Yeah, I dug it:

It wasn’t the outcome I expected.

In some ways, it was better.

Top stories from last night:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So far.

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

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

Joe Doakes from the Como Park neighborhood for Saint Paul write to the new MNGOP majority in the Legislature:

Looks as if you’ll control the state House and Senate, but Dayton will be governor. Obviously, his tax-the-rich plan isn’t going anywhere in the Legislature. But how will you get your austerity budget signed?

Remember when the Democrats sent Pawlenty a tax-increasing budget on the last day of the session and he vetoed it, thinking he could use the unallotment process to balance the budget? Democrats rushed to Court to get Pawlenty’s actions declared unconstitutional. Their argument was he should have vetoed the budget and shut down the government.

It was the great political food fight of the past biennium.

Back to Joe:

Learning from your mistakes is a sign of wisdom. Now that you control the Legislature, pass a slash-and-burn budget on the last day of the session and force Dayton to either (1) sign it, thereby pleasing your constituency while infuriating his; or (2) veto it and shut down the government, thereby mildly annoying your constituency while infuriating his.

Sure, he can call you back for a special session. Doesn’t mean you have to pass anything different the second time around. Keep sending him the same deal until he takes it. Remember, he can’t unallot – they made sure of that – so you’re in the driver’s seat.

This last bit is what’s important:

One more thing : buy some earplugs. The weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth by the unions, welfare recipients and drive-by media will be deafening if you don’t. Ignore them and do the right thing. Your kids and your grandkids will be glad you did.

And if you don’t, you’ll have a great time telling those kids and grandkids about your one term in Saint Paul.

Because you have a mandate. You rode to Saint Paul on a wave of energy, passion, enthusiasm, anger and determination like this nation has not seen – ever! Last night’s victories, in Minnesota and nationwide, were not part of a centrally-orchestrated campaign; this was the sound twenty million newly-minted conservative activists make when they realize that our government is out of control

You are where you are because of us.

You must not seek accomodation with the DFL, or with Governor Dayton.  Politics is about compromise, of course – but unlike GOP caucuses of the past, you must obtain those compromises by squeezing the DFL for their fair share and then some.

We won.  The MNGOP over history has found a million ways to make that phrase ring hollow.  That history must end today.

We didn’t send you to Saint Paul to play kissyface with Lori Sturdevant and Rachel Stassen-Berger.  We didn’t send you there to become popular with Larry “The Stats Masseuse” Jacobs or the Strib Editorial Board.

We sent you there to kick the DFL’s ass.  We sent you there to tell this state’s preening, self-appointed elite that no, we are not “happy to pay and pay and pay for a better Minnesota for the AFSCME and the SEIU.  We sent you there to change Minnesota

Get to work.  We’re watching.  We put you there, and we’ll be more than happy to bring you home.

The roots of the GOP’s defeat in 2006 and 2008 started in 1994.

We sent a class of Congresspeople to Washington.

They arrived in Washington – and then they went Washington.

They turned into creatures of the Beltway.

They did it because we allowed them to.  We allowed them to become creatures of expedience; we let them believe it was more important to be liked by the New York Times and to get into the WaPo’s soirees than it was to stick to the principles that had gotten them elected.

We elected them – and then we trusted them.

We can not make that mistake again.

We,the people, must keep breathing down their necks.  We must be the voices they hear at night; “don’t mistake this mandate for a blank check.  You owe us.“

And we need to keep it up.  We must not stop.  We must keep showing the energy we showed this past 18 months, we started rallying in our millions, oblivious to our idiot “elite’s” ridicule.  We put them in office; we must not be afraid to take them back out.

Like the Spartans, we must tell our newly-minted conservative legislators, in Saint Paul and in DC, “come back with your shields, or on them”.  Death or glory.  Politics is about compromise – but make the Dems pay.

That’s why we gave you the mandate.

If you squander this mandate you’ll have me and a few million more like me to answer to.

Here’s your mandate.  Don’t screw it up.

America is afraid tonight.

Afraid that the great recession is far from over. Afraid the government, having pulled every lever in the cockpit, may not be able to save us this time.

Make no mistake, no matter what the results tomorrow, occupational anxiety will persist. High unemployment levels will not soon abate. Waves of foreclosures, bank and insurance company failures will pepper the landscape for months and maybe years to come while Obama administration policymakers chant eenie meenie miney moe.

Small businesses are wondering when the recovery will come in their mailbox. Many Americans are wondering when Obama and his people are finally going to show up and save them from their misery. Those that can see farther are afraid America itself may not be salvageable and that no one can save us from the misery to come.

The numbers are so large and the odds so long…they might be right.

Everybody knows the GOP is going to hand the DNC it’s ass tomorrow but I agree with Rasmussen.

…a fundamental rejection of both political parties.

More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve.

It’s not so much that America sees the GOP as the party that has the secret sauce. No. It’s more like right now they’re the cream of the crap.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Emmer and Paulsen and Hann and Stensrud and will be voting for conservatives across the board out here in the West. But the victories tomorrow night, and there will be many, will be empty for many of us that wonder if anyone anywhere has the stomach to make the decisions that America needs now.

