I took a look at the “Independence” Ventura Party’s “Principles” page yesterday.

On the one hand, it’s a well-written statement, not far removed from the output of this effort within the GOP.

But I thought this bit here was interesting:

We are what we are and we don’t pretend to be something we are not. Our word is good and we are accountable for the promises we make. In our personal actions and party affairs, we seek to exemplify the same fair, open, and democratic processes we advocate for our government. Before we evaluate others in the light of our principles, we stand first in the light ourselves.

Wow.  Excellent!

So how’s about we have Tom Horner “stand in the light” and release his client list from his years as a political consultant?

So we can see the various causes he’s championed in his years as a wonk consultant.

So the people of Minnesota can perhaps judge for themselves if the media are lying to them about him being a “Republican” in any sense that the term should mean.

Go toward the light, Tom.

There’s an old Soviet-era joke that I remember from when I was a kid.  A Soviet radio station in Minsk was broadcasting a talk show.  The host said “Minsk is the most beautiful city in all of the Soviet Union”.  

A caller rang in, and asked “what do you think of the story that the Americans will be targeting nuclear weapons at all of our biggest, most important cities?”

The host immediately chimed in saying “Smolensk is the most beautiful city on all of the Soviet Union!”.

Two years ago, when the DFL ran former sergeant Steve Sarvi against (retired Marine colonel) John Kline in CD2, and former Marine lawyer Ashwin Madia against Erik Paulsen in CD3, military service was high on the DFL’s list of qualifications.  Very, very high, in fact.

This past year – especially with former Navy fighter pilot Dan Severson running on the GOP slate for Secretary of State, and former Navy helicopter pilot Chip Cravaack running against Jim Oberstar in CD8, that particular meme has disappeared from all DFL chanting.

But I have a hunch it’s going to disappear a lot more:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Connecticut finds Blumenthal with just a three-point advantage over Linda McMahon, 48% to 45%. Two weeks ago, he led the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment by 13 percentage points. The New York Times story broke late Monday; the survey was taken Tuesday evening.

Blumenthal is the anointed replacement for Christopher Dodd in Connecticut.  The NYTimes ran a story busting him saying he’d been in Vietnam when he had not.

To be fair, he spent the last years of the Vietnam War in a Marine Reserve unit in DC.

To be even more fair, isn’t that the kind of thing that the left raked George W. Bush and Dan Quayle over for?

The Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) sent Minnesota’s government into a tizzy a few weeks ago when they tossed Governor Pawlenty’ s unallotment – his legal line-item veto – of  billions in spending in the previous budget.

Via NewsQ, Senator Julianne Ortman says the SCOM swerved into activism in throwing out the unallotment – and the decision was based on politics:

In the courts’ analysis, and to justify their preferred result, they reasoned that the language of the [unallotment] statute was ambiguous. They implied a condition into the statute that didn’t exist, holding that unallotment may only be used after the Legislature and governor have already adopted a balanced budget.

Apparently Chief Justice Magnuson’s majority believed its decision would resolve the current disagreement between the governor and Legislature, but it had no such result. The 70-year-old statute was the agreed-upon method between Minnesota’s executive and legislative branches for resolving an impasse like the one we have just seen: the House and Senate DFL leadership could garner enough votes to pass a revenue-raising bill, but they could not muster enough votes to override the governor’s veto. The unallotment statute was one tool available for breaking an impasse — one that many disagreed with in these circumstances, to be sure, but a tool we cannot live without.

Members of Minnesota’s judicial branch should never have inserted their views into the issues between the political branches. These judges over-reached their own constitutional authority, which is restricted by the Separation of Powers Clause, Article III, Section 1, which provides that no branch can usurp or diminish the role of another branch.

Our system is such that there  could be consequences…:

If his actions were heavy-handed or overly political, voters in the next election could hold accountable those who supported his actions. If voters agreed, as I did, that the governor’s use of unallotment was absolutely necessary in response to our state’s historic economic and financial crisis, then they could act accordingly in 2010. Instead, the court got political.

Which would involve people – and the media – paying attention to what the SCOM does.

I got the strangest sensation last week.  I haven’t had this sensation in the longest time.  Maybe a brief flash in 2000, but it wasn’t quite the same thing.

The DFL realizes that they’ve got nothing.

The Strib referenced Ben Smith in Politico this morning, saying that…:

Pawlenty appears to have run the table on the Democratic majorities in both of the houses of the legislature, forcing them to drop plans for new surcharges and scrap their top priority, an expansion of federal and state-funded health care for some of the state’s poor. They also enacted spending cuts that a court recently ruled Pawlenty could not make himself.

He will complete his two-term tenure at the end of this year having fulfilled his pledge not to raise taxes, with his approval ratings in positive territory, and having largely avoided the pragmatic compromises that often bedevil governors in polarized party primaries. His success gives him the accomplishments to match his conservative rhetoric, and set a high bar for other ambitious governors facing budget crises of their own in this lean year.

“We have some pretty clear values and principles in mind that we adhere to and when it relates to those core values and principles we don’t compromise on,” Pawlenty told POLITICO in an interview Monday after what he said was two hours of sleep on each of the two previous nights. “When it comes to issues around the role of government taxes and amounts of spending and other things, those are core values and principles by which we set our compass, and we stay strongly on that course and we battle.”

It’s a good piece.  You should read the whole thing. 

Perhaps the crux is right here; Pawlenty seems to have aversion-trained the DFL:

“Democrats have always known that a tax increase means a veto. As a result, there has been a grudging acceptance among Democrats that any package negotiated with the governor will not include tax increases,” Nelson said.

And this put the last piece into the (possibly completely-spurious) puzzle.  Maybe it’s just me, of course – but over the course of the past few weeks, it feels as if the Minnesota DFL has run out of gas.  They seem tired, like a boxer that’s gone a few rounds too many – as, in the legislature, they have, squandering four straight legislatures of prohibitive majorities but getting turned back by Governor Pawlenty at every juncture.

And if you’re a DFLer, after having beaten your head against a wall for four different sessions, culminating in agreeing to spending cuts that the Minnesota Supreme Court had just sent back from unallotment – snatchign political defeat from the jaws of a dubious legal victory – what do you have to look forward to?

