In the world of Rock and Roll, in the words of Neil Young, “it’s better to burn out than fade away”.

In the world of Bruce Springsteen’s music, when characters screw up, they flame out big-time – and usually take other people down with ’em.

In “Johnny 99”, from Nebraska, the protagonist – “Ralph” – gets laid off from a job at a car plant. He gets “too drunk from mixing Tangueray and Wine” – itself a major botch – and shoots a night clerk. It instantly changes his life; he goes from being a regular guy to a lifer overnight. His life is completely screwed, he declares as he’s sentenced.

Now judge I had debts no honest man could pay

The bank was holdin’ my mortgage and they were gonna take my house away

Now I ain’t sayin’ that makes me an innocent man

But it was more `n all this that put that gun in my hand

 

Well your honor I do believe I’d be better off dead

So if you can take a man’s life for the thoughts that’s in his head

Then sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time

And let `em shave off my hair and put me on that killin’ line

Clearly, the character of Ralph/Johnny didn’t preconsider his actions according to the long-term consequences one might expect from them – but then if Mr. 99 had merely thrown up and gone to bed, the song would be a pretty mundane commentary on the human condition. People do act in ways that ignore their actions’ long-term consequences, in ways big and small, all the time.

And there’s the point.

Another of conservatism’s key tenets is the idea of prudence; a conservative measures actions against their likely long-term consequences, and tries to decide and act accordingly.

They also recognize – as Johnny 99 did not, until the end of the song – the consequences of failing at this.

And among the many reasons Springsteen’s music resonates with conservatives is that the characters, for decades, illustrated the princple, in ways positive and negative, in a way that sounds like…

…well, real life.

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Rock and roll has always been, ostensibly, about upsetting the existing order.  In the beginning, its very existence upended what passed for “order” in popular culture, at least to the extent of helping create a “youth culture” – something that’d never existed before, and really started in America.  As culture and the genre evolved through the sixties, pop music smeared itself in the “revolutionary” rhetoric of the rest fo the counterculture; in the seventies, the punk counter-counterculture (at least in the English art-school variety) flipped the hippies’ putative idealism on its head in an orgy of self-indulgent nihilism.  Post-punks – U2 would be the most famous and enduring of the bunch) in turn, flipped that on its head in an welter of often self-righteous activism.

And against that backdrop, the music of Bruce Springsteen has always been refreshingly non-revolutionary. (more…)

Let’s take a look at history.

1985 – Ronald Reagan, who (let’s remember this) governed his entire eight years with Congressional minorities, had to finally cut a deal with the Dems.  The deal with Tip O’Neill involved two dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax hikes.  It led to the “Reagan Tax Hikes” that liberals blather about (they were much, much smaller than his tax cuts, and occurred after the economy had recovered, which isn’t nearly as stupid as raising taxes during a recession).   Naturally, O’Neill reneged on the deal; we got the tax hikes and the spending, putting a black mark on Reagan’s legacy and giving a generation of giggly lefty chanting-point-bots a cheap tu quoque tittering point.

1990 – George H.W. Bush cuts a deal with Congressional Democrats, who are still in the majority – just one more round of taxes, in exchange for spending cuts, leading to his famous declaration, “Read my lips!  No new taxes!”.  The Dems welched, naturally, leaving Bush looking like the fool that, for believing the Democrats, he truly was.

2012 – Some House Republicans are making noises that sound suspiciously similar to “we’ll be happy to agree to tax hikes today, in exchange for spending cuts someday when you get around to it”.  In other words, they are planning to extend electoral credit to a party that has “our ends justify our means” as an unwritten platform plank.

Dear House Republicans:  you thought the 2010 primary season was brutal for RINOs?  Remember Trent Lott, and don’t be stupid. Compromising with Democrats before you’ve gotten your pound of flesh is the mark of the sucker.  The moron.  The soon-to-be unemployed politician, God and your smarter voters willing.  

It’s a little-noticed verse of a song buried in Bruce Springsteen’s biggest studio album:

Now, honey, I don’t wanna clip your wings
But a time comes when two people should think of these things
Having a home and a family,
facing up to their responsibilities

They say in the end true love prevails
But in the end true love can’t be no fairytale
To say I’ll make your dreams come true would be wrong
But maybe, darlin’, I could help them along

It’s from “I Wanna Marry You”, from The River.  It’s a nice, simple, romantic little trifle.  Given Springsteen’s personal life over the past 25 years, it’d be easy to call it “ironic”…

…but again, the series isn’t about any artist’s personal life, or personal beliefs.  It’s about the resonances his audience finds in the music.

The next tenet of conservatism we’re covering is that conservatives adhere to custom, convention, and continuity (provided ones customs and conventions continue things that are worth continuing – which we’ll get to later on in the series).

And shelve the past twenty-five years of history – because this is about as customary, conventional and continuous as one gets:

Little girl, I wanna marry you
Oh yeah, little girl, I wanna marry you
Yes I do, little girl, I wanna mary you.

My daddy said right before he died
that true, true love was just a lie.
He went to his grave a broken heart
An unfulfilled life, darlin’, makes a man hard

No apple-carts upset here, right?

Of course, there’s a lot more to custom and tradition than that.

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In the song “Darlington County” (from Born in the USA), a couple of ne’er-do-wells drive south to find a little work and raise a little ruckus:

Hey little girl standing on the corner,
Todays your lucky day for sure, all right.
Me and my buddy we’re from New York City,
we got two hundred dollars, we want to rock all night.

Girl you’re looking at two big spenders,
Why the world don’t know what me and Wayne might do
Our pa’s each own one of the World Trade Centers,
For a kiss and a smile I’ll give mine all to you…

At the end of the song, we find out how it went:

Driving out of darlington county
My eyes seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
Driving out of darlington county
Seen Wayne handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford

It’s comic trifle – the whole song is, really.  But it hints at a theme conservatives believe as a part of being conservative; that the world has an enduring moral order.  That there is a battle between right and wrong, Yin and Yang, good and evil – and that right and good are better, and should be exalted, or at least striven for.

“Wayne” ran afoul that order – with comic results, unless you’re “Wayne”, I suppose.

But it’s usually a lot deeper than that.

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Before I get into the beef of the series, it seems I need to do a little remedial art appreciation, logic and rhetoric.

For starters, my thesis, and the case I’m making, is “Why Bruce Springsteen is America’s Greatest Conservative Songwriter”.  Not “Bruce Springsteen is a Conservative”.  He’s not.  That’s all duly noted and stipulated in advance.

Not “Everything Bruce Springsteen Has Ever Written Resonates with Conservatives”.  It does not.  Merely most of his best stuff.

But as Socrates showed us a few millennia back, the best way to teach is to ask and to answer.  In other words, it’s time for one of my Frequently Asked Questions:

• “But Springsteen is a teh liberal!”: It doesn’t matter even a little.  The series isn’t about him or his personal politics.  They are, in fact, utterly irrelevant.  Art is in the eye of the beholder.  Many conservatives find resonance, even inspiration, in his music, though; this series merely explains why.
• “But what if Teh Boss himself were to tell you you were wrong?”:  Again, doesn’t matter.  It’s not about him.  It’s about what he wrote.
• “What does Nate Silver say?”:  Nothing.
• “Don’t be teh smartass.  You know what I mean.  How can you empirically prove your thesis?”:  There is no “empiricism” in art criticism.  It’s stating a critical case for a subjective point.
• “You are just trying to make teh music fit your intellectual template”:  Nope.  I’m stating a case for why the music not only fits my worldview, but reinforces it.
• “But did you ever REALLY listen to it?”:  As we’ll see in coming days, clearly, more than you have.  Whoever you are.