Fact is, George Bush’s fiscal policies destroyed any claim the GOP had on fiscal reserve. And yet, Obama, belying thin hopes that his presidency would be more about ambition than ideology, drove the agenda so far left that it would be a conservative’s dream if it weren’t for the monumental damage it has done to our nation.

It took policies so wasteful, so misguided, so unpopular and on a scale so inconceivable to manifest a contrast with the GOP’s fiscal policies. It is solely stupefied disbelief that will drive Americans to vote for Republicans tomorrow in a proportion that may make statistical history.

To think that the GOP will soon be jettisoned back to 1994 politically was unthinkable just a few months ago.

We must hope – demand – that the opportunity this time won’t be equally squandered.

I moved to Minnesota 25 years ago.

I moved here because my home state, North Dakota, was mired in an epic farm depression – and even in the best of times, the job market for a guy with a BA in English and a drive to be a writer was dodgy.

I moved to find opportunity.  I worked my ass off, and eventually found it.

But I look at the Minnesota that a forty-year near-monopoly stranglehold of DFL control has had left behind – but for a few hopeful years in the past decade – and wonder “would I move here if I were getting out of college today?”

And “will my kids have any reason to stay here?”

Eight years ago, I might have said “absolutely’!” without reservation.  Sane adults were taking over.  Even Saint Paul had been run for quite some time by guys – Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly – who could focus on what mattered, at least by Saint Paul DFL standards.

But Minnesota’s sliding backwards.  Businesses are leaving.  And Mark Dayton’s entire goal is to make sure goverment wants for absolutely nothing.

It’s a recipe for decay, decline, and failure.  Ask the Greeks.  Ask California and New York.

It reminds me of the years not long before I moved to Minnesota.  The Carter years – the years of malaise and hopelessness.

What would America have given, in retrospect, to have avoided the years of malaise? Of hopelessness?  Of that feeling that we were rolling downhill like the proverbial snowball headed for hell?

We found our redemption, of course – in Reagan, in a way, but in a larger sense in rediscovering part of our nation’s soul.

So what will Minnesota choose?  Lining up like dutiful oxen to drag the wagon of government forward, groaning and creaking as the driver cracks the whip ever louder as the going gets tougher?

Or will it choose to again become the place that drew my great-grandparents from the old country, over 100 years ago – a place of opportunity, of untapped potential?  The place that spawned my paternal grandparents, where gumption and will and hard, hard work could lead one to a better place (even if that place was North Dakota, for a few generations?)  The place that has the potential to be for our kids what it was for me?

Mark Dayton is the candidate of stagnation.  Of decay and decline.  He is the driver on that oxcart.  He wants you to be good, compliant, oxen – happy to drag your days away for a Better Minnesota.

Tomorrow is your chance to choose better.

To choose growth over decay.

To choose the American, and Minnesotan, spirit over the soulless miasma of the bureaucracy.

To choose the spark of personal initiative, creativity and soul over the deadening hand of Big Mother Government.

To choose freedom, prosperity and happiness over lumpen gray satiation.

Vote Emmer.

Previous Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor

#2: Moving Minnesota Forward

#3: You And I

#4: Playing To Our Strengths

#5: The Overhaul

Who does government work for?

If you said “us”, either you aren’t from Minnesota, or you are hopelessly naive.

For the past forty years in Minnesota, the state budget has grown, consistently, vastly faster than inflation.  Not just a little faster, but much, much, much, much faster.

No matter who was in charge – DFLers or, until recently, the equally-liberal “Republicans” like Arne Carlson – the budget grew, year in and year out, usually by double digits.

Worse, during the good times our productivity was taxed to excess, giving even more of the results of our labor and creativity to the government than it thought it was going to get.  And the government, rather than giving it back from whence it came, decided to find still more things to spend that money on, “obligating” us to keep that spending going full-steam when times got tighter.

Minnesota has been on a treadmill designed to ensure that government gets what it needs – and wants – first and foremost, for the past forty years.

And there is no way we can keep it going.  If Minnesota adopts the budget that the DFL and the state’s machinery demands – a 20% increase over the previous biennium – it will be followed in the next biennium by another 10-20% increase, and then another, and then another, until by the time our children have to try to run things our entire state economy will exist, one way or another, to feed government.

Absurd?

Of course.  Because no economy can sustain that kind of growth.  The market will collapse, as it did in Greece, and as it is in California.  The private sector will go Galt, as indeed Minnesota corporations are starting to do now – keeping their corporate headquarters here, for now, but moving service and manufacturing and even engineering jobs to Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Mississippi, and India because Minnesota is too damn expensive.

There is one candidate who will get in front of this trend, stand astride it, and yell “Stop” – whose vision involves stopping the train not only before it drives off the cliff, but turning it around and changing the way this state operations – with zero-based budgeting, with a rational appraisal of what government should be doing, with a focus on what really makes Minnesota great – Minnesotans, with their infinite motivation and creativity, working in their enlightened self-interest, backstopped with their voluntary, communitarian spirit.

Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan said America faced A Time for Choosing.

Minnesota is in the same place today as we were 46, and 30, years ago. It is a time for choosing.  Freedom and prosperity?  Or mediocrity and serfdom to the soulless bureaucracy?

Choose freedom.  Vote Emmer.

Previous Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor

#4: Buck The Narrative

#5:  Our Better Nature

There are two duelling narratives at work in the Minnesota gubernatorial election this year.

One of them is a huge, national narrative; the immense, perhaps unprecedented in 65-100 years, backlash against the currently-absolutely-ruling party.  Conservatism is, by most rational accounts, about to deal a thrashing to liberalism that’ll make the 1994 election look like a flip of the Scott County Soil and Water district‘s power structure.  Whatever it is.  The point being, the “Narrative” is that the GOP wave rolls and breaks, sweeping away liberal politicians from coast to coast.  The left fears the wave; when you have liberal Democrats backing and filling and trying to portray themselves as conservatives and telling a sitting president two years off the biggest electoral mandate in decades to “shove it“, and even the likes of Lori Sturdevant are filling their sandbags (didja know Larry Pogemiller has grown more conservative?  Lori says so!), there’s a narrative out there.  And of course, the counter-narrative, from the DFL and the media (pardon, as always, the redundancy, and it’ll be a joy to be done with this campaign if only so I can retire that particular phrase for the next 18 months or so), is that Minnesota is the state that always bucks that trend; we voted against Reagan in ’84! (for a native son, at a time when our GOP was indistinguishable from the DFL).  The narrative says that conservatives, usually Republican, are going to win and win big.

The counternarrative, being pushed by the DFL and their BFFs in the regional media?  The hope that they can manufacture some change in one of the DFL’s greatest frustrations; the Chicago-Cubs-like inability to win the big prize, the governor’s office.  The DFL hasn’t had an elected governor in a generation, since 1986, when Rudy Perpich slouched into his last, ludicrous term (Jesse Ventura doesn’t count, even though he fronted the DFL-lite “Independence Party”, and his policy strings were pulled by “moderate” DFLers Tim Penny and Dean Barkley, and since he had no party representation in the Legislature he had to spend his entire term spooning with Roger Moe to get anything done, and essentially governed as an insane man who, paradoxically, was sane for a DFLer).  The press’ desire for change in the governor’s office – for a DFLer, any DFLer, even an ersatz one like Tom Horner – is almost physically palpable.  And it reminds one of the old parable of the frogs who wished for a king, and were sent a stork.  Storks eat frogs, lest the irony escape you.

The media, for all their caterwauling about reporting what actually happens, loves narratives.  It satisfies the human desire to bring order and pattern to chaos (not to mention putting their party in control, with an aim toward redistricting Michele Bachmann out of Congress, since those stupid voters keep refusing to do it for them).

Screw the narratives.

Minnesota needs not only a leader, but a leader whose goal and mission is to break with the bigger, longer, more debilitating narrative that’s driven this state for far, far too long – that Minnesota is a big-government, big-“service”, big expense state.  It was a model that arguably worked a few decades ago, when our economy and our world were very, very different places that were a lot more forgiving of wholesale patronage and gross inefficiency.  More on that in tomorrow’s installment of this series.

Minnesota needs a new narrative – one that we, The People, write as we go, through our own merits and drive and energy and determination.  Not one written at 4225 Portland, or on Plato Boulevard, or on Times Square.

We can elect Mark Dayton, and keep on acting in someone else’s story – the same story we’ve lived through before.  The same story that’s reaching its miserable denouement in California, and Massachusetts, and Illinois – leaving They, The People, broke and out of work and picked clean by the taxman.

Or you can write a new narrative – our narrative – starting on November 3, if Tom Emmer is elected.

I’m making my choice, of course.

Previous Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor

#5:  Our Better Nature

What are Minnesotans’ great strengths?

We have so many; we’re resourceful (who else could live in such a cold place)?  We’re smart – our test scores show it (although North Dakotans would seem to be smarter, by that measure); we’re communitarian, even without the heavy hand of government to drag it out of us.

We’re self-starters; we’ve created things as varied as sandpaper and the artificial heart; the homing torpedo and instant cake mix; the supercomputer and solid dish soap…

…and while government has had its role in many of those achievements, Minnesotans should stand up and take credit where it’s due; government at the very best merely got out of the way.

But look at Mark Dayton’s entire campaign.  Everything about it reads like a return to the 1970’s, from the goals – resurrecting and perpetuating programs like Local Government Aid – through the “eat the rich” language.

Just as our companies, and our families, have had to change to meet the challenges that happen as times change, so must our government.

There is one candidate that will make government adapt to the same changing times we all face.