A summer duking it out in a primary between a failed Speaker of the House, a former Senator that’s a laughingstock of the entire nation, and a former State senator who’s a pariah in his own party (not to mention Tom Horner who, ostensible former affiliations aside, is a moderate Democrat in policy terms, and who will draw away many, many more DFL than GOP votes). 

And when you pick from among those three deeply-uninspiring choices, you’ll stepping out into a hurricane; a GOP candidate not only at the head of an energized party out for four years of payback, but well-sited to bring in a huge chunk of the “Tea Party” vote.

It’s showing in a lot of ways; the DFL is skulking quietly away from the debris of the budget session tossing a few pro forma “Cold Omahas” and “we deserve betters” around; their big response to the Emmer campaign so far is to chant that he’s an extremist and to avoid any actual discussion comparing policy like a vampire avoiding sunlight.

Politics is cyclical; being a Democrat today must feel a bit like being a Republican (as distinct from a conservative) in, say, 2006; out of energy, out of ideas, needing a huge intellectual jumpstart.  Oh, they’ll pull something together for the campaign, but you can practically feel the fatigue.

 It won’t last forever, of course.

Not that we can’t try.

A political consultant’s main job, if you think about it, is to try to convince as many people as possible that a crap sandwich is really made out of paté and bread.

We’ll come back to that.

The weekend’s big brouhaha in re the Minnesota state budget was over the proposal to dump low-income Minnesotans from our own state system into Obamcare, so that Minnesota could cover more able-bodies single adults, among many other budgetary issues.

Pawlenty held tough.

So, as a matter of fact, did GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer (with emphasis added by me):

First of all, we should be grateful to Governor Pawlenty for once again protecting Minnesota families and businesses from tax increases. Economic recovery in Minnesota will come faster because we had the strength to hold the line on taxes.

But any recovery will be stopped in its tracks if the next governor “opts in” to Obamacare early by enrolling thousands of Minnesotans onto the federal health care roll at irresponsibly high costs, ignoring Minnesota’s nation-leading reforms in health care delivery.

With this deal, the next governor will have that power. I am announcing today I will not use it if elected this November. I also challenge my opponents (including Speaker Kelliher, who pushed for this power in closed-door negotiations) to tell Minnesotans where they stand on this issue immediately.

Emmer, in fact, voted “no” on this shift.

Now, let’s return to that opening thought about political consultants.

Tom Horner, the former “Republican” consultant, is running for governor under the “Independence” Ventura Party banner.  He released this statement:

The budget deal negotiated by the Legislature and Governor Pawlenty is a reflection of Tom Emmer’s Minnesota with the DFL leadership’s seal of approval…Instead of facing up to the hard choices, legislators have created a budget deficit that will be as much as $9 billion in the first year of the new governor’s term. 

In other words, “It’s paté!”.

Seriously – while the DFL is chanting “Horner is going to take votes away from Republicans”, read this…:

Minnesota needs a goverrnor who is willing to make the hard choices to honestly balance the budget and invest in job creation, education and innovation, even if that means the next governor only serves one term. That’s the commitment I’m making. Emmer and Kelliher have made it clear that their political futures are more important than Minnesota’s economic future.Could Minnesota’s current budget have been balanced honestly and without gimmicks? Absolutely, but the process had to start at the beginning of this legislative session, not in the 11th hour. A balanced budget would include revenue from broadening the sales tax base; repealing some of the $11 billion in tax expenditures that go mainly to the wealthy; and, increasing the tobacco tax. A Racino would raise additional dollars while giving Minnesotans who gamble the security of casinos that are publicly regulated.

…and show me a Republican who actually belongs in the party – someone who favors limited government, prosperity, low taxes – who would vote for any of this…

…paté?

Conservatives see government in the same way as we do the guy who cleans out the septic tank.  It’s dirty work that we’d rather not do, and we’re willing to pay a fair price to have it done, but at the end of the day we want a fair deal done, and then we want it to go away.

Liberals  see government like a factory; you put stuff in one end, you get cool stuff out the other.  The more stuff you put in, the more cool stuff you get out!  And if everyone works together to make sure that factory gets all stuff it needs put in, there’ll be no shortage of cool stuff coming out!

Lori Sturdevant in the Strib  writes;

 A case of the “what-ifs” hit me last week. I was listening to state Sen. Linda Berglin describe her clever ploys for drawing down more than $7 in federal health care money for every new $1 the state spends while still cutting spending overall — and musing about Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s vow to send her handiwork to vetoland.

What if the Legislature’s ablest health care head had been allied these last eight years with one of the state’s most politically gifted governors? What if instead of being sparring partners, Berglin and Pawlenty had been real partners in remaking health care?

Then we’d have gotten what we had from time immemorial through the end of the Ventura years; a government that, like any other addict, can always find a rationalizion to spend more.

Slower growth in state spending is the new normal, and Pawlenty has applied a heavy foot to the brake. Through eight years, the GOP governor has muscled more fiscal restraint into state balance sheets than did any of his predecessors in the previous half-century.

Re-read that last paragraph. 

And everyone finish the last sentence:  “…, no thanks to the DFL, the Mainstream Media and Lori Sturdevant”. 

It’s crucial now for state government to maximize the bang of every tax buck. Large-scale reform is in order. And in a politically purplish state with a penchant for electing divided government, reform requires bipartisan partnerships.

Plenty of them should have been possible in the past eight years.

Rubbish.

While politics is about compromise, bringing real epochal change to government – in this case, breaking Minnesota’s (and especially Minnesota’s “elites'”) smug, smarmy addiction to taxes, spending, entitlement-mongering and wastrelcy – is about taking control and showing the side that you will accept nothing less than a change in the way business is done. 

The DFL have shown great willingness for “bipartisanship” – where “bipartishanship” means “acting like DFLers”. 

No more.

It’s time to get serious with our “elites”;  with a small, finite list of exceptions (responding to attacks on our nation, finding kidnapped children, taking care of families of servicepeople, cops and firemen who are killed or seriously injured protecting us all), “bipartisanship” is the wrong response to the challenges that face us.  Partisanship – fighting for divergent ideas that everyone believes are better solutions than the other sides have to offer – is what makes for better government.

Not necessarily more impeccably-smoothly funded government – but keeping government fed is not our mission, either.

