the end of all that to be more like the GOP of 1994 than the Matt Gaetz clown car of 2023.

And the National Review, whatever else you say about them, is about the same thing.

I hear what Joe’s saying. I understand it. I even agree to a point. I’m also a conservative before I”m a Republican. There will be a post-Trump era, sooner or later. I’d like whatever replaces Trump to reflect beliefs I can get behind. Love Trump, hate him, or fall somewhere in the middle,

I don’t get the National Review hate – that might be worth a letter from Joe in and of itself.

Anywayt, Joe Doakes emails:

I know better than to read National Review Online but sometimes I can’t help myself.   The recent article about Nikki Haley reminds me why that’s such a dumb thing to do. 

I hate ‘gotcha’ questions.  They are inevitably out of context and intended for use in a slanted, partisan media campaign.  For instance (paraphrasing):

Q: What was the cause of the Civil War?

A: It was a dispute about who decides how a state will be run – the federal government or the people living in the state.  

Q: You didn’t mention slavery. 

A: Well, what do you want me to say about slavery?  That wasn’t the cause of the war.  

GOTCHA!!!!

Except she’s right.  Elimination of slavery was not the cause of the war.  We know this from two crucial pieces of history.  You can look it up and should, because almost everything being said today is wrong. 

First of all, if abolishing slavery was the reason for the war, why did four slave states – Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri – fight for the North?  If those states had wanted to abolish slavery in their state, they could have done it any time.  Instead, they joined the Union side to fight against the Secessionist side. Slavery was not the issue.  Secession from the Union was the issue.  

Second the publicity campaign to make the war about abolition of slavery came with the Emancipation Proclamation, announced long after the war was already going.  It only applied to the states in rebellion – NOT to the slave states in the Union – further evidence that the abolition of slavery was not the reason for starting the war in 1861, but was simply a tactic intended to divert attention from federal government over-reach to a high moral crusade of abolition which would justify Lincoln’s unconstitutional actions during the war.  

The historical evidence supports Haley but you can’t convince anybody of that today.  Slavery is everything and always the most important thing, to Liberals and RINOs alike.  Haley didn’t mention slavery so GOTCHA.  

Infuriating.

Joe Doakes no longer in Como Park

I’m going to stake out one (actually two, given that I don’t get the zing at NR) difference Joe.

“Secession was the issue”. And what were they seceding about?

• “Preserving the Union” – and what was the political issue breaking up the union? Slavery.
• “Economics” – And what was the economic issue? Competition between an industralizing society and an agrarian plantation society based around slavery.
• “Why were border states exempt?” – For the same reason the US allied with a rogues gallery of dictators when it was in their interests.

“Abolishing slavery” wasn’t the reason for the war – and yet all of the reasons for the war were one degree of separation away from slavery.

So the real answer, as usual, is everyone is wrong.

If you aren’t running on this…

…for the love of all that is holy, please tell me why?

As I’ve been noting for about eight years on this blog, I’m intensely ambivalent about Donald Triump.

His personality roils with traits I personally don’t care for.

But something about all the prosperity, peace and border security is looking good.

“Oh, Merg, so you just want someone who’ll make the trains run on time, yuk yuk”

Peace and security are legitimate jobs of a national government. Prosperity is the opposite of the “Fascist” dynamic you’re yukking about. And Trump at his wackiest didn’t approach the level of authoritarianism of any of Baraclk Obama’s three terms in office.

I’m on Team DeSantis [1],but if it came down to Biden, Harris or Newsom against Trump, I’d probably hold my nose and vote Trump.

The worst thing about Trump is that he, like Obama before him, is the center of a personality cult. And with Trump, soooooo many of the cultists are just so deeply dim:

Loomer – charitably described as “insane” – cites a piece on by David Greenberg, a Rutgers historian who’s never been mistaken for someone who’d throw a life ring to a conservative who fell overboard.

Bill Clinton infamously threw some of his more extreme supporters under the bus in his long forgotten”Sista Soulja” moment (in the the long-forgotten Sista Soulja”). Trump’s never gonna have a “Crazy Laura” moment.

If he did, I might have to hold my nose a little less hard.

[1] And yeah, I think in a just world Doug Burgum would be on the short list, but we don’t live in a just world.

Anna Matthews joined me to talk about Cynthia Lonnquist’s race to replace Ruth Richardson in MN HD 52B.

Interested in helping out? Write “info@mngop.com”, or join them Sunday morning at 10AM at the McDonald’s at Dodd and Crosstown.

Today’s song list.

To: MNGOP SCC Delegates
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: On Your Predilection For Running Headfirst Into Walls And Kicking Yourself Repeatedly In The Groin

Esteemed Colleagues,

I got your letter the other day, about the intent to try to toss state party chairman Hann at the next State Central meeting.

I know who’s driving this, and I suspect I know why.

I’ve also seen no evidence that there’s any more of a “plan” to this than there was to Matt Gaetz’s defenestration of Kevin McCarthy.

Seriously – show me the alternative you provide. And I don’t mean vague blandishments or the usual impotent tough talk.

You want to take a run at Hann? Come on my show on Saturday. Let’s talk.

There will be questions. Serious ones.

I’d like to the delegates to know if there’s a “there”, there, or if this is just another round of ritualized head-into-sidewalk smashing.