Bruce Springsteen.

There may be no more politically-divisive figure in popular music today.

On the one hand, he openly campaigns for liberal Democrats, and against conservatism, every election cycle.  This earns the ire and contempt of many conservatives.  And with a net worth of $200 million – four times Michael Moore’s portfolio – he’s the very definition of a limo liberal, even if his limo is a ’32 Ford with a 318, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor.

On the other hand, many of Springsteen’s highest-profile fans – Chris Christie, Tim Pawlenty, me, Laura Ingraham among many others – are one degree of conservative or another.

Now, part of that is no doubt purely visceral.  Eddie Van Halen once said that rock and roll is supposed to make you feel something – angry, horny, lovelorn, whatever.  And Springsteen is if nothing else an extremely gifted writer who has, for two generations now, had a gift for making people feel things – things that cross party lines, because they’re human reactions to art.

But many songwriters have that gift.  And yet, in the face of perceived incongruity and even some muted, passive-aggressive hostility from the artist himself, conservatives soldier on as fans.

Why?

About a year ago a woman I know – a modestly prominent Democrat organizer – asked on Twitter “Don’t you Springsteen Republicans actually listen to his lyrics?”

To which I responded  “Yes.  Do you really LISTEN to them?”   And by that I meant “without slathering your own worldview and ex-post-facto knowledge of Springsteen’s life and activities outside his music over the past ten years?”

Because as I started arguing a few weeks ago in response to MPR’s question on the subject “what song sums up where this nation is at right now?” (I answered with Bruce’s This Hard Land), Springsteen’s music, especially throughout his peak creative years (which I’d argue started with his collaboration with Jon Landau on Born to Run and ran through Tunnel of Love, and rebounded on The Rising) was overflowing with themes and currents and messages that resonate with political and social conservatives.  And, in fact, those themes, currents and messages were the most important ones in his repertoire.

———-

“But wait, Berg – all you’re going to do is pound some isolated out-of-context odds and ends into a context you make up to define conservatism as conveniently as possible for your dubious premise!  Right?”

Not even close.

I’ll be building this piece around a ten-point definition of conservatism from none other than that noted Paleocon tool, Andrew Sullivan who, back before his brain flitted away into Trig-Palin-triggered dementia, put together what I thought was a pretty good definition of a classical conservative:

According to Sullivan, the conservative…:

• believes that an enduring moral order exists.  Not an easy one, but an enduring one, anyway.
• adheres to custom, convention, and continuity, barring any compelling reason to change.
• believes in what may be called the principle of prescription – the idea that most of the great ideas on which our sociey was founded are good enough as is; improvement faces a steep curve.
• are guided by their principle of prudence – we try to gauge actions against their probable long-term consequences.
• believes that only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law.
• believes human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults.  Human nature is not inherently good.
• believes that freedom and property are closely linked.
• upholds  voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
• sees the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.
• knows permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.

That’s a good definition of classical conservatism, from Hobbes and Hume all the way to Milton Friedman.

To that, I’d add some peculiarly American characteristics; here, a conservative believes…:

• That while Humanity is not perfectable, and Americans – especially as acting through government – are far from perfect, America has coalesced into a nation around a set of ideals that are in themselves inherently noble and worth upholding.
• That this nation – imperfect as it is – is a free association of equals, governed by mutual consent.  Government is not a set of parents needed to discipline recalcitrant children.

I’ll be doing 2-3 of these a week for the next few weeks; showing in each case how and why Bruce Springsteen’s music (if not his personal politics, obviously) not only resonates with, but inspires, people who believe in all of the above.

So roll down the window and let the bracing wind of freedom blow back your hair!  C’mon – rise up!  We’ll meet beneath that giant “Friedman” sign that gives this shining city light!

Don’t end up like a dog that’s been beat too much, all you henpecked conservative Bruce fans; it’s a state full of lemmings, and we’re pulling outta here to win!

The GOP’s new motto on immigration reform?  Yo quiero pander…to all sides of the debate:

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Politico that he’s open to giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship in exchange for a temporary moratorium on all legal immigration while they “assimilate.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a longtime proponent of reform, said legalization should be paired with the repeal of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. And Republican House Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Friday that he would not commit to including a path to citizenship in his immigration reform efforts…

Juan Hernandez, a Texas-based Republican political consultant who served as Sen. John McCain’s director of Hispanic outreach in 2008, said whatever the potential disagreements, congressmen should start hammering out a deal now.

“Should it be with two, three or four steps? That’s fine. Let’s negotiate. But let’s starting taking the first steps immediately,” Hernandez said. “We may not find a political moment again in which at least I see everyone saying it’s time for immigration reform.”

The cries that demographics equal destiny for an eventual GOP shift to the left on all issues pertaining to immigration reform have been shouted for some time.  And in the wake of a narrow popular vote re-election for Barack Obama, carried in part by a 44% margin of victory among Latino voters, the cries have renewed with vigor.  Even some in the conservative intelligentsia have backed a 2007-esque immigration reform stance, including Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer.

But would backing amnesty, a path to citizenship, however the GOP wishes to define such legislation, really give the GOP any electoral edge?  Republicans have gained nothing among African-American voters despite the GOP’s critical role in civil rights legislation.  Yet pollsters love to mention Bush’s 44% showing among Latinos in 2004 and equally enjoy pointing out 65% of all voters (including 3 out of 4 Latinos) support some opportunity at citizenship for illegal immigrants.  Of course, Bush’s Latino support was greatly inflated and was more likely around 38%.  And last, but not least, is the data suggesting that immigration from Latin American countries may be actually reversing.

That last part is critical because Latino attitudes towards immigration reform vary depending on whether they were born here or immigrated.  While 42% of all Latino voters called immigration reform their number one issue, only 32% of U.S. born Latinos agreed compared to 54% who were foreign born.  Financially stable ($80k+ incomes) Latinos and those who are second generation are less likely to focus on immigration reform or support carte blanche amnesty.  Those who called Spanish their first language were far more interested in immigration reform than those who said English was their primary language.  The greater integrated recent immigrants had become, the less interested they were in immigration concerns.

Republicans focus on Latinos when speaking about immigration reform ignores a number of other demographic groups who have more at stake in any immigration conversation.  Asians are now the largest block of recent immigrants, surpassing Hispanic migration.  And as a voting block, Asian-Americans voted by similar margins to Latinos for Obama.  Where are the breathless newspaper column inches declaring the GOP must court Asian-Americans?

Republican outreach to minority groups has been a priority mothballed election cycle after election cycle.  If an election where nearly 13 million fewer voters showed up prompts the GOP to finally engage demographics they’ve thus far all but ignored, then great.  But if Republicans try and out liberal liberals on issues like immigration reform, they will continue to find no real opportunities for political gain.