In America, we have a veto to protect the minority from the depredations of the majority.  It’s part of our system here in Minnesota; it has been since we became a state.

The whole point is to prevent majorities, even prohibitive majorities, from running roughshod over the minority.

Cut to Keith Langseth, who entered the Legislature the same year Jimmy Carter came to the White House, knows better.  As Govenror Pawlenty ended the session without caving in to the Dems’ control of both houses of the Legislature, Langseth groused…:

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, who has served in the Legislature since 1974.

Langseth expressed exasperation with Pawlenty and his refusal to give in on the budget. “I’ve served with six governors, and five of them know what democracy is about,” Langseth said. “You compromise.” DFLers hold strong majorities in the House and Senate.

Yes, “you” do compromise.

If “you” are the DFL, “you” always means “the GOP”.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central.  Today we’ll be interviewing Governor Pawlenty in the 1PM hour, and GOP-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer in the second hour.   Tune in pronto!
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

It’s the new Matt Entenza TV spot.

Entenza – with whom I’ve co-hosted a public event, a few years ago, and whom I found to be a perfectly likeable guy, although in contrast with Ed Schultz (one of the stars of the evening), a wolverine is good company, too – tells his tough yet heartwarming story:

After watching the spot, especially the tagline (about wanting to help Minnesota create more such heartwarming and inspirational stories), I have to ask, though; what state program were Entenza’s benfactors on, that allowed them to be so noble?

The DFL on Monday voted for an epic tax hike (disguised, per usual, as negotiation) in the middle of an epic recession/depression.

The answer – the real answer, anyway – is to toss every single DFLer responsible for this vote out this November.

My friend and longtime radio colleague King Banaian is trying to do just that up in House District 15B in Saint Cloud, against Larry “Haw” Haws.   King responds to his opponent’s vote for the tax hike (emphasis added):

“Last night my opponent voted to increase taxes on small businesses and what he considers wealthy Minnesotans,” Banaian said. “The last Economic Update from the Finance Department cited consumer confidence and sentiment being ‘mired’ at low levels and ‘lingering employment concerns, slow wage growth, and tight credit are likely to inhibit household spending until 2011.’ Even if you believe Minnesotans don’t pay enough, this is a terrible time to raise taxes.”

“But we do pay enough. The DFL bill that Rep. Haws voted for would give Minnesota the 4th highest marginal tax rate in the country on incomes of $200,000. Higher rates in California have done nothing to cure their budget problems. Why does Larry Haws think this is a good example to emulate?”

“The answer to every DFL problem is to look at small businesses as an ATM from which they can cover their need for more money. They have enough; the real need in Minnesota is to reduce spending, not raise taxes. Rep. Haws had the opportunity to balance the budget by ratifying Governor Pawlenty’s spending reductions but voted against that. When I get to St. Paul, we will set priorities that do not ask already-generous Minnesotans for more,” Banaian concluded.

Or as another conservative candidate might say, we need to stick the budget in a vise and “drill baby, drill”‘.

I’ll await word from the Strib on exactly how King’s position is “extreme”.

(Via Gary @ LFR)

This story caught me just a tad off-guard:

Minnesota’s largest teachers union has thrown its support behind Democrat Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s campaign for governor.

Education Minnesota endorsed Kelliher on Saturday after a yearlong search.

Normally I’d say “after a year-long search for what – someone who could spell?”, but this year is a little different.  Matt Entenza founded MN2020 in large part to curry favor with public employees unions (leading to hatchet jobs like last  year’s jihad against charter schools, which beggared fact but, one would suspect, buffed his cred with the MFT.

I’m going to guess that the union chose long-term political infrastructure over short-term favor-banking.

I thought this was an interesting statement:

Union president Tom Dooher said in a news release that Kelliher shares the union’s determination to create an education funding system that is sustainable and sufficient.

Huh?

Achievement gap?  Minority dropout rates?  Bad math and science scores?

No.  Stable funding is the priority.

The Tom Emmer campaign has been aggressively pushing itself into places where, the conventional wisdom says, Republicans just don’t go.  Right after the MNGOP convention, Emmer paraded at the Longfellow May Day parade, promting all manor of victorian vapours among the lefty pundits who have, for some reason, stopped being big champions of the First Amendment since Barack Obama took office.

Last weekend it was the Cinco De Mayo parade, on Saint Paul’s West Side.  The Bill Jungbauer campaign blog  observed some intensely bigoted behavior…:

Another event that was totally outrageous occurred when we passed the dfl booth. About fifteen people stood in front of the booth in the street and chanted loudly in our faces, “KKK go away.”

And an interesting VIP (emphasis added):

Among the crowd was none other than Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, the endorsed democratic candidate for governor. The fascist, tax and spend feminazi was the ring leader amongst her merry band of liberals. So, rather than everyone sharing in our right to free speech and expression, these leftists, led by MAK, chose to disrupt and disturb us and those around us. The wonderful people of the community who only wanted to enjoy their celebration stood in witness to MAK and the democrats leftist hatred, exposing to us all their true fascist tendencies.

I don’t like bandying the “F” word around pointlessly – and I personally would like some third-party verification – but if a candidate herself gathers a pack of supporters, not to question or counterdemonstrate, but to heckle her opponent with defamatory ad-hominem, it’s not all that far off the beam.

What do you Democrats have to say about your endorsed candidate engaging in that kind of behavior?

Isn’t this the “angry” “provocation” that you are all mewling about the GOP doing (without, as always, providing any examples)?

UPDATE:  We may have video on the way shortly.  Stay tuned.

I peeled this bit out of my liveblog, since I think it’s worth a discussion on its own.

One of the tempests in the teapot last night; a group of “liberty” members of the party were tweeting merrily away that Norm Coleman and that noted moderate Vin Weber were making phone calls on behalf of Tom Emmer.  Now, among the purist/libertarian wing of the party, Norm (and Pawlenty, for that matter) are anathema, because they’re just not pure enough.

Of course, absolute purism and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee; politics means compromise.  Did Norm and Governor Pawlenty always make the right compromises?  Perhaps not – but you have to be in office to be have an imperfect record.

But here’s a question I’d like to ask (if only rhetorically) to the “Emmer’s a RINO because Norm’s calling for him crowd”; which of Norm’s objectionable policies do you believe Emmer subscribes to, merley because Norm is making calls on his behalf?