Tom Emmer has run a campaign that has not only focused on the positive – he even chided Ed Morrissey and I for calling Dayton “the opposition”, a stark contrast to the deeply, cravenly slimy campaign that Dayton has run – but looks to the best of Minnesota’s character.  His budget doesn’t scapegoat classes; it calls for some shared sacrifice on the way to a much, much better goal.  Mark Dayton’s campaign appoints others to be “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota”; Emmer puts the onus on all of us – and presents us all with the opportunity, not only to escape California/Greek/New York style stagnation and bankruptcy, but to share in honestly-earned rewards.

Tom Emmer has run a principled campaign; he presents the state with a tenable plan to balance its budget while taking care of the people who need taking care of, and asking a little more out of those who don’t – like city governments.

He appeals to Minnesotans’ better natures – our strength, our communitarian spirit, our intelligence, our vision.  Not our passive-aggressive venality.

It’s just one of the reasons I’m voting for Emmer.  But it’s an important one.

Four more to go before Monday.  Stay tuned.

Marco Rubio’s big home-stretch web ad…:

…should not only be required viewing for every American, it should form the basis of the GOP platform at every level.

Chris Christie endorses Emmer:

Remember last spring?

When leftybloggers and the local and national media were scouring behind every dandelion for “racist tea partiers?   When the standard of “proof” was “suspicious ambiguity?”

As most of us who actually attended Tea Party rallies knew, it was all crap.

And now we have proof:

A new analysis of political signs displayed at a tea party rally in Washington last month reveals that the vast majority of activists expressed narrow concerns about the government’s economic and spending policies and steered clear of the racially charged anti-Obama messages that have helped define some media coverage of such events.

And there’s your thesis – the media has used whatever “racist” signs they did find to paint their entire coverage of the conservative revolution.   The gullible and/or depraved lefty “alternative” media has run with that meme, naturally.

Ekins’s conclusion is not that the racially charged messages are unimportant but that media coverage of tea party rallies over the past year have focused so heavily on the more controversial signs that it has contributed to the perception that such content dominates the tea party movement more than it actually does.

“Really this is an issue of salience,” Ekins said. “Just because a couple of percentage points of signs have those messages doesn’t mean the other people don’t share those views, but it doesn’t mean they do, either. But when 25 percent of the coverage is devoted to those signs, it suggests that this is the issue that 25 percent of people think is so important that they’re going to put it on a sign, when it’s actually only a couple of people.”

Conservatives can expect the media to slander us.  But it’s good to fight it.

As Daniel Henniger notes in the Journal, the rescue of the miners was  a victory of the free market:

It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.

Amid the boundless human joy of the miners’ liberation, it may seem churlish to make such a claim. It is churlish. These are churlish times, and the stakes are high.

In the United States, with 9.6% unemployment, a notably angry electorate will go to the polls shortly and dump one political party in favor of the other, on which no love is lost. The president of the U.S. is campaigning across the country making this statement at nearly every stop:

“The basic idea is that if we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America somehow automatically is going to grow and prosper.”

One of Minnesota’s gubernatorial candidates has the same precise message.

Uh, yeah. That’s a caricature of the basic idea, but basically that’s right. Ask the miners.

If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men?

Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.

This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill’s rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock’s president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.

Longer answer: The Center Rock drill, heretofore not featured on websites like Engadget or Gizmodo, is in fact a piece of tough technology developed by a small company in it for the money, for profit. That’s why they innovated down-the-hole hammer drilling. If they make money, they can do more innovation.

This profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at that Chilean mine. The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above.

A remarkable Sept. 30 story about all this by the Journal’s Matt Moffett was a compendium of astonishing things that showed up in the Atacama Desert from the distant corners of capitalism.

Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

Chile’s health minister, Jaime Manalich, said, “I never realized that kind of thing actually existed.”

The profit = innovation dynamic was everywhere at the mine rescue site.

So by all means, Democrats – keep focusing on killing that spirit off.

Picture yourself on a snow-covered lake, gliding smoothly on your new snowmobile at 60 mph and about five miles out you begin to feel the growing sensation of pain and regret as your bladder balloons from the two Grain Belt Premiums you pounded at the last pit stop.

Your two buddies are out ahead of you and without a clue as to the escalating emergency you are about to be a party to.

In your distraction, you miss the snowdrift that your buddies navigated around and when your sled hits it you are airborne. As time slows, as it always does in times like these, gliding through the air with the greatest of ease, you think to yourself  “This is going to hurt.”

You land hard and fast, slightly tipped to the left but a second later realize that your forward momentum has continued unabated. All limbs are onboard and your sled appears to be no worse for the wear.

…and then you feel the warmth.

At first you are pleased because your manbrain usually associates warm feelings down there with great anticipation.

…but when the warmth moves down your thigh and starts to creep out back? Not…so…much.

And so it goes with the liberals among us.

Having peed their pants with stimulus, government make-work projects, census jobs and the like, the only remedy is to keep peeing your pants so as to fend off the chills that come when your wet snowsuit becomes a cold wet snowsuit.

…and George Soros is chief Pisser.