ADDENDUM: Rachel Campos-Duffy at National Review hits the nail on the head of the broader challengers standing between Republicans and Latino voters:

Hispanics come to America for the American Dream. They are “trabajadores,” and you would be hard pressed to find an American farmer, contractor, or restaurant owner who would not testify to their work ethic. Unfortunately, the communities in which they live and work are teeming with liberal activists: farm and service-industry labor unions, well-intentioned community-based social services providers and more radical and racially motivated Latino groups such as La Raza, LULAC, and Mecha. In addition, the curricula their kids encounter in public schools are either hostile or silent on the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and ideas that are the foundation of conservative thinking. All of these activist groups and institutions have a common ideology and an affinity for big and centralized government, and of course, entitlements. They go out of their way to sign folks up and to begin the cycle of government dependency. Once hooked to the IV of government handouts, a steady drip of ideology, and a heavy dose of raunchy pop culture, the once vibrant American Dreams and traditional family values of Hispanics drift into a slow, deep coma.

I got an email from MPR the other day.  It was actually a combo email from MPR News and “The Current” asking what song we thought best summed up the state of the nation during this election season.

I wrote back with my suggestion – a song that has layer upon layer of significance to our nation, our society, our zeitgeist and the election itself.  A song that’s all about dreaming a big dream, and having those dreams run up on the rocks, and hitting that moment where you have to think “was that a dream or was it a mirage?”.  A song about that moment when you have to decide – do I drown, or do I sack up and carry on?

A song about truth and consequences.  A song that, on a work week after a long trip across the prairie, reminds me of the huge swathe in the middle of this country, the square states full of bitter gun-clinging jebus freaks like me that are, in fact, my home and background and blood and my past.  And that is, with a blessing and a tailwind, may be our nation’s future.

The song is “This Hard Land” by Bruce Springsteen.

It’s a song he wrote during a John Steinbeck jag, for Born in the USA, and that should have been on the album (be honest – would anyone miss “Downbound Train?”) and was in its day one of the most sought-after bootlegs in Springsteen’s oeuvre.

So many layers to this song, and to the reasons I chose it.

First verse?

Hey there mister can you tell me what happened to the seeds Ive sown

Can you give me a reason sir as to why they’ve never grown

They’ve just blown around from town to town

Till they’re back out on these fields

Where they fall from my hand

Back into the dirt of this hard land

Thomas Hobbes, the 18th-century British intellectual who was one of the patron saints of conservatism as we understand it today, couldn’t have expressed better the fundamental conservative ideal that “life’s a bitch”, that there are forces that are bigger and more powerful than men and their dreams.

But well return to that.

Now me and my sister from germantown

We did ride

We made our bed sir from the rock on the mountainside

We been blowin around from town to town

Lookin for a place to stand

Where the sun burst through the cloud

To fall like a circle

Like a circle of fire down on this hard land

America is a land of myths.  Mostly big and glorious ones – like the ones that drew our forefathers, like the singer and his sister, from their old homes, the Germantowns and Norwayvilles and Saigon Centers, to This Hard Land.   Much of what America sees as its own self-image – whether the wilderness of the Badlands or the wilderness of the tradiing floor or the inventors garage or the moon or the neighborhood or the entrenched beliefs of the human heart – is about the epic American dream of going where your ancestors have never gone before, of being something they weren’t.

And over the past seventy years, it’s become about the marketing of those dreams, whether via John Wayne or “Hope and Change”.

But like all dreams – and their cousins, the myth and the chimera – they run afoul a brutal reality:

Now even the rain it don’t come round

It don’t come round here no more

And the only sound at nights the wind

Slammin the back porch door

It just stirs you up like it wants to blow you down

Twistin and churnin up the sand

Leavin all them scarecrows lyin face down

Face down in the dirt of this hard land

The prairie is dotted with the remains of old farm homes from families that just didn’t make it, flindered remains of their back doors still slamming in the wind.  Just as America is dotted with businesses that tried and failed, leaving behind empty buildings, rusty frames, doors drifting back and forth in the desultory breeze.  And yes, the wreckage of government initiatives like the one that’s dominated our political life this past presidential term, a dream – a chimera from a brief majority four years ago – of an undertaking that, despite the fervency of its dreamers’ beliefs, has failed as completely as the sodbuster in the song.  Whether through poor design, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being fundamentally wrong or – like the singer and his sister – just from suffering a bad run of luck in the face of a merciless and uncaring Nature, all of human existence is a tough grind dominated by forces we don’t, by ourselves, control.

Being human, we attempt to control them anyway – to bring order to the chaos, and to tame the untameable:

 From a building up on the hill

I can hear a tape deck blastin’ “Home on the Range”

I can see them Bar-M choppers

Sweepin’ low across the plains

Its me and you, Frank, we’re lookin for lost cattle

Our hooves twistin and churnin up the sand

Were ridin in the whirlwind searchin for lost treasure

Way down south of the Rio Grande

Were ridin cross that river

In the moonlight

Up onto the banks of this hard land

It’s human nature to try to bottle up and contain Nature, whether the nature around us or the nature inside us.

And it’s one of the great dividing lines in human nature, the one between those who are content for their “home on the range” to come recorded, to have the almighty Bar-M or The Almighty  or The One out looking for the strays, for those who are just fine being “Julia“…

…and those whose dreams, or mirages, embrace the chaos that ensues where life and Nature, natural and human, are in conflict.

And the last verse is for them:

Hey frank wont ya pack your bags

And meet me tonight down at liberty hall

Just one kiss from you my brother

And we’ll ride until we fall

Well sleep in the fields

Well sleep by the rivers and in the morning

Well make a plan

Well if you can’t make it

Stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive

If you can

And meet me in a dream of this hard land

Whether it’s the pioneer seeking more elbow room from all the other settlers and their choppers and tape decks, or from bouncing back from a failure, or a big part of a nation taking a deep breath and saying “this is not the path we want”, or, I dunno, Atlas shrugging for all I know, this verse – with allusions to Okies loading up their trucks and bidding their relatives goodbye, or immigrants climbing on the boat and wishing their old lives auf wiedersehen, or men kissing their wives and kids and mustering down at Liberty Hall as the drums and the hobnails rattle on the wind, or a people saying “thanks, Julia, and all the best to you and that mysterious niece and/or nephew that appeared a few frames back, but I’m looking for something a little more…epically mythical” – is the American myth; the idea that we are a restless pack of strivers looking for a newer, better, freer horizon.

Beyond that, in terms of politics today?  Every generation dreams of leaving a better world to their kids, as I do for my kids and my new granddaughter. We have a distinct chance, as things go, of leaving them a world that my ancestors in the Dust Bowl would look at and whisper “there but for the grace of God…”.  And unlike the the Okies, our immigrant forefathers and protagonist in “This Hard Land”, this time there’s noplace to ride away to to start over.  We’re stuck with this hard land.

More on this after the election.

Anyway – ask a question, you’ll get an answer.  Usually.

UPDATE:  Hobbes, not Hume.  Sigh.  It’s been a few years.

UPDATE 2:  Welcome, Bob Collins’ readers!