Or is this just the most ofay attempt at guilt by association – policy by association, really – that I’ve ever seen?

Feel free to leave an answer in the comments.

4:58 – Seifert announced his retirement.  I say he runs for CD7 if Byberg doesn’t win.  I think it’s a swell idea.

4:55 – I was back on the floor casting my ballot when Seifert conceded.  Incredible class act.

Emmer is on stage now – it took me that long to get back to the press pit.

He’s speaking now. Great acceptance.

Only real question – how many “angry white male” references will the press and leftyblogs snif about?

4:40 – Results in:

• One “No Endorsement”
• Three Undecided
• 22 Blank
• Seifert – 876 (43.8%)
• Emmer – 1118 (56%)

Needs 1199 to endorse.  Seating for third ballot.  Back in a flash.

4:33 – Second ballot results coming out – after Carol Molnau!

4:21 – Still waiting.  Whip count says Emmer up 2-3 votes in CD4.  We’ll see.

3:35 – Change in the report d/t computation error:  Emmer 52.6, Seifert 42.5 is the new official count.

Next ballot now.  Heading to the floor.

3:00 – First ballot results are final:  53-43 Emmer. Herwig, Haas and Davis are off the ballot (none got more than percent, by my count).    Emmer is currently 126 votes shy of the endorsement.  Fifteen minutes til the next ballot.  Bill Haas is coming back to the stage.

Haas has, as I (verbally) predicted, tossed his votes to Seifert.  All 26 of them.

Now Leslie Davis – with six votes – is on stage.  “Rivvizend stakely cash more excusiwavbay.  Yatukka wiveabengay, extortinga file cuz he cknows I’m here”.  No endorsement.

Herwig up next:  Throws his votes, also, to Seifert.  36 of them.

2:56 – Reading results.  Seifert just topped 40% as we plod thorugh the Eighth district – so we’ll definitely have a second ballot.

2:47 – They’re still reading results.  We’ve been through CDs 1,2,4,5 and 6; Emmer is up by a bit, but the 7 and 8 should  both be strong for Seifer.

2:29 – I just got back off the floor, after the usual irritating rules squabbles.  They’re reporting votes a BPOU at a time.

SITD SCOOP

Scoop here:  CD4 hasn’t reported yet, but Emmer took the 4th by 89 to 60 out of 152 allowed ballots.  That’s a better ratio than he had at the CD4 convention.

1:27 – I’m told Davis said if he’s not endorsed, we face “unparalleled misery”.  Let’s just say he’s not got the crowd wrapped around his finger.

1:17 – I’m sorry – it’s actually Leslie Davis.

1:16 – Michael Savage is onstage now.  He’s not close enough to the mike.  First Ringer; “someone didn’t take their non-drowsy pill”.  Hard to hear him.

:14 – Bill C, out on the floor, says it looks like Emmer 3:2.  Chad the Elder says he figured 60-40.  Mark Buesgens says three ballots – but then that’s his job as a campaign leader.

1:10 – Leo Pusatieri tweets “Larry Haas makes Phil Herwig look absolutely dynamic”.  Sad to say, it’s true.

12;56 – Haas on stage now.  Alone.  No organization.  Halting speech.  Gotta be tough to follow Emmer and Seifert’s shows…

Chad the Elder wonders “what makes someone carry on a campaign like this?  No chance, no support…is it ego?  Or what?”  I note that Haas has an actual track record of implementing conservative principles in government.  First Ringer – “He’s the credible fringe candidate”.

12:55 – Larry Colson says the Emmer floor demonstration says crowd feels like 55-45 Emmer.  Floor demo passion looked way in Emmer’s favor.

12:52 – Emmer floor demonstration carrying on.  I’m gonna say it looks like Tom has a slight edge.

12:50 – Emmer shoots fireworks as he leaves stage.  Good thing they didn’t play “Once Bitten Twice Shy”.

12:49 – “Say yes to lower taxes, to leave more money in the pockets of people who earn it!”

12:45 – Shouting out to Annette Meeks – “She literally wrote the book on conservative government”.

12:44 – Emmer talking now.  Kevin Ecker thinks crowd looks 55-45 Emmer.  We’ll know soon enough.

12:32:  Seifert left stage with his mass of supporters.  Emmer video running now.  Or is it Leslie Davis? No, it’s Emmer.  Trying to count the duelling crowds is difficult.

Emmer hitting on the family thing – seven kids.

Hitting on principles.

First Ringer has joined me on bloggers row.  “Vote for Emmer or the kids get it”.

Video ends with tagline – “now’s the time to be done with politicians as usual.

Brian Sullivan on stage to give the nomination.

12:15 – Browser crashes hard jus tin time for Phil Krinkie to introuce Marty Seifert.  Marty on stage now.  His organizaiton is showing, for better (boots on floor) and worse (all those frankly dumb hit pieces).   He’s hittting his rural roots hard.  Not sure if that’s a big winning tack in a year with statewide issues uniting us all.  We shall see.

12:05 -And still talking.

11:55 – Snuck away to a standup with Michele Bachmann.  She is studiously avoiding endorsing anyone.

11:45 – Phil Herwig is talking.

11:44 – Rumor has it that someone “really big” is going to introduce Emmer.  Rumor is passing around that there’ a “higher degree of security” than for, say, a congressperson.  There’s talk of Palin, but nothing is confirmed.  Pure rumor mill.

11:34 – Kolls – “Anyone ready to endorse a governor?”  Huge round of applause. Hopes up…

…but all we get is a credentials report.  Still – almost time to head back to the floor to vote.

11:05 – Governor Pawlenty is on stage now.  “Fortunate Son” is the song.  I’m waiting for some leftyblogger to mewl about the “irony” of it, understanding neither the term nor the song…

He opens by thanking the First Lady.  Drew a huge round of applause.

“Ironic that we’re meeting here just a few weeks after “tax day” – or as Democrats call it, “Christmas”.  Hammering on Dems’ spending mania.   “Bailouts – 700 billion.  Increase in deficit – 2 trillion.  Republicans elected in November – priceless”.

Notes that he’s the only governor in the US to sign concealed carry…twice.  “More people have been killed by the Hiawatha Light Rail line than concealed carry!”