Billionaire investor George Soros said the U.S. economy should pursue more fiscal stimulus instead of joining international efforts to reduce budget deficits.

Soros said spending cuts are the “wrong consensus” in the current economic environment. He said the global economy is still not at equilibrium, even though financial markets are functioning again, and U.S. fiscal restraint is limiting the recovery.

My neighbor, a liberal, thinks the government is spending too much and getting too big. My liberal colleagues (as few as they are) also associate “stimulus” with “failure”. Even democratic legislators are disassociating themselves with Obama and stimulus spending to save the shredded remnants of their political careers.

But George Soros persists with this notion of a continued flow of urine as a prescription for restoring our financial future as a nation.

Why?

The U.S. has been “driven to quantitative easing because the political debate has been won basically by the Republicans, who argue for balancing the budget and no more stimulus.”

…because it wasn’t his idea.

Piss off George.

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

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

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

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

Of course you don’t.

Because there was no such movement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

None.

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

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

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

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

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

They don’t.

The City of Mound is the kind of place we in places like Saint Paul and Minneapolis  dream about; a town with a conservative city council that has done a great job of controlling spending, weaning itself from “Local Government Aid”, and balancing its budget by being fiscally responsible.

And Sue Jeffers is the kind of person we need more of in Twin Cities conservatism; a fire-breathing conservative activist who doesn’t just talk principle, she acts on it; she may have been the greatest force behind Tom Emmer’s nomination that you never heard of.  While she does do a show on a station that competes with mine (she’s on 100.3, I’m on AM1280) and which Ed and I crush in our time slot (ahem), she’s a friend of mine and one of the sharpest forks in the Minnesota conservative drawer.

But I gotta call her on this one.

Mound city councilman Dave Osmek – who is Republican enough to have been the chief teller at the 2010 MN GOP convention, and conservative enough to talk with Ed and I about the work he helped do to balance the Mound city budget and wean the city off of Local Government Aid – emailed me:

A couple weeks ago, Sue Jeffers’ producer Stan, who lives in Mound, noticed a black Lexus with a City of Mound sign on it. They spent 5-10 minutes bashing Mound (see show podcast from 9/11, hour 2, about 3/4 through the hour).

(Sue’s a good friend, but I’ll let Clear Channel’s promotions department pay me to link to their website, thankewverymuch)

Without calling or checking out the story, the proceeded to blast the Council (4 for 4 conservative Republicans). Jeffers said…they could buy 2 Ford Taursuses for that price…”typical government”…

At face value, it does in fact sound like some pretty wasteful government spending.

There’s more to it, of course:

Except the truth is, the vehicle in question is a private vehicle that we pay milage on for a dock inspector that works seasonally. Instead of buying a $20,000 Taurus, we pay him a couple hundred bucks a season and bought him a magnet for use when on-duty for the side of the car.

So in other words, rather than buying a Lexus, or two Tauri or even a single Taurus, the city of Mound essentially rents a car for about one percent the cost of a Taurus.

Osmek tells me that the story has the conservative Mound city council…

…trying to tamp down this fire, during an election season. Needless to say…I ain’t happy.  I don’t have a problem when people challenge me or tell me when I’m wrong.  But when someone says something this patently false, its incredibly frustrating because lies are far more provacative than the truth.  Like the old saying goes, a Lie can travel across the globe before the Truth gets outta bed.

Naturally.  It’s why it’s such staple of the Alinski-ite campaigning the DFL’s been doing this cycle; inflammation is more useful to them than information.

Making a big noise for responsibility and accountability in government is a good thing.  I strongly encourage it.

But let’s make sure we focus on the real enemies – mainly, those who actually are wasting money!

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

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

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

I haven’t figured that one out yet.

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

I’m trying to remember my talking-points briefing from ScaifeNet on conservatism’s “heterosexist agenda”.

Maybe I left it in my notes.

Oh, wait; there were no notes, or talking points, because across conservatism at large, there is no heterosexual conservative agenda.

There are most definitely conservatives, of course.

Now, many of us are Caucasian (we are reminded, by people who are almost universally Caucasian).

But among conservatism’s most celebrated thinkers and activists  are Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, and Linda Chavez and Michelle Malkin.  It passes without remark on the right, largely – becuase conservatism isn’t about nursing or fixing racial grievances.  It’s about traditional values in running a society.

Most American conservatives are Christians – but not all of them.  There are atheist conservatives; among America’s immigrants, the most likely to be and vote politically conservative are Indians, largely of Hindu, Sikh, Jain and other South Asian faiths.  Is Bobby Jindal any less a conservative for having been born a Hindu?

So how about gays?

Gays vote predominantly Democrat, of course; they are considered a safe-enough voting bloc by Democrats that the party counts on their support even though they extend themselves to enact virtually none of their favored policies until a majority of conservatives are on board anyway (see “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell”).

But if an American is a pro-free-market, pro-fiscal-responsibility, pro-security, pro-sovereignty, pro-individual rights, pro-merit person who happens to be oriented toward his or her own gender, what is the problem?