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Joe Doakes from Como Park writes in regard to a comment thread the other day about my issues with Apple maps (with emphasis added)…:

Sanity posted this comment to a prior post on SITD:

1. Sanity on October 2, 2012 at 9:26 pm said:

“. . . I don’t have a choice about who to buy electricity or water from. Those are regulated utilities because they have a monopoly. I do, however have the choice of buying an iPhone versus Samsung vs not buying a smart phone at all. Mitch chose to buy the Apple product, knowing that he is supporting a pro-gay rights company. I find that interesting.”

For crying out loud, how long does it take Sanity to do his shopping?

Let’s see, Fiber One or Fiber Plus? Hmmm, how to decide? Price? Fiber content? Taste?

No, that’s all irrelevant. How do their company executives feel about homosexuals – that’s the important thing! Fiber One is made by General Mills, which opposes the marriage amendment, meaning General Mills is Pro Gay. Okay, Fiber One it is.

Now, Land O’Lakes milk or Roundy’s?

Honestly, do people live like that? How can they stand to think that way?

Joe’s right – I mean, if a cell phone manufacturer advertised itself as “ambivalent about gay rights”, it’d be at least irrelevant to my purchasing decision (well behind “do the maps work?”), and most likely detrimental (I mean, not only is it unseemly, but marketing via social wedges is off-puttingly cynical).

But yes, Joe, people most definitely do live like that.   And not just commenter “Sanity” (who is, I suspect, one of the “Penigma” hive).  In fact, just about everyone is like that in one way or another.

I’m conservative.  As a conservative, poitics aren’t the be-all and end-all of my life; it’s a hobby, like playing guitar or blogging.  But my religious faith?  That is important.  It plays into the major, and most of the minor, decisions in my life.  For example, in 12 years of being single a second time, I haven’t dated an atheist – or even anyone who’s not some variety of Christian.  In something as vital as “a potential life partner”,. some sort of agreement on the basic nature and meaning of life is fairly vital.

As re the company that makes my cell phone?  Not so much.  As long as they don’t trade slaves or donate too promiscuously to Democrat and anti-liberty causes (as the company that used to own Pepsi, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell did for many years with their support for The Brady Organization – until a boycott from people like me got them to reconsider), I don’t really care.

For liberals, on the other hand?  It’s a stereotype that politics are more important than religion for liberals – but stereotypes become stereotypes for a reason.  In a dozen years on the dating market (more or less enthusiastically) I’ve never had a conversation with a self-identified liberalette go south over my religion, my taste in music or my choice of cell phone.  But I have had three or four send me emails oozing horror when they discovered I was a conservative.  “I could never date one of…you“, they say.  Prodded, a few have replied to the effect of “because I think having some agreement on the basic nature and meaning of life is fairly vital”.

So even if all you have to go by is stereotype (as is the case with the commenter in question) and assume I oppose “gay rights” – I don’t, and have likely done more against anti-gay bigotry than most liberals anyway – it betrays one of the great aspects of the left-right culture clash; for conservatives, politics is a necessary evil, a chore you do for the greater good, like cleaning the septic tank, so you can get to what matters.

For liberals, politics and its attendant optics and messaging and symbology – let’s call it “liturgy” – are the point.

The commenter in question needs to remember that.

Also learn basic logic.

Like most conservatives, there are few things in the world I like less than standing around, marching or chanting.  Oh, I do like being out in the fresh air with a group of good people that have goals similar to mine in mind – but leaving aside the fact that it seems so group-think-y, hippy-ish and downright liberal, it’s pretty much inevitable that there’ll be something better to do, somewhere in the world, than that.

But I, myself, am getting a little exercised about the Star/Tribune’s ongoing propaganda exercise (AKA “the Minnesota Poll”).  And I’m more than a little tempted to grab an afternoon next week and see if we can’t get some people more or less like us out in front of 425 Portland to try to let them know that not everyone out there is a querulous low-information lemming.

Just saying.

Tempted.

Very, very tempted.

A very wise friend of mine, who has gotten heavily involved in the Ron Paul camp in the past couple of years, asked “So in this election, you have a choice between the guy who’ll take 35% of your income, and the guy who’ll take 39%”.

Er…take the 35%?

And work like hell to get a conservative Senate and keep the House?

I know; many among the Ron Paul supporters – especially the ones who are trying to pretend Gary Johnson is relevant – are claiming there’s no difference between Romney and

Incrementalism is only bad if a) it’s in the wrong direction and b) you can’t at least maintain, if not accelerate, it in the right direction.

““There are 100 different doors to come into the conservative movement,” he said. “You can disagree with 99 of them, as long as you agree on one: more-limited government.”

— Grover Norquist

There has been much sturm und drang within, and especially outside of, the Minnesota GOP over last spring’s coup de main by the Ron Paul campaign in Minnesota.  Paul activists, organized as tightly as a Marine basic training company, swarmed the precinct caucuses, the BPOU conventions, the CD conventions, and finally the state convention.  They completely took over some districts (including the Metro 4th and 5th CDs) and took the lopsided majority of the state’s delegates to the national convention.

Now, unlike my friend and longtime activist John Gilmore, I’m doing my best to see a silver lining to the takeover, especially in the 4th CD in which we both live.  Gilmore is the lightning rod of the anti-Paul faction in the 4th and the state, of course, and pulls no punches on the subject, and makes it clear he’s not in the business of finding silver linings.

Being a mere foot soldier, all I can do is note that whatever the problems the Paul takeover has brought at the leadership level (and, as I’ve noted, there are most definitely problems), the takeover has had a few benefits, at least at the grassroots level.  There are fewer “warm body on the ballot” candidacies this year in the Fourth CD than any year I can remember.  More of those races hit their number to get the state funding match than in any recent year.

That’s all to the good.

On the other hand?  I’ve documented some of the problems that we’ve had in the 4th CD from the top down rather than the bottom up.

And compared to the 5th CD, we’ve got it good.  Nancy LaRoche – a longtime activist in CD5 – chronicles the disintegration of the leadership in the CD5 GOP under the “watch” of some especially cynical Ron Paul personality cultists.

Nancy’s been trying to find if there’s even a faint sign of life among the elected “leadership”.  Money quote:

None of the executive leadership have responded to the web site bill as of today. Then I wondered, was the 5th District organization as a whole part of their kill plan? There has been no fundraising, no full committee meetings, and no sign of leadership since their election. Mitch Berg wrote about similar issues of idle hands in CD4.

Jason Lewis talked about the misled direction of some Paul supporters who can’t see the forest for the liberty trees. They refuse to elect a better President now to buy the country time for more liberty-minded candidates later. 5th district leaders appear to have no intention of shaping the party, only destroying it. I tend to agree that these Libertarian “tributes” are happily exploiting the Republican party only to advance their sponsor, Ron Paul — then trashing the vehicle they commandeered.

This, of course, was the big concern many in the “establishment” – including this former “establishment” member who in 2010 was one of those pesky Tea Party insurgents – had with the direction of so many of the Ron Paul crowd.  While many – including the vast majority in my own SD65, including its leader, Joe Schultz (who writes an excellent blog, by the way) came to stay and make a difference within the party, there are not a few that quite clearly did not, and have no intention of it.   And plenty of people are not amused.  And in a year when the Fifth CD fields one of its strongest candidates ever – Chris Fields – it would have been spectacular to have had him backed with a functional district.  (Likewise with Tony Hernandez in the Fourth).