Good speech to a friendly crowd; his last as governor, as he noted.

10:48 – Chip Cravaack – endorsed candidate in CD8 – talks.  He’s a former Navy helo pilot.  Dan Severson is a former F18 pilot.  Funny how the Dems have shut up about how important it was that Republicans serve in the military than in 2008, when Steve Sarvi and Ashwin Madia’s service was a dispositive sign of incontestible virtue.

10:35 – I’m back in the Press Pit.  I plan on dividing my time pretty widely about the place today; I’ll be doing some media, blogging, and occasionally sprinting back to 66B to vote – whenever we get around to it.

I had the pleasure of meeting Rep. Mark Buesgens in the walkway between the Party platform and the Press Pit.  Had a great chat with him; he’s an occasional SITD reader (thanks, Mark!), and he notes that bloggers play a vital role; “peole have been getting dumbed down for too long; blogs make people think!”.  I’m flattered.

The GOP’s rockstar diva puts her support behind the “hockey dad.”  Will her last minute endorsement score or just put Tom Emmer in the penalty box?

On the eve of the Minnesota GOP’s two-man dialogue for governor being pared down to a monologue, 2008 Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin has injected herself into the contest with the political equivalent of a powerplay goal for her self-described “hockey dad” candidate of choice, Tom Emmer:

A family man who wants to leave his kids a better future, a “hockey dad” who once played for the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Nanooks, a patriotic commonsense conservative who wishes to serve for the right reasons – that’s Tom Emmer, and I ask you to join me in supporting him for governor of Minnesota.

John “Policy Guy” La Plante asks the 60% question of the evening – is Palin’s endorsement worth having?:

So Sarah Palin has endorsed Tom Emmer. Is this good news for Team Emmer? I’m not convinced.

Why? Because, I suspect, most Palin fans are likely sympathetic to Tom Emmer anyway. But a Republican candidate must appeal to more than Republican voters to win in the general election.

For a good chunk of independents and Democrats open to voting for a Republican candidate, an endorsement by Sarah Palin is the kiss of death. They’re the mirror image of Republicans who disdain a candidate who

gets endorsed by the Star-Tribune .

Much like Emmer’s somewhat questionable choice of Annette Meeks as his runningmate earlier this week, the backing of Sarah Palin makes terrific sense in the context of a political universe that’s set to expire in an endorsement supernova sometime Friday afternoon or evening.  As the adage goes that there’s no bad press as long as they spell your name right, so goes the same logic for the choices that have defined Tom Emmer’s final week before the gubernatorial endorsement.  While picking a highly partisan activist to share the ticket and garnering the endorsement of a polarizing but beloved conservative politician are potential risks come November, they’ve ensured that for better or worse, everyone is talking about Tom Emmer less than 24 hours from what could be the pinacle or nadir of his political career.

But La Plante’s analysis is also spot-on.  Palin remains as much of a potential liability in the general as she is an asset in the endorsement.  And Emmer’s camp must be prepared, should he raise his arms in victory on Friday, to find his win credited to Palin’s involvement by the media in a pre-emptive strike to paint the Delano rep into the far-right corner of the electorate.  Such an outcome likely sounds fine to many on Team Emmer given that the alternative is a long fall and summer on the political bench.

Susan Gaertner leaves the goober race.

Prosecutor Susan Gaertner left the Minnesota governor’s race Monday, saying she didn’t want to be “a spoiler” in Democrat Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s quest to become the first woman to win the job.

Well, nothing like having a good reason.

The coast isn’t clear, though. Former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton and former state Rep. Matt Entenza continue to seek the Democratic nomination in the August primary.

Gaertner, the Ramsey County attorney, declined to endorse any of the candidates, but she said Minnesota has never come closer to electing a female governor.Kelliher became the first woman to win major-party endorsement for the state’s highest office when the Democratic Party backed her campaign in Duluth on Saturday.

“This is the closest Minnesota has yet to come to electing a female governor,” Gaertner said at a Capitol news conference. “That would be history-making.”

Wow.

I wonder if she’d have left the race if the Laura Brod had run and been endorsed?

I’ve been doing some digging – and I’ve found what really happened at a number of key moments of American history…

July 4, 1776: [Scene: Independence Hall, Philadelphia]. 

JEFFERSON:  “OK, here it is.  When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to fully fund entitlement programs which have connected them with another, and to assume among the budgets of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Government and of Government’s God/Goddess entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of The Budget requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation and the costs, amortized over 30 years, of said separation, as adjusted for inflation, with due diligence paid toward the opportunity costs arising from said separation.

MADISON:  “Good – but we need more on bonding.  Could we go back to the bit on bonding?”

August, 1864: [Scene: The War Department, Washington DC]. 

GENERAL HALLECK:  “President Lincoln, General Grant is a drunk”.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN: “Then perhaps all of our generals should have a bottle of whatever he’s drinking.  (Turns to secretary) We’ll call the program “The Cheap Blend Surge”; we can fund it through an excise tax on player pianos!”

GENERAL HALLECK: “Capitol idea, sir!”

December 25, 1944: [Scene: a basement, Bastogne, Belgium.  General MacAuliffe, commander of the US 101st Airborne division, which has been surrounded by seven German divisions for nearly a week, is approached by a German emissary under a white flag]. 

GERMAN:  “General, vot iss your ansah to ze offer of zurrendah?”

MACAULIFFE:  “Nuts”.

GERMAN: “Pardon me?”

MACAULIFFE: “Nuts – I cant’ find my slide rule.  I’ll have to take the idea under advisement, but honestly, I’m not sure that we have the budget to support 12,000 POWs.  Can we schedule a meeting on this?”

August 28, 1963: [Scene: The steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC]. 

MARTIN LUTHER KING:  “I have a dream that one day this nation will be able to fund a program that will pay community leaders to organize us to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are entitled to an equal share of this nation’s budget!.'”

June 12, 1987: [Scene: The Brandenburg Gate]. 