To Joe Farah – who’s been harping on Ann Coulter for appearing at “HomoCon” – plenty.  He’s debating Christopher Barron of “GOProud”, a gay conservative Republican group:

Barron told The Daily Caller that Farah challenged him to debate over whether GOProud can be considered “conservative” after Farah argued on his site that there is no place within conservatism for an organization like GOProud, a group that promotes itself as “the only national organization representing gay conservatives and their allies.” TheDC is waiting for confirmation from WND about the debate’s details.

Farah dropped Coulter from a speaking engagement at WND’s annual “Taking America Back” convention in Miami for agreeing to speak at GOProud’s “Homocon” party in New York. (Coulter later said that Farah had never actually booked her for a speech, calling him a “swine” and a “publicity whore.”)

Farah contends that groups like GOProud are trying to commit a “coup” to unroot the conservative movement with an “agenda…to take the homosexual agenda inside the conservative tent.”

Barron insists that his group is genuinely conservative and said he looks forward taking on Farah in front of a WND crowd.

For the record, I will vote for a Philipina Taoist lesbian who is a solid fiscal, legal and security conservative before I’d vote for a liberal hamster who happens to be white, straight and Christian.

Although if the Filipina is a Bears fan it’d help.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As this is written, Tom Emmer has just finished announcing Part One of his budget plan – the one that the DFL and the Chanting Class has been wondering about for the past two months.

To paraphrase James Carville, Part One is about the jobs, stupid.

Emmer is going to…:

1. Lower The Corporate Income Tax. This will enable new businesses to get profitable faster, and allow large companies to stay that way – forestalling layoffs, enabling job additions, and addressing business’ #1 complaint about doing business in Minnesota, our top-in-the-nation business and corporate tax rates.
2. Increase The “Angel” Investor Credit. “Angel” investors – people who are willing to take long shots on new companies that don’t yet have established sales, assets or revenues.  They are what get new companies off the ground, and allow them to survive and make payroll until they turn a profit – are in many ways the lynchpin of the new economy.  Of all “new economies”, really.  Angel Investors were the underpinning of much of the high-tech revolution that transformed our economy, and our lives really, for the past fifty years.  Currently, investors can deduct 25% of their investment (up to $125,000 from a $500,000 investment); Tom Emmer will increase that credit.
3. Accelerate The Refunds From The Sales Tax Exemption On Capital Purchases.  Minnesota allows a refund of sales taxes on capital equipment –  in the tax cycle after the equipment is purchased.  Emmer will front-load that – essentially lopping sales taxes off of capital equipment, making it easier – 7% easier – for companies to buy the equipment they need, when they need it to be easiser, when they buy the equipment; freeing up 7-and-change-percent of the company’s revenue to do more important things – like hire people.

By the way – as noted above, Minnesota currently has a Sales Tax exemption for capital purchases. Someone tell alleged “smart guy” and “political expert” Tom Horner, who seems to believe that’s not the case.

From the Emmer press release:

The GOP candidate noted that all of the tax relief measures in his plan have received bipartisan support in the legislature and were endorsed by the 21st Century Tax Reform Commission in its 2009 report. Also, small and large companies alike will benefit from two of the three tax cuts in the Emmer Jobs Agenda, ensuring benefits to the broadest range of Minnesota employers, including those which make little or no profits.

More on this as the week progresses.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll see Emmer’s plan for reforming education and state regulatory processes.

Florida will see the biggest slime-attack of its entire history…

…against Jennifer Carroll.

Carroll, a native of Trinidad, a retired Navy Lieutenant-Commander, a mother of three, an immigrant from Trinidad, and a conservative, is Rick Scott’s new running mate on the Florida GOP gubenatorial ticket.

Oh, yeah; she’s of African descent:

“Jennifer Carroll is the embodiment of the American dream. She came to America as a young girl, decided to serve her country with the United States Navy, pursued a higher education, started a small business, and then was elected the first African-American female Republican in the Florida Legislature,” said Scott, who launched a new website featuring his new running mate (www.ScottCarrollforFlorida.com).

“Her conservative principles are in line with mine, and this fall we will present a clear choice between conservatives with business experience and a plan to create 700,000 jobs and liberal Obamacrats who want to bring the failed Obama agenda to Florida,” Scott said in a statement to his supporters.

Ms. Carroll looks to be a very, very sharp candidate.

Look for a Democratic smear campaign painting her as stupid, unaccomplished and, most likely, racist; look for at least one “Auntie Tom” reference from a C-list pseudo-celebrity.

She’s the thing the left fears most; an apostate.

(Via E-Mo)

Alaska’s GOP Senate nominee starts his quest to ask voters to “look into your heart”.  Senate Democrats may start asking contributors to look into their wallets.

