Remember the key dictum in Media-Republican Party relations – which is such a truism I may codify it as another Berg’s Law: any Republican can be “the good Republican” , until they’re a threat to the Democrats.

So the piece the other day by Dan Balz in the WaPo might actually be good news for TPaw, in a backhanded way; if you interpret it that way, it means he is a contender the Dems are nervous about:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is widely regarded as one of the Republican Party’s rising national leaders. The runner-up to Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, he is a conservative whose blue-collar roots, amiable personality and two terms as governor of a traditionally Democratic state would seem to make him a natural to help his party attract the kind of swing voters who are always fought over in presidential elections.

So far so good.

But the Pawlenty who has stepped onto the national stage in recent months has said and done things that have other Republicans wondering about his instincts and his sure-footedness as a prospective 2012 presidential candidate. Pawlenty could learn from the earlier mistakes of one of his potential rivals for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Last week, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Pawlenty was asked repeatedly whether he welcomed Sen. Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote for the Senate Finance Committee health care bill, in the GOP.

And he ducked it.

Because it’s a stupid, stupid question.  Tim Pawlenty has no say over whom the voters of Maine send to Congress and under what label.

At a time when some conservatives are insisting on purity within the ranks and others say the party must truly be a big tent, Pawlenty ducked the question. He hemmed and hawed, but couldn’t bring himself to say “yes” — suggesting that he believed “no.”

What Pawlenty should have said was “get real, Scarborough.  “Purity” and “Big Tent” are both abstract ideals that don’t exist in the real world, and those (invariably) unnamed Republicans on both side are talking about abstruse principles of “purity” and “inclusion” that mean very little to real voters.  What we need – and I plan – to talk about is making conservatism speak to those in the middle.  Which is, indeed, how I became first the nominee, and then governor, in my state; convincing voters, after decades of irresponsible spendthrift DFL and pseudo-DFL governors, that fiscal resoponsibility was a good thing.  So – is that “purist”, or is that “big tent”, you over-promoted gasbag?”

(I’ll forgive Pawlenty for leaving that last bit out).

Balz’ big problem seems to be that Pawlenty – whom Balz labels a “conservative” early in his piece – says and does things that are “conservative”:

Most recently, he endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd congressional district, but he acted only after former Alaska governor Sarah Palin had turned the special election into an intraparty test of strength.

Pawlenty said there is no deliberate effort to move to the right. “In general, I’ve governed as a conservative in Minnesota, so being conservative isn’t like a new development or a revelation,” he said.

Now, let’s step back a bit.  Balz thesis is that Pawlenty, in saying things that deliberately court the resurgent conservative movement, is acting like Mitt Romney.

Romney, of course, was accused of being a stealth liberal for having socialized medicine in Massachussetts, among other things; being nearly the sole Republican in office in a state can, and usually will, mean “non-conservative” stuff has to happen.   Pawlenty’s conservatism has flaked around the edges under the pressure from two DFL-controlled chambers in the Legislature; he’s had to adapt, giving way on some peripheral issues (ethanol subsidies) while staying largely true to the big-picture (holding the line on tax cuts and, as much as reasonably possible, the budget).  He’s had to compromise, which is why it’s called “politics” and not “dictatorship”. 

Balz eventually cuts to what passes for a chase – the comparisons with Romney:

Still, there is something Romneyesque in all this. Four years ago, Romney lurched to the right in preparation for his presidential candidacy. He did it on social issues, where his prior support for abortion and gay rights left him vulnerable on his right flank.

Right.  Romney put on the Big Bad Conservative suit to go for the nomination.

But if you can say one thing about Governor Pawlenty, it’s that he’s never “lurched”.  The closest we’ve come is the 2002 nomination race against Brian Sullivan, where he had to put aside his pragmatic, legislative persona (he’d been the House Minority leader) which was slightly moderate by nature and necessity, and run to the right to get the nomination from Brian Sullivan.

Since then – for seven years – Pawlenty has been very consistent on a policy and rhetorical level – which is pretty astonishing, considering the changes in the Minnesota legislature since he took office (in 2002, the GOP controlled the House and made it close in the Senate; today the MNGOP is in the minority in both chambers).

Pawlenty has a consistent record of opposition to abortion and gay marriage. In his case, he appears to be catering to the conservative, populist anger on the right, which is challenging the party establishment and attacking Obama in sometimes extreme language.

The real risk for Pawlenty, as Romney learned in his unsuccessful 2008 campaign, is losing his true voice and his authenticity.

Answering that particular bit requires accepting a few yawning gaps in reason.  First, that opposition to Obama is primarily rooted in “anger”.  There is anger, to be sure – but the vast majority is a thin veneer of pique atop a mass of reasoned disagreement.  Obama’s tax and spending proposals will be ruinous; the healthcare reforms will destroy our healthcare system; the President’s foreign and war policy is pusillanimous.  One may be angry or reasonable in addressing this – or a little bit of each.

Second – that it’s “inauthentic” for Pawlenty to acknowedge this.  It makes no sense; it’d be akin to asking John Kerry to ignore all that post-2000-Florida-recount angst.  No serious person suggested it – because it’s a stupid idea. 

But for a Republican to acknowledge anger, to the media as represented by Dan Balz, means to be consumed by it, as if conservative thought is an on-off switch with only the bandwidth for one message. 

And John Kerry said Republicans were bad with nuance…

That’s the kind of politician Pawlenty has been up to now. The question is whether, at a time of turmoil within the Republican Party and with a need to raise his own profile, he can prepare himself for a possible presidential campaign without sacrificing the best qualities that brought him to this point in his career.

Dan