RONALD REAGAN:  “If you want peace, General Secretary Gorbachev, increase the funding for East Berlin’s transit redevelopment environmental impact mitigation process!   Secretary Gorbachev, open the books on East Berlin’s transit redevelopment environmental impact mitigation process!   Mister Gorbachev, tear down the barriers to fully funding the timely completion of the transit redevelopment environmental impact mitigation documentation as part of the pre-design environmental impact and mitigation process preparatory to getting approval from the affected district soil, water and easement committees!” [1]

April 26, 2010:  [Scene: a house in the Midway of Saint Paul (whose bathroom is the pride of the entire neighborhood]

FLASH:  “The state can’t go through 4 more years of the same policies that have gutted they very budget items that made Minnesota great.”

Immigrant pioneers struggling through blizzards to eke a living out of the sandy soil.  241 Svens and Oles fixing bayonets and charging at 2,000 Bubbas and Billy Joes, saving the Union in the process.  Doughty miners doing daily war with the rock beneath our feet for generations.  Ingenious inventors working in obscurity to invent the modern flour mill, the gyrostabilized bombsight, the supercomputer,  the pacemaker, the amalgamation of R’nB and rock’nroll, the greatest medical center in the world…

…whew.  Good thing all of that was in the budget!

Thank you, State of Minnesota, for budgeting for life itself! (more…)

Now that the DFL has endorsed Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, they get to answer the question “we endorsed who? How?  Why?”

The DFL endorsement is a traditional kiss of death.  The DFL’s real candidates, Dayton and Entenza and Gaertner, are all going directly to the primary – itself an indication of how out-of-touch the DFL’s power elite and activists are.

The conventional wisdom is that the GOP, which will have a candidate this weekend, is going to have a three month head start on the actual campaign, while the DFL dukes it out among itself until the August primary.

The conventional wisdom omits that the Strib is going to be running interference for the DFL:

Republicans claimed to be gleeful over Kelliher’s endorsement. GOP Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb said Kelliher has presided over an “ineffective Legislature.” He visited the DFL convention to watch its party contest.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert said, “While the Republican Party will be united behind one candidate in less than a week, the DFL will have a bruising primary battle for months.”

But Democrats were quick to praise their convention for its civility. “This was the most courteous, cordial convention I can remember,” veteran delegate Randy Schubring, of Rochester, said Saturday.

So what?  Let’s see if they can say that in July.

Republicans may not be able to say the same thing. In advance of Friday’s gathering to pick the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Seifert and Tom Emmer, both members of the state House, waged a heated, testy fight for their party’s nod.

The two men have battled inside the party for years, developing a bitter rivalry even before they were leading candidates for their party’s endorsement. Their supporters appear to have no end of enmity for their rivals, shaping a battle thatwill spill onto the GOP convention floor.

Rubbish.  There is an end to the emnity.  It’s what conventions are for, for starters.

And if for some reason the GOP forgets what’s really at stake in this election, there a couple hundred thousand Tea Partiers (or as the Strib says, “dozens”) out there who’ll be happy to remind them.

It’s in the Strib’s interest, of course, to try to fan the conflict – or any conflict the can find – within the GOP.  Because if Kelliher is the DFL’s idea of a gubernatorial candidate, it’s gonna be a rough summer for the DFL and, thus, the Strib.

Fearless prediction:  expect a “Minnesota Poll” showing Kelliher with a decisive lead in the very near future.

Margaret Anderson-Kelliher has won the DFL endorsement to run for governor.

Future footnote Anderson-Kelliher sings "It's Raining Men" at a karaoke bar in Maplewood last month

For those of you from out of state, this is a traditional ceremony that marks the beginning of the process for a DFL politician retiring from politics; all the real candidates are running in the primary.

The below is not a fearless prediction.  Call it a hunch.

If you live in the Second Congressional District, you know John Kline is going to win; if Shelly Madore wins the primary, Kline – even in a bad year, like 2008 – would win by 15 points, conservatively, and this won’t be a bad year for Kline.  If “Powers” survives, it’ll be 30-40 points. 

If you live in the Third, it might be a little closer; Paulsen’s got a tailwind, and had a great freshman term.  DFL-endorsed candidate Jim Meffert is a solid 10 point dog, and I think that’s being nice.

Likewise in the Sixth; Michele Bachmann, who won two squeakers against a full court press from not only the regional left and media (pardon, as always, the  redundancy) but the national ones, during two terrible years for Republicans, is going to win by a comfortable ten points, no matter which victim the DFL nominates.

Of course, the DFL pays it all back in the Fourth, Fifth and Eighth districts were, even when the GOP comes up with a strong candidate (as the Fourth District GOP did in endorsing Teresa Collett this past weekend), the media colludes to make sure that Keith Ellison, Betty “Dissent Is Violence!” McCollum and Jim Oberstar are never held accountable for any of their actions, even if knowing them would convince the overwhelmingly-DFL constituencies to vote otherwise, which seems doubtful at times.

But in the First?  Tim Walz, who ran as a “moderate” DFLer to unseat moderate Republican Gil Gutknecht in 2006, but has spent his entire term in office as Nancy Pelosi’s ultraliberal lapdog, and voted for the Obamacare plan that is pretty sure to gut the health care for most of the First’s residents, and gut-shoot the Mayo Clinic, has got to be vulnerable.  Randy Demmer is a strong candidate who survived a bruising convention (seven ballots last weekend) for the chance to run against Walz. 

So here’s what I’m asking; if you live in the Second, Third or Sixth Districts, it’d be great to run up a huge score on the Dems.  Heck, it’d be great to knock ’em into third-party territory! 

But if you could see your way clear to spare a few bucks to send to the First, to help Demmer overcome his cash deficit, that’d be a great start. 

And if you have  few bucks to spare to help Teresa Collett in the Fourth, and Chip Cravaack in the Eighth

UPDATE:  Yep, I know – Randy Demmer.  I was thinking of another Demmer I knew way back when.  My bad.

State Rep. Randy Demmer won the 1st District endorsement on Saturday, beating out Alan Quist and two more conservative candidates.

Demmer, a four-term state representative and business owner from Hayfield, a town southwest of Rochester, vowed to paint Walz as too liberal for his southern Minnesota district.

“We know Tim Walz is working with Nancy Pelosi,” Demmer said. “He’s right there doing everything she beckons him to do.”

For all his talk in 2006 of being independent and representing his district – which ranges from rock-ribbed conservative farmers, doctors and businesspeople in the south and the Rochester area to mewling liberals in and around Mankato – Walz has been nothing but a lapdog for Nancy Pelosi (although rumors that he actually ran and fetched a stick thrown by Madame Speaker are apparently false).