On MPR this morning, I heard a bit by Mark Zdechlik comparing the reactions of the “mainstream” Republicans in the party and the Tampa delegation with those of the “Ron Paul”-faction, who were the majority of the delegates.   Zdechlik quoted a Mark Zasadny of Roseville.  I’ll add emphasis:

Minnesota Ron Paul delegate Mark Zasadny of Roseville said if the election were held right now he would vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president.

Mr. Zasadny: thanks for hammering home every stereotype the “establishment” had of the Paul movement; that you had not the faintest interest in the GOP, but hijacked it to serve as a vehicle for the Ron Paul Personality Cult.

(Yep, I said “Ron Paul Personality Cult”.  Anyone who doesn’t honestly think that a Romney/Ryan presidency won’t be better for the prospects of liberty in this country, especially and even if only economic liberty, but also the rest of the First Amendment, than a second Obama term seriously needs to get a grip.  Incrementalism is not a dirty word, if it’s incremental in the right direction, especially if that’s a springboard to further bigger increments.  Increments are better than excrements).

“It seems like the clear message was like the grassroots movement is not really welcome in the Republican Party. So that’s kind of hard to swallow when they come around and say, you know, ‘OK, are you ready to unite behind the Romney campaign and the RNC,'” Zasadny said. “And it’s like, ‘well you just tried to cut our throats.’ So how are we supposed to respond to that?”

Well, you can respond in any of a number of ways, Mr. Zasadny.

• You can come back for the next round of caucuses and conventions, and try to consolidate your control of the MNGOP.
• You can replicate your Liberty movement organization that suceeded so wildly – at least at conquering the party organization – in other states, and take over more states, to gain more control of the party apparatus so that the next time the rules fight comes up, you’ll fight the battle with more than just a thin rump of delegates from Minnesota and Nevada.
• You can learn the lessons that every spunky class of political newcomers does; that politics is a marathon, not a sprint.  And all of you Ron Paul supporters that got into the game last February at the caucuses?  You’ve just been sprinting.  You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Or you can react to the perceived “throat cutting” (which wasn’t; the party has every right to organize itself to present its winning candidate in as monolithically-positive light as possible, free of the yelping of what is, let’s be honest, a small minority of the delegates) by doing what Mr. Zasadny and the “leadership” of CD5 have done; taking the knife out of their throats and jamming it into their eye sockets, and twisting it 720 degrees.

Mr. Zasadny:  You were sent to Tampa to represent the Republican Party.  Part of being a delegate to a Party convention is supporting The Party.  Whether you agree with it or not.  That’s not to say you can’t be a principled dissenter – I’ve done that myself – but not   while speaking as an elected delegate at the party’s convention.

The MNGOP is, and should be, a big tent.  It should have room for fiscalcons and libertarians, and even the odd “moderate” who doesn’t screw the rest of the party on taxes and regulation.  As a Tea Party libertarian conservative, I’m more than sympathetic to the Libertarian cause; I came back to the MNGOP in 1999 mostly to try to push the libertarian-conservative cause in the GOP.  So not only am I a sympathetic ear – I was pushing the Liberty cause long before most of you were involved in the MNGOP.

But when you betray the party while serving as a party delegate?

The question isn’t “should Mr. Zasadny and those who think like him make themselves absent from future GOP events”.  The question is “how badly have people like Mr. Zasadny and the CD5 “leadership” hurt the cause of the genuine Liberty supporters that have come to the GOP to do some good – and in many cases, have delivered on it?

Because there are a few babies among the bathwater.

I’ve been a huge Dinesh D’Souza fan since I read his Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary President over a decade ago; it may have been the best Reagan bio ever.

And I got a chance to see 2016 over the weekend.  It didn’t disappoint:

The movie’s thesis is…

(Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk spoilers below the jump, although to be fair I think much of what’s in the movie has been in the public domain; this is just the first high-profile place I’ve seen it all collected into one coherent thesis)

(more…)

…and ripped it out of the railbed, and beat Obama and the Dems over the head with it?

P.J. O’Rourke – the greatest writer of my generation, even though he’s a generation older than me – writes on the dolorous effect of the Baby Boomers on not just American society, but the idea of America.

O’Rourke laments the death of far-sweeping goals – going to the moon, building the biggest dam or the tallest building, being the biggest and the baddest:

But if America is still rich and strong, why should it matter that we’re no longer interested in doing anything spectacular? Maybe critics of an America whose grasp exceeds its reach are victims of atavistic machismo. Maybe we have Freudian issues. Professional help might be in order. No Americans are scheduled to go to Mars, but plenty are scheduled to go to therapy. Perhaps the realities of 2012 demand a change in attitude.

Except the change has already happened, the result of our shift from an exterior to an interior existence. America once valued the high-skilled. Now we value the high-minded. We used to admire bold ideas. Now we admire benign idealism. This doesn’t make us good, it makes us wrong. The bold can be achieved. Of the ideal, there is none in this life.

And why does it matter?

America’s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn’t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s also a bad advertising campaign. America has one great product to sell, individual liberty. It’s attractive, useful, healthy, and the fate of the world depends upon it.

We are the most important and maybe the only country that fully embodies the sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility of each and every person. “American” is not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a culture; it’s a fact of human freedom. Our country was not created and is not governed by a ruling class or even by majority rule. America is individuals exercising their right to do what they think is best with due respect (to the extent human nature allows) for the right of all other Americans to do likewise. This is not an ideology or a system. This is a blessing.

You should read the whole  thing.  And vote accordingly.

What does this chart represent?

No, it’s not the Brett Favre Media Bell Curve. It’s the comparison between:

• Obama’s projected unemployment with Porkulus (Dark blue line)
• Obama’s projected unemployment without Porkulus (Light blue line)
• The actual unemployment rate (Red dots)

Question for all you Democrats; if Romney releases his tax returns, will those red dots merge with the blue line?

(Via Instapundit)

They call him The Seeker

After 46 years in politics, will Wisconsin’s electorate ask of Tommy Thompson who are you?

To appropriate Israeli politician Abba Eban’s historic quote about the Palestinians, it can be said that former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The father of welfare reform and four-time gubernatorial winner in a state whose political environment was more blue than purple at the time, Thompson seemed like he was destined to advance on the national stage.  A presidential run in 1996 or 2000 would not have seemed a far-fetched idea.  Instead, Thompson made a quixotic bid in 2008.  Likewise, Thompson could have easily sought the U.S. Senate back home, with even conservatives hoping he’d run as recently as 2006 or 2010.  Instead, at 70 years of age, Thompson has bet on a political return after a 14 year electoral absence.

And for the moment, it’s a bet that Thompson is winning.  Despite an expensive and bruising primary against three other strong candidates, Thompson narrowly emerged the victor.  But after facing a self-funding primary opponent in Eric Hovde, Thompson enters the general election with a $3 million to $350,000 deficit against Democrat Tammy Baldwin.  Worse for Thompson, the double-digit polling lead he held as recently as May has turned into what Real Clear Politics averages out to basically a tie.  And this against the most liberal member of the House of Representatives according to National Journal‘s Vote Rankings.  Baldwin isn’t merely blue, she’s downright phthalo.