Back when I was working in bars, I was working at this toilet bar in North Saint Paul. It was a boring Friday night in the middle of summer. Once of the bouncers left early, leaving the bar with one bouncer – a big guy with a curly perm that was trying to get into professional wrestling.

The other bouncer apparently went out to the parking lot and hoovered up a line of bad Bolivian Marching Powder, maybe spiked with PCP – because he came back into the bar, started bellowing at the room, and then throwing punches. He smacked the bartender, cutting his lip and knocking out a tooth or two. He also tangled with a couple of customers. throwing tables and chairs and bottles all over the place.

The rampage went on for a while. Five minutes? Ten? I’m not sure.

But the entire time, as the coked up loony was on his rampage, the Wrestler guy bouncer stood and bellowed “You want a piece of me? HEY! Do you want a piece of me?” over and over, like he was filming an interstitial bit for a pro wrestling tournament.

Nothing at all useful, mind you. Just bellowing ” You want a piece of me? Yeah, you! You want a piece of me“, as the guy trashed the bar and a few of its employees and patrons.

I wonder if that wannabe-wrestler isn’t working as a consultant for the GOP these days.

Conservative groups have been very susceptible to the siren song of tough, unyielding talk combined with poo-poohing actually affecting policy. One example particularly near and dear to my heart – “Minnesota Gun Right”, a group that’s not from Minnesota and will never affect gun rights, but does make a lot of tough-talking videos.

Democrats are phenomenally vulnerable nationwide – married to exploding debt, economic stagnation, genocide against Israel and “woke” decay.

And far too much of the GOP, appears to be heading to the election focused not only on talking the talk and ignoring the walk, but saying “the walk” is stuff “Establishment RINOs” do.

Ben Shapiro talked about this in the first couple of segments of his podcast a few days ago:

To much of the GOP, politics is a (picking adjective carefully) vicious cycle:

• “The swamp” needs to be drained.
• But the swamp has rigged the system to prevent us from draining it.
• “The Swamp” is the product of policy – which, like any policy in a democracy, can be changed, provided you win enough elections to push policy in the direction you want.
• But getting elected to office, and having to do the inevitable horse-trading and make the inevitable compromises that come with actually having to make policy in a divided government makes you “the swamp” (see: Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy). Indeed, talking in terms of “Moving the Needle”, as opposed to “draining the swamp” or otherwise “burning it dall down”, is itself considered being “part of the establishment”.
• But bellowing against the Swamp feels good (and is good for fundraising). Because…repeat from the top.

Conservatives used to be able to play the long game – indeed, conservatism used to be about society’s long game. The Left sought their immediate gratification.

Maybe it’s the most toxic possible result of the collapse of the societal attention span – “conservatism”, or at least the GOP, has become the party of emotion.

Mike Casey is running for the GOP nomination in CD4.

Jim Schulz, former MN Attorney General candidate, is with the Minnesota Private Business Council.

And here’s today’s music list:

Good thing Rep. Phillips grew up with a silver foot in his mouth. If he’d had to succeed on his merits, he’d be living in a homeless camp by the Quarry.

Example:

Uh,, no. You got 1 out of 4. Roosevelt – the president who set the stage for Wilson’s “progressive” orgy – probably qualifies.

Lincoln didn’t promote slavery, so morally-consistent modern Democrats would not know what to do with him.

Jefferson would be a Libertarian; he’d hang out with Justin Amash and Rand Paul.

Washington? Someone who was given the chance at unfettered power, even declaring himself king, and demurred in favor of a constitutional Republic? Not a chance. He’d be a proto-Reagan conservative.

And JFK would get kicked out of today’s DFL. HHH was all but kicked out of the DFL of the 1970s, for crying out loud.

CD3 – please do better.

On Saturday, I had a chat with Shawn Holster about the new, vastly streamlined Minneapolis GOP. It’s a reform that makes sense – going from four Senate district and 13 ward committees to a single city organization. No more wondering what side of what arbitrary dividing line you live on, no more wondering if you went to the right meeting, no more wasted effort among a dozen sub-units, more focus on what matters- it’s freaking brilliant, and Saint Paul should do the same.

It starts at the :33 mark:

In the meantime, as I was talking with Shawn, this was the MInneapolis Ward 10 convention:

Ken Martin – who runs the party of Bill “Guillotine Republicans!” Davis, of Matt “He Who Flexes on Reporters who are 30 years older than him” Roznowski, of Leigh “Thrilla On the House Floor” Finke, whose party has presided over probably half a dozen cycles of Minneapolis district conventions breaking down into riots…

…is making vigorous noises about violbla beingbla bla unacceptibiblablabla.

I mean, it’s a grand jury, intended to allow prosecutors to indict ham sandwiches, etc etc, bla bla.

But looking at this interview with the forewoman of the Trump grand jury in Fliorida…

…it’s hard to be filled with confidence in the future of one of the most important institutions in our democracy.

Big Left will flip the tables, declare that Trump’s push to develop a vaccine was a huge mistake.

So what actually happened on the floor of the House last week?

Adam Kinzinger proves he knows nothing about the constitution by saying it in as many words.

No. Really.

The only thing that bothers me as much is the Trump personality cult is the anti-Trump personality cult