Demmer beat back a challenge from longtime conservative activist Allen Quist and two other contenders, who couched their bids in even more heated rhetoric.

…

Demmer, 53, took eight ballots over about five hours at the convention held at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

And that’s a good sign; while I prefer the more conservative candidates in general, Demmer is no Arne Carlson; his Taxpayers League rating is 64, which could be better, but it beats Walz sitting down.  And while abortion is not my litmus test issue, it does my heart proud to see that NARAL has give him a long string of zeros.  Put it this way – if he wins, it’ll be like Gil Gutknecht never left.  Perfect is the enemy of plenty good enough.

Downside?  Walz is sitting on $600,000; Demmer has about $10K in the bank.  He’s got a lot of ground to make up; even with a conservative tailwind, it’s going to be a busy year.

Any of my readers in the First – please sound off!

It’s hard being a Republican in the Fourth District.  The Fourth is one of those places where the DFL could nominate a set of those novelty wind-up chattering teeth and get 55% of the vote; much of the district is first-tier DFL constituencies, government workers and union labor and people who depend on government in one way or another.  To be fair to the wind-up teeth, they’d be better representatives than Betty McCollum…

…but it makes it hard – some might say “mind-numbingly frustrating” – to be a GOP candidate.  I’ve seen excellent candidates get into the race, throw everything they had into it, and walk away happy to have been only 15 points off the pace; in the past few bids, it’s been more like 50. 

Now, I don’t believe in karma – but I do think what goes around comes around.  And just to the south of the Four, the DFL gets a piece of the same medicine.  They endorsed a candidate to run against John Kline.  And the Strib is so underwhelmed that they couldn’t even be bothered to copy-edit the story on the subject.

The lede:

Democrats chose a 45-year-old construction worker to challenge U.S. Rep. John Kline in the 2nd Congressional District.

That’s the lede.  And who is this “45-year-old construction worker?”

Powers, a newcomer to the state’s political scene, defeated former state Rep. Shelley Madore, DFL-Apple Valley, at a Saturday endorsing convention in Chanhassen.

Powers.

Powers?

Like, Powers Boothe?   Does the guy have a name?  Or is he like “Prince”, a guy with a one-word name?

That’d be a slick marketing gimmick, really.  Maybe Leslie Davis will try it.  He’s tried everything else. 

But seriously – does he have a first name?  Or a last one, maybe? 

Any hint in the Strib story?

“We plan on making hundreds of phone calls a day…” Powers wrote in blog post celebrating the announcement on his campaign’s home page.

Nope…

…despite Democratic difficulties at the polls, Powers said the Lakeville congressman can be defeated…Powers will campaign in a GOP-leaning district that has not known Democratic victory in a decade.

Even the Strib’s picture (in the online edition):

Powers

You have to go all the way to the story’s last paragraph to learn that Powers’ name is Dan.

Now that’s lonely.

One of the most useless exercises at any business is the process of “writing a mission statement”.  If you have a business that has a chance at success, the mission is pretty self-evident.  “The Mission of Muffy and Ian’s Kites ‘n Koffee is to provide better coffee and kite supplies to the consumers of West Buyaloopup, Oregon”.   

Most management know better than to ask me for a mission statement anymore – because for the past fifteen years, I’ve told ’em all the same thing; there’ve been two mission statements in all of history that serve as templates for all others:  Baron Manfred Von Richthofen (“My mission is to patrol my sector and shoot down anything I see.  All else is bullsh*t”) and Conan the Barbarian (“The greatest joy mission is to drive my enemies before me and hear the lamentation of his women”).

The simple fact is, for most businesses the mission is bone simple, to the point of self-explanatory.  It’s true for most entities, whether people (“My mission is to be the best person, father and citizen I can be”), families (“The mission of the Berg family to make sure Bun and Zam grow up to be good people and citizens”), blogs (“the mission of Shot In The Dark is to drive liberals before it and hear the lamentation of whatever liberals’ distaff community is determined to be; all else is bullsh*t”), organizations (“The mission of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers is to provide a social outlet for bloggers and blog readers”), or whatever.

With political parties, it’s just as simple; the mission of a political party is to embody the principles that reflect their members’ vision of what government is supposed to be.    All the thousands and millions of ’em.

The Minnesota DFL platform actually does a fine job of conveying that vision.  It states a long list of principles – most of them launching from the notion of “society” doing something, or government fully-funding this or that.  The DFL platform presents a grandiloquently statist vision – a high-level “to-do” list for big government – in elegantly-crafted wrapping paper.

The Minnesota GOP platform [danger – PDF file], on the other hand, is a dog’s breakfast of talking points.   It’s circulated in tabloid form at precinct caucuses; I’ve seen people try to make heads or tails of it, watched their eyes glaze over, and put it down, eyes rolling.   The document is literally written by committee – not just any committee, but one of the biggest committees in all of Minnesota.  At every year’s precinct caucuses, thousands of resolutions get forwarded for consideration to BPOU, Congressional District and finally State scrutiny; few actually get into the platform…

…but “few” of thousands still makes for a huge platform.  There are nine sections to the platform, each with 15-20 planks.  It comes to nearly 20 pages.

And it includes an amazing assortment of things – from lofty ideals (“…policies that reflect that every innocent human being, born and unborn, has an inalienable right to life from conception to natural death”) to practical principles (“Improving the quality of education by maximizing parental choice through expanded support for charter schools, school choice programs, parental rights to home school their children and more competitive and accountable public school systems”) to bald-faced sops to special interests (“Making the Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program available annually in every Minnesota
elementary and middle school “) to low-level exercises in social micromanagement (“…pornographyblocking software should be installed on all computers having internet access in publicly financed institutions “) to things that principled conservatives should find abhorrent, if they thought about it (” The Minnesota legislature should pass legislation increasing the legal age for gambling in Minnesota to 21 years of age”) to stuff that just doesn’t make sense (“Opposing efforts to put all land and water under the control of the federal government” – I don’t think even Obama has suggested trying this yet). 

It’s time to put the platform on a diet – and make it focus on the things that a political party should focus on; the principles that should guide the party’s members, and especially the party’s candidates and elected officials.