It had all the looks of an epic recount slugfest.  Narrow margin of victory.  A near blood fued between the waring factions.  Lawyers from Washington.  Instead, Alaska’s GOP primary battle royale ended with a whimper, not a bang:

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska conceded late Tuesday in her Republican primary race to Joe Miller, a lawyer from Fairbanks backed by Tea Party activists, Sarah Palin and other conservatives…

Ms. Murkowski’s concession followed the counting of about 16,000 additional ballots on Tuesday, which left Mr. Miller with a lead of about 1,469 votes out of about 103,000 cast. Several thousand more votes were to be counted on Friday but the trend suggested Ms. Murkowski would not gain enough ground to win.

Despite fumbling her re-election bid worse than Joe Pisarcik and entertaining a variety of ways to get onto the November ballot, Lisa Murkowski decided – at least for the moment – not to further risk the odds of a Republican holding her seat come November.  That hasn’t stopped Murkowski from sidestepping an endorsement of her primary bête noire.  And from the looks of yet another early poll, Joe Miller could use the support as Rasmussen has Democrat Scott McAdams within 6%:

Rasmussen Alaska Senatorial Survey

• Joe Miller (R) 50%
• Scott McAdams (D) 44%
• Other 4%
• Not sure 2%

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Scott McAdams 43% / 36% {+7%}
• Joe Miller 50% / 44% {+6%}

To call McAdams’ post primary fundraising Lazarus-like would imply his financial efforts had once been alive.  But since Murkowski and Miller headed to extra innings, Democrats in the lower 48 states have been slowly funneling McAdams coffers – thus far to the tune of just over $77,000.  Such figures might help in the 173rd “largest” media market in the U.S., but McAdams may be fighting his own internecine battle with state and national Democrats who are hinting at trying to replace him with more established names like former Governor Tony Knowles or former Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer.

More likely, Alaska will be witnessing two AAA candidates battling in the political majors, egging on by activists from both sides.   Neither party’s senate branch is likely to pour resources into Alaska; the DSCC even moreso if McAdams remains on the ticket as they simply can’t afford to expend resources with so many vulernable incumbents.  But that hasn’t stopped conservative and liberals activists from trying to throw gas on the cooling embers of the primary in an effort to stoke interest and donations.  Consider the race the defacto Tea Party vs The Daily Kos battle of the frozen tundra.

But Joe Miller’s biggest opponent isn’t Scott McAdams but – depending on which numbers you feel matter more – either the 40% of Republicans who say they have an unfavorable opinion about him or the near 50% of Republicans who voted against him.  To that effect, Miller needs to keep Tea Party interest in his campaign brewing lest the coffers run dry, especially as he attempts to bridge the divide between his supporters and Murkowski’s. 

Could Murkowski torpedo the entire endeavor and endorse McAdams?  Sure, but doing so would stain the entire Murowski legacy in Alaska and all but formally ensure that Lisa Murkowski’s political career truly ended on primary night.  Murkowski’s relatively quick concession at least shows enough political acumen to suggest she’s still interested in surviving to fight another day.

Alaska’s Libertarians freeze the state’s U.S. Senate race.

With the GOP primary between Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Joe Miller headed into overtime, Alaska’s Libertarian Party suddenly found their own Senate prospects switching from irrelevant to relevant.  Between D.C. rumors of Murkowski courting the LP for ballot access and the willingness of the party’s own Senate nominee to step aside should Alaska’s senior senator come up short in the absentee race, Libertarians found themselves needing to make a familar choice between principle and politics.

By that definition, the outcome should never have been in doubt:

On Sunday morning, over coffee and donuts, the ExComm voted unanimously, 5 to 0 to deny the Senator the ballot line. There was no malice intended. ALP Chair Kohlhaas has repeatedly stated that she is a nice lady, and the ALP was flattered by the offer.

While the decision guarantees Lisa Murkowski won’t become a political footnote as the first Libertarian U.S. Senator, it also likely guarantees that short of a near landslide of Murkowski absentee ballots, Joe Miller will be the GOP’s nominee.  Despite the race closing to just over 1,600 votes and talk of tens of thousands of absentee ballots left to be counted, only 5,801 absentee ballots were sent to Republican voters.  Thus Murkowski needs to win those remaining ballots with totals around 60% – a possible but not particularly probable outcome.

Should she lose any recount attempt, Murkowski’s options are few other than simply conceding.  No other party can give her ballot access (other than the Democrats), meaning Murkowski’s last hope to return to Washington lies in a longshot write-in candidacy.  Although polling showed Murkowski competitive in a 3-way race, the hurdles of a successful write-in campaign are taller than Yao Ming on stilts.  Strom Thurmond managed to win a U.S. Senate race as a write-in candidate in 1954, and a handful of others have won U.S. House general or primary elections as write-ins.  But in almost all cases, the victory came because the opposition was either completely unknown and unmotivated to run, or because there simply wasn’t any opposition at all.  Neither could be said to be true in Alaska.

Murkowski’s likely forthcoming disappearance from the race makes Alaska’s senate race – at least for the moment – look mildly competitive.  In a two-way battle, Miller leads Democrat Scott McAdams only 47% to 39%, perhaps partially explaining why Miller’s ill-tempered tweet comparing Murkowski’s possible party switch to prostitution has garnered as much lower 48 media exposure as it has.  Or maybe because it had the media wondering if the analogy made the Libertarians the pimp or the john.