Some of the factors weighing down Thompson’s numbers are easy enough to spot.  Thompson has been attacked from the Right for more than a year – the Club for Growth was airing anti-Thompson ads as far back as August of 2011 and spent $1.7 million on the race.  The result may not have been a Thompson primary loss, but the ads definitely turned Thompson’s approval/disapproval numbers upside down, 43% to 39%.  And Baldwin hasn’t been simply waiting for the Republican primary to end to start her campaign as she’s already spent $4.6 million preparing the November battlefield.

But the largest factor holding back Thompson is himself.  A man who first came into office in 1966 is poorly set to capture the zeitgeist of an electorate that has tired of career politicians.  And while Wisconsin voters are less inclined to vote Democrat, as was the case in 1986 when Thompson was elected governor, they’ve also become less inclined to cross party lines in their voting habits.  Thompson’s blue-collar appeal that helped him win in union strongholds like La Crosse or Green Bay doesn’t mean as much when union households (or any other reliable Democrat constituency) will no longer even consider voting for someone with an ‘R’ next to their name.

None of this is to suggest Thompson can’t win.  In fact, he may already be slightly ahead as a Marquette poll has him up 5%.  That’s a far cry for a former governor whose lowest re-election percentage was 58% and still a distance away from a race that looked in the bag merely months ago.

…and this is it.

Expect a surge in building French restaurants in Switzerland.

Oh, yeah. And expect the French to recoup a fraction of the money they expect to recoup from it.

As I’ve noted over the years, I was born, grew up and went to college in North Dakota.  I left when I was 22 – largely because everything I really wanted to do with my life involved one kind of city or another.  At that time, “things I wanted to do with my life” mostly included “have a band and take a shot at making it in a city with a decent music scene” – but over time, everything else I ended up wanting to do tended to involve living in a major city as well.

In 1985, North Dakota was in pretty dire straits.  The state had a lot in common with Minneapolis and Saint Paul, back then; it was in the throes of the deflation of a huge real estate bubble, in this case a bubble in the price of farm land which had led an awful lot of farmers to over-borrow, which led to a huge wave of foreclosures when the bubble finally burst.  Foreclosures zoomed, unemployment soared, the whole US agriculture industry reeled (no state more than North Dakota, which was at the time more dependent on agriculture than any state in the union).  The farm crisis of the eighties took place in the fly-overiest of America’s flyover lands, and so left only a few marks on the larger American psyche – some good, some pretty awful.

The state learned a few lessons from the eighties (which also included a brief boom and long bust in the oil market; the Oil Embargo in the seventies caused a brief burst of drilling in the western part of the state, which led to some rapid expansion and equally rapid contraction when the price of oil dropped the below the point where North Dakota oil made economic sense).

Of course, times have changed in my home state.  The place is floating in oil, and money to boot.  And that money is going to a lot of things – and infrastructure isn’t as high on the list as some (MPR) seem to think it should be.  There’s method to the madness, of course; during the first oil boom, North Dakota built all kinds of infrastructure that wasn’t needed when the boom shriveled.  While this boom may not shrivel in the same way, the state also knows that there’s a pattern to oil booms; the first ten or twenty years is the Boomtown phase, with hordes of workers drilling exploratory rigs all over the place.  Once all the exploring is done, and things switch over to production mode?  There’s still lots of oil, jobs and money – but it’s not the same.  It’s steadier. And a lot of the “boom” will move on to the next boomtown, wherever that is.  And the infrastructure needs will be very different.

Still, it’s very different than when other NYTimes columnists were calling for the state to be evacuated and handed back to nature – the infamous “Buffalo Commons”.

Our nation’s idiot media “elite” have never known what to make of the place.

I bring it up because the New York Times is writing about North Dakota again.  Gail Collins, as trifling and meringue-y a columnist as Maureen Dowd,  h paid the state a visit recently, and wrote a column that TMZ might have rejected as too shallow and caricature-worthy:

Right now you are probably asking yourself: “What would it be like to live in a place with an unemployment rate of 1 percent?”

Me, too! So I went to Williston, N.D., to find out. There are certain things that journalists do as a public service because you, the noble reader, are probably not going to do them for yourself — like attending charter revision meetings or reading the autobiography of Tim Pawlenty.

Or take Gail Collins seriously.

But she gets a key fact straight; there are jobs out in oil country:

Going to Williston is sort of in this category. The people are lovely, but you’re talking about a two-hour drive from Minot.

If you did come, however, you would feel really, really wanted. Radio ads urged me to embark on a new career as a bank teller, laborer, railroad conductor or cake decorator. The local Walmart has a big sign up, begging passers-by to consider starting their lives anew in retail sales. The Bakken Region Recruiter lists openings in truck driving, winch operating and canal maintenance work, along with ads for a floral designer, bartender, public defender, loan officer, addiction counselor and sports reporter. All in an area where the big city has a population of around 16,000.

There’s an oil boom…Williston’s median income, which was under $30,000 when the serious drilling started, has jumped to well over $50,000 a year…“It’s a place of opportunity,” says E. Ward Koeser, the genial head of a local communications company who has also been Williston’s part-time mayor for the last 18 years. A waitress at a restaurant that Koeser patronizes recently told him that she made $400 in tips on a single night. “Although I’m sure that’s not the norm,” he added hastily.

(As someone who used to work in part for tips in ND, it sure isn’t.  I drove an airport van for a hotel.  You could always tell when someone visited from New York or LA; I’d get a $5 tip for driving and hauling the bags.  Minneapolis?  A couple of bucks.  North Dakotans?  Nothing.  Or a quarter.  And that was meant to be a good tip).

You are probably wondering about the downside.

Indeed, if you’re in the MSM, you’re obsessing about it.  This is wealth not bestowed by government; there just has to be a dark side to it all!

Obviously there has to be one, or you and I would already have moved to Williston, or at least taken up a collection to send unemployed college graduates.

We’ll come back to that.

You would expect that, as population and incomes rose, new stores, theaters and restaurants would follow. But, in Williston, they haven’t. Lanny Gabbert, a science teacher at the high school, says his students yearn for a mall where they could shop, “but the closest thing is Walmart.” The most ambitious restaurants would be classified under the heading of “casual dining,” and the fast food is not fast, given the lunchtime lines that can stretch out for 20 minutes or more. Neither retailers nor restaurateurs are interested in investing in a place where they have to compete with the oil fields to attract workers.

So the “downside” is that relatively great wealth hasn’t brought a Rodeo Drive to Williston.

OK, fair enough.  Let’s continue.

Housing costs in Williston, N.D., are approaching those in New York City. Many of the oil workers stash their families back wherever they came from, and live in “man camps,” some of which resemble giant stretches of storage units.

“The man camps — I call them the necessary evil,” said Koeser, who added, apologetically, “that’s a little derogatory.”

If the place you love can’t quite climb out of the recession, think of this as consolation. At least you’re not living in a man camp and waiting half an hour in line for a Big Mac.

Which is as excellent a metaphor for Obama’s America, the America of Planet Upper West Side, as there is; better to have amenities than a job – even a job in a place that may not be up the street from Fifth Avenue or the Mall of America.