A small group of conservative GOP activists – who shall remain nameless for the moment – have written a rough draft of a statement of princples; they intend, at some point or another, to introduce it as at least the beginnings of a discussion to replace the current War And Peace-sized platform with something a bit more accessible and to-the-point.

Here it is:

Individuals, businesses and the country succeed and prosper when government stays out of the way of the people – those who act on their own initiative, and who lead the way with integrity, responsibility, charity, hard work, humility, courage, gratitude and hope. 

Goverment has a role in our society – but that role is carefully enumerated in the United States Constitution.  The Republican Party of Minnesota believes that a good government does not eclipse roles that are best carried out by families, houses of faith, charitable organizations or businesses.

We, the members, candidates and elected officials of the Republican Party of Minnesota, support the following principles:

1) America is a great nation; we have been a “Shining City”, an exemplar of virtues for all other nations and their people.  The greatness of the American nation, the virtues of its people, and the success of the American experiment are a beacon of hope for the whole world.

2) Liberty is essential for our society to advance and prosper.  The freedom to explore advances in culture, business, faith, science, and government politics improves all of our lives; on the other hand, excessive government regulation and control hinder that development. The ability and freedom to disagree with each other and our government must also be
protected; any hindrance to the free market of ideas will sap the ability of America to advance and to better herself.

3) We have more hope and trust in the individual than the government to solve society’s problems, and to lead us into the future.  We value and protect the freedoms and the rights of the individual in preference to those of government.

4) Faith is where we derive our moral compass and come to understand the eternal rules of order and rights in which our creator has ordained. We believe each person needs to be free in order to explore their faith.

5) Life is sacred; it must be protected and defended from government control.

6) The Family is among our society’s most important institutions.  Government must not be allowed to infringe on the sanctity of the family.

7) The Pursuit of Happiness is essential to our existence, we support equal opportunities,  not equal results.

8 ) Charity comes best from the heart of individuals, and cannot be forced or coerced via taxation and regulation.

9) All citizens are equal before the law.

10) The law abiding citizen must be trusted to defend their life, family and property.

These are the principles we, the people of this nation and the members of this party, believe lead to a just society, a secure nation, and a better future for our children.

The committee struck out someone’s suggestion for a final line; “…, and to hear the lamentation of their women, and all else is bullsh*t”, but otherwise I like it.

Comments?  Feedback?  Leave a note in the comment section (and be advised that while all commentary is welcome, this is MN GOP business, and thus limited to the grownups; criticism is fine, but addlepated anti-Republican buncombe will be mutilated for the sole amusement of the blog owner.  While my comment section is generally the most open forum anywhere in the American media, this thread will be controlled.  Deal with it).

I can’t believe I missed this one last week; Lori Sturdevant asks:

Is DFL Senate majority leader growing more conservative on the job?

That’s easy.  No.

But Pogemiller’s no idiot.  I mean, he doesn’t have to be smart in the classical sense to keep winning a seat in his district, but he’s not dumb, either.  He can see which way the wind is blowing.

And in a year when the dominant sentiment is “throw the taxing, spending bums out”, having a statement like “I think it’s simplistic and naive to say people can spend their money better than the government” on one’s record can’t be good electoral mojo.

So it makes perfect sense that someone like Pogy would enlist some willing flaks – that’d be Sturdevant – to try to paper over that long record of “all of your money are belong to us”-type statements, made back when it looked like Obama’s shirt-tails were going to stretch all the way into the next century.

But underneath it all?  It’s gonna be the same old story.

By the way, I’m going to put that quote on a sign to take to the Tea Party.

Along with Cy Thao’s classic “When you win, you get to keep your money, when we win, we take your money”.

Wonder if Sturdevant’s gonna write a piece about Thao’s newfound financial libertarianism?

I’m feeling better and better about this November.

I was in the Press Pit at yesterday’s Bachmann/Palin rally at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

I’ll say this about the GOP; there was a time when most of the great speakers were Democrats; Ronald Reagan was something of an anamaly (and a few steps beyond being just a great stump speaker).

Ever watched video of a World War II airplane engine starting up?  The propeller starts to spin, as the starter cranks the engine over.  You know it’s spinning, as the spark plugs start to fire and you hear a few cylinders coughing, but you wonder when the airplane is going to take off.  And then, suddenly, it catches – and the propeller smoothly speeds up, and the engine takes on that hearty roar that catches you in the pit of your gut, and you just know that someone’s gonna get a bomb dropped on them.

That’s what watching Michele Bachmann speaking is like.  When she gets to the podium, you can tell she’s a ball of potential energy waiting to explode; she speaks without notes, and I suspect she goes onstage with a few ideas of where she wants things to go, and tries a few of them…

…and, imperceptibly, as the crowd warms up and as she, like that engine in the B17, catches on, suddenly she and the whole room just take off, and the plane lifts off the runway, you just know that a bunch of Sixth District liberals and sanctimonious state Dems and the national media are going to be dodging explosions the rest of the day.

And Sarah Palin?  When you hear the woman talk, you can see why the national Democrats and media (pardon the usual redundancy) have had to switch to full-time defamation mode, attacking her education, her family, her baby, her hobbies, her looks (and occasionally her term in office, although less-often substantively than, say, by filing and referencing disposable “ethics” complaints (attacks that Palin disposed of with grace and sharp, pointed humor – which is hard to see coming from most of her thud-witted competition).  If they had to take her on on the force of her personality and the power of her speaking, they’d be a third party. She spoke for about twenty minutes; while I compared Bachmann to a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine, Palin is more like a heat-seaking missile; she rocketed right off the rail toward her target.

Neither of them needed a teleprompter, by the way.

As to content?  Both of ’em borrowed from Reagan, addressing the character of the American people when challenged; the obvious subtext is, “we’re being challenged now”.

As to the crowd?  They said 11,000 tickets had been given away, including 1,000 at the door.  I stood up on my seat in the press pen – there were maybe 1,000 bleacher and floor seats, and the rest was standing room, and the place (Hall D at the Convention Center) was as packed as a good mosh pit.

Afterward, I wandered ovdr to the Hyatt, to see if there was any visible sign of the Dems’ purported counter-rally.

Other than a few black-clad hypstrz, I didn’t see a thing.  Not that I wanted to walk into the Hyatt to find out; I was feeling too good.

More later.