Democrats are obviously looking for GOP-held targets to help mitigate their likely November losses.  But despite the early polling, Alaska isn’t fertile ground for the DNC.  McAdams had raised only $9,000 as of the last reporting deadline, with a grand total of $4,500 on hand.  How much money would Democrats really want to pour into a state that requires more campaign infrastructure than TV ads in order to compete? 

Between McAdams’ nearly nonexistent campaign and Tea Party activists throwing money at Miller, it seems doubtful at the moment that Republicans will be required to spend much capital – monetary or otherwise – to ensure the seat remains safely in the ‘R’ column next January.

Alaska’s cold war heads to a boiling finish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To hear the local left and media – pardon the redundancy – you’d think Target came out advocating killing puppies.  In fact, for the left and media (ptr), it may have been even worse – committing apostasy.

But is the “news”  bad for Emmer, the “MNForward” PAC, or even for Target?

There are a couple of reasons I’m going to suggest “no”.

Dayton’s Already Won The Base: A friend of this blog once suggested to Tom Emmer that he needs to quit trying to win the conservative base.  There may be a point to that.  But this issue – especially the “Emmer is Anti-Gay” slur, about which more below – is the same thing in reverse; it’s the left’s attempt to inflame the lefty base over some of their big code words; “anti-gay” and “corporate money”.  It’s possible that people who haven’t been converted to one side or the other might pay attention to this story – but for a variety of reasons, I think that at the very very worst this story has short legs.

That Sweet Stench of Desperation: But there is a reason to try to get the lefty base all riled up – because they are in the midst of a lethargy that reminds me of Republicans in 2008 or 1996.  The widespread, outside-the-party-meeting passion is all on the right these days.  The DFL knows it – and has do to something to get their base to give a damn, especially given the spectre of having to go out and get people excited about Mark Dayton in less than a week.  And so the left needs to create a boogeyman.

Now granted it’s a purely negative campaign – “Vote for Dayton or…um…there’ll be a conservative in office!”.  But consider the alternative; “Vote for Mark Dayton; he’ll tax people who work hard enough to earn over $250K, and probably the rest of us too.  And then…um…”

And a negative campaign is better than no campaign at all.

Emmer Is Not Anti-Gay: There are probably a thick dollop of DFLers and not-that-smart independents who hear “supports traditional marriage” and think “hates gays”.  But people in the real world, the world of the intelligent, do in fact know that the vast majority of people, regardless of their politics, both accept gays as equals and, judging by the voting on gay-marriage referenda nationwide, do not accept the idea of gay marriage.  It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance; smart people see cynical people saying “that means he’s rabidly anti-gay” to dumb people, and shake their heads in disgust.  And, jokes about “Governor Ventura” aside, most people are smarter than that.

Although perhaps the Emmer campaign needs to send the sound bite from his appearance on the NARN at last year’s State Fair to those who believe A4aBM’s slur:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What do you think about gay marriage?

EMMER:  I don’t care!  [Audience laughs]  No, seriously – I believe marriage is about procreation – but this next election is all about jobs.

I suspect that’s not too far afield from what the vast majority of Minnesotans – regardless of their politics  – believe.

It’s Not A Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay World:  Look – in any population, you’re going to find 1-2% of the people are actively gay, and probably 1-2% of the population who genuinely hate gays.  In between you have the rest of us; people who would fight for a gay person’s right to political and legal equality (to say nothing of their right not to get beaten up), but need to be convinced about gay marriage.  And among that 96% are not a few people who either care enough about politics to ask “er, how is this “anti-gay?”, and not a few more who say “someone hates gays?  Sack up, fellas, I got plenty of people who hate me for being a Korean grocer/white Christian/Lebanese mortgage broker/Armenian professor/Jew.  Life’s tough; have a falafel and join the freakin’ club”.   Either way, playing the victim card only gets you so much traction when times are as tough as they are.

Especially because…:

MNForward Is Right: MNForward’s agenda has nothing, bupkes, to do with social policy.  It’s about trying to make sure we get a responsible government – one whose policies will not actively trash this state’s already dicey business environment.  Jobs are hard to find these days; the last thing we need is to make it harder to create, get and hold (private sector) jobs.

James Carville said it; “it’s the economy, stupid”.  And deep in their conference room down on Plato Boulevard, you just know the DFL has to admit to itself that this is a lousy year to be selling dime-store socialism – but it’s the only card in their hand.  And so they have to draw attention away from it, which leads to…well, see the “Sweet Stench of Desperation” section, above…

I think that when the dust settles on this that, even if the media manages to hush up the genuine discussion about A4aBM’s funding and the speciousness of the “anti-gay” claims, that Tom Emmer and, most likely, Target will both come out ahead.  The whole flap reeks of last-ditch desperation.

And even Minnesota voters don’t get that silly.