Not-Obama America?   I know guys who wake up in West Saint Paul on Sunday morning, drive all day to Williston, make a ton of money, and drive home after work Thursday.  I know guys – my sister’s husband among ’em – who spend two weeks driving a truck in oil country and a week at home, because it’s where the money is and a great way to blast that nest egg to the next level.  People who, by desire or by necessity, have taken the recession by the horns and done what needs to be done to keep themselves and their families not just above water, but in the black at a time when the likes of Gail Collins are sniveling about their friends’ brats who just graduated from Bard College with an art degree and somehow can’t find a job with a hedge fund.

(Via North Dakota’s official blogger, and my Mom’s neighbor, Rob Port)

And with all the prelims out of the way, we’re up to the grand finale of this, one of Minnesota Politics’ greatest traditions; the top ten conservatives that Minnesota liberals hate!

And here we go:

10. Laura Brod (2010 Ranking: 14): Brod – a former legislator, and one of the sharpest, most articulate politicians in the state, is lurking in the wings for her shot at something.  And when she does, she’s going to rock the place.  And when conservative women are about to rock, liberals salute them – with boundless,  condescending, sometimes unhinged ire.

9. John Kline (2010 Ranking: 15):  Redistricting has cut John Kline’s fortunes back a tad.  Instead of winning the 2nd CD by 30 points, he’ll win by 12.  It was only 12 years or so ago that the 2nd was Tim Penny’s safe sinecure.  And in Minnesota, only Liberals are supposed to have sinecures.

7. Keith Downey: Downey’s a fairly junior legislator – but during the shutdown, he made “Govenor” Dayton look like the gabbling marionette he is.  As his nominator, my staff blogger First Ringer, noted, “During the shutdown, the unions called their protests “Downeyville.” Not bad for a 2nd term legislator. Expect his name to rocket up this list if he runs for governor in 2014 as expected”. No argument here.

8. Kurt Zellers: Speaker of the House – what some DFLers call “The Kelliher Seat”.  And he’s Conservative.  Say no more.

6. Erik Paulsen (2010 Ranking: 21):  What do you call someone who took a “purple” district and rode it into one of the safest GOP seats in the state?  Hated!  But nothing like…

5. Chip Cravaack:  …someone who “steals” one of “their” safest sinecures from them. The DFL wants Cravaack defeated more than they want tofu at Festivus.  By far the strongest debut in this year’s poll, from nowhere (naturally – when the 2010 poll was going on, nobody had heard of Cravaack, even in the GOP, outside the 8th CD).

4. Jason Lewis (2010 Ranking: 7):  Lewis, perhaps more than any other pundit, upset the “great thing” the DFL had going for so many years.  He’s the father of modern conservatism in Minnesota – and clearly that’s neither been forgotten nor forgiven.

3. Tom Emmer (2010 Ranking: 3):  They had to outspend him 3:1 to beat him by 8,000 votes, even with a dysfunctional GOP behind him.  In so doing, they so exposed the incompetence and (likely) massive fraud in the DFL-controlled voting system that it set the wheels in motion to reform the entire toxic mess.  And Tom is still kicking their asses.  No wonder he’s holding steady at #3.

2. Katherine Kersten (2010 Ranking: 4): Liberals love their women to be the PC equivalent of barefoot, preggers and in the kitchen.  Kersten broke the Blue Ceiling at the Strib – the first columnist to be an “Out” conservative, in a bullpen that has always called Dave Durenberger a right-winger.  She rankled the establishment at the Strib, and in Twin CIties liberalism at large.  They hate being rankled.

1. Michele Bachmann (2010 Ranking: 1):  Not even close.  More votes than the next two finishers put together.  Not only that, but of everyone that voted for her, all but one put her in first place – for a passion index a point and a half higher than the next competitor.  Representative Bachmann is the perfect bete noir storm; sharp, articulate (if occasionally a bit shoot-from-the-hip), attractive, female, paleoconservative, charismatic, smarter than they are (whether they admit it or not), and absolute master of all she politically surveys.  By holding, Thatcher-like, to rock-solid principle, she was a bright spot in two dark GOP elections; she’s persevered to win her last race by 12 points, and likely win her next one by 20.  And if there’s anything a Minnesota liberal hates more than a conservative woman, it’s a conservative woman who walks over them without breaking a sweat at their most depraved attacks.  More than that?  Their hatred only seems to make her stronger.

And in being so, she teaches all conservatives in this purple miasma a lesson; stake out your principles, explain them clearly, and stand by ’em.

And in that lies the doom of the DFL, if there is any future to be had for this state.

And they do very very much hate that.

———-

Thanks for voting, and stay tuned; we’ve only two years away from the next episode of “Who Do Minnesota Liberals Hate?”

All right.  Yesterday we got through the nominees and the finishers from 21 through 37 in the rankings.

This morning, we’re up to the first half of the Top Twenty!

20. Ed Morrissey (2010 Ranking 10):  The Hot Air proprietor, and my long-time radio co-host, slides ten spots since 2010.  Liberals’ hate seems to be more closely focused on policymakers than pundits these days.

19. Bob Davis: On the other hand, Bob Davis’ return to Twin Cities radio also marks his debut on the list.

18. Sue Jeffers: Is it because she’s a conservative talk-radio playa?  Or because she’s a GOP candidate (for Ramco Commission) and activist?  Or because she’s an outspoken female conservative?  Why choose!  Libs hate her!

17. Chris Fields: If there’s anything a lib hates more than a “Minority” who’s not sitting obediently on the DFL bus, it’s one who, rhetorically, shreds his DFL opponent in every way but fundraising.

16. Mitch Berg (2010 Ranking 8 ):  Even though I slide eight spots – what a wonderful country this is!  Where a regular schlump working stiff with a blog can be the 16th-most-hated conservative in town!

15. Tea Party (2010 Ranking 24):  The libs have spent the past three years flip-flopping between “The Tea Party is Dead!” and “The Tea Party Is Too Powerful!”.  Time to flop, apparently.

14. Dan McGrath / MN Majority: The driving force behind the bipartisan Voter ID amendment, MN Majority and Dan McGrath, leapt into the top 20 this year.  If Mark Ritchie were doing the counting, he’d have won by thousands, though.

13. Dave Thompson: The former talk host and leader of the Senate’s “I Don’t Give A Rat’s Ass If The Strib Editorial Board Doesn’t Approve” caucus would seem to be at the beginning of a long career as the object of liberal hate.

12. Mary Franson: Female?  Check.  Conservative?  Check.  Shred the Dems when they convicted her in rhetorical Kangaroo Court?  Check.  Representative Franson didn’t have the highest debut, but it was close.

11. Tim Pawlenty (2010 Ranking 2):  Falling from 2 to 11, former Governor Pawlenty will no doubt leap to the top of the charts if he’s selected for VP.

Noon today:  The Top Ten Titans Of Liberal Ire.

Two years ago, we had 30 nominees with a significant number of votes that we could actually rank.

This year, there were 40.

And so in this episode, I’ll give the results from 40 up to 21:

40. Bridget Sutton: The southeast metro activist, Inver Grove Heights school board member, wife of former GOP chair Tony, and potential candidate for many things, Sutton makes her first appearance on the poll.

39. Jen DeJournette: One of the heads of “VOICES of Conservative Women”, DeJournette was one of a big surge in female nominees and vote-getters.

38. Katie Kieffer (2010 Ranking 30): Kieffer, the up-and-coming conservative columnist, actually got about the same number of votes as in 2010.  The competition was just that much more intense this year.

37. Alan Quist (2010 Ranking: Nominated): Quist would probably have finished around this point in 1998, if I’d had a blog then…

36. Gretchen Hoffman: The no-nonsense – and, unfortunately, retiring – Senator from northwest Minnesota will be missed, here and especially at the Capitol.

35. Any Corporation that stands up to them: Pretty self-explanatory.

34. Sarah Palin: I did label the poll “Minnesota” conservatives – but I think this is accurate enough.

33. Michael Brodkorb (2010 Ranking 5): The former Senate Commo director, Party deputy and NARN co-host dropped sharply this year.  Liberals apparently hate him less because he’s not focusing on, and shredding, them.

32. All Female and Minority Conservatives: This may have been the overriding theme of this poll; it’s the women and the “Minorities”.

31. Scott Walker: You don’t have to be a Minnesotan for Minnesota liberals to hate you.

30. John Hinderaker (2010 Ranking 13): The acerbic Power Line blogger dropped out of the top 20 this year.

26. Tony Sutton (2010 Ranking: Nominated):  Sutton’s profile as the target of lefty ire certainly grew in the past two years.

28. Tom Hauser / KSTP TV: Hauser and The Five got some votes this year, from people who noted that Twin Cities liberals have been whining that they are “conservative flaks”.  Which is apparently a Twin Cities liberal term for “actually reports facts about Republicans”, even if they’re not unflattering.

27. Twila Brase (2010 Ranking 28): Brase – my neighbor – stays at about the same level of general loathing.  This next two years may change that.

26. Sara Anderson: The majordomo of the Republican redistricting plan was certain to be  the target of plenty of lefty animus, given the left’s propensity for attacking people when they can’t attack facts.

25. Steve Drazkowski: The Senator from southeast Minnesota certainly spent this past session fielding the brickbats.

24. Pat Garofalo: The Lakeville rep took his share of flak and then some for leading the challenge of Minnesota’s big herd of sacred cattle, Education Minnesota, and raising his hand for Minnesota taxpayers.

23. Kurt Bills: The MN Senate candidate made a strong debut showing.

22. Matt Dean: The House Majority Leader also had a strong debut.

21. Bradlee Dean (2010 Ranking 17): I’m not sure that Dean is actually hated any less; it’s just that with the Minnesota “Independent” out of business, there’s not somebody writing about him eight hours a day, every day.

We’ll have 11 through 20 tomorrow morning, and wrap up the contest with the top ten tomorrow at noon!

Before we get to the ranked results from the poll, I thought I’d run both a quick explanation of the mechanics of the poll, and then a look at the Minnesota conservatives and groups that got nominations, but no votes.

First;  I took the list of votes in descending order of hatred.  Votes at the top of a list got more weight than votes at the bottom.  I entered the votes and weights into a spreadsheet, tallying both number and weight of votes.  That’s how all ties were broken; a tie between two nominees with the same vote total was broken by the nominees’ “Passion Index”, or average weight per vote.  Someone who got five second-place votes would out-score someone with five tenth-place votes, for a hypothetical example, although someone with six tenth-place votes would beat someone with five first-place votes (hypothetically; it never happened).

The poll is extremely unscientific. and uses a methodology that any statistician with a yen to seek the truth giggle with derision – which means it’s the same as the Star-Tribune “Minnesota Poll” and the Humphrey Institute’s “HHH Poll”.  However, my poll is intended for entertainment, not as “journalism” (or, just as likely, an attempt to sway the vote), which gives my poll a bit of a moral and ethical advantage.

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The poll – and Minnesota conservatism – have changed a bit in the past two years.  Some people who placed on the poll two years ago didn’t show up at all this year: Entrepreneurs, who placed 27; Tracy Eberly, who notched a 25; Brian “Saint Paul” Ward who came in at 2; Rep. and then candidate King Banaian who eked out a 20; Phil Krinkie, who came in at 12; Carol Molnau, who finished at 11, and the biggest dropper, David Strom, who came in at sixth place two years ago.

So with that out of the way, let’s take a look at nominees who received just one vote:

Brad Carlson: The NARN’s newest co-host makes his initial appearance in the list.

John Gilmore:  The St. Paul activist makes his first appearance – although the current crowd of St. Paul Republicans may have ranked him higher.

MIchelle Benson: Senator Benson is the first of many female conservatives on this years’ list.

Paul Mirengoff (2010 Ranking 23) and Scott Johnson (2010 Ranking 16): The Power Line colleagues – both of whom ranked in the money last year – fell off a bit this year.

Taxpayers League: And that wasn’t the only surprise.

Jack Tomczak: The former Bachmann aided turned talk show host turned punching bag of the deranged is just getting started in the “Target of Hate” business.  He’s had a great start this year.

Joe Soucheray (2010 Ranking 26): The change to sports talk hasn’t helped Souch’s fortunes – misfortunes? – in this poll.

Marianne Stebbins: The head of Minnesota’s Ron Paul movement gets on the board – barely.  She might have scored higher among some MN Republicans.

Mary Kiffmeyer (2010 Ranking – nominated): The former secretary of state got one vote both years.  This won’t be the last we’ll hear of Voter ID, though.

AM1280 The Patriot (2010 Ranking – nominated): The little station that could…did.

Roger Chamberlain: The Freshman senator from White Bear Lake started what should be a good career as a lefty piñata (that swats back harder)

Tom Hackbarth: Libs considered the Senator guilty until proven innocent last year – but this year, there’s no question that at least one voter thinks MN liberals hate Tom Hackbarth.

Michele Bachmann’s Dog: From a voter who nominated quite a few other members of Bachmann’s household.

Stanley Hubbard: Liberals apparently think that acknowledging conservatives occasionally have a point – as Channel Five did during the 2010 campaign – makes you “just like Fox News”.

Walter Hudson: The Tea Party leader showed up on the tally this year.

Andrew Breitbart: Notwithstanding that he’s not a Minnesotan, Breitbart got a nod.

Pat Anderson (2010 Ranking: Nominated): The former State Auditor can run the numbers if she wants, but she came in the same place she did in 2010.

Michele Bachmann’s Kids: Unless one of them turns out to hate her.  Then they’ll love the kid.  Til they reconcile.

Norm Coleman (2010 Ranking – 9): From #9 in 2010 to a single vote this year, Coleman is not the mightiest to fall in this edition of the poll.

Tony Hernandez: The Fourth CD Republican got nominated by one voter who concentrated on “minority” and female conservatives.

Kermit (2010 Ranking: Nominated): Kermit holds steady after two years.  That’s not bad!

Marcus Bachmann: I’d have put the Representative’s husband higher.  But the Bachmann family has plenty of votes, all in all…

Anyone with half a brain: Someone wanted to cut to the chase.

Swiftee (2010 Ranking 29): Swiftee – persona non grata at just about every Twin Cities leftyblog (including MinnPost) actually got more votes this year than in 2010.  The competition was just that much harder.  But Swiftee was a perennial in these things long before there were blogs…

Coming up at noon today – the back of the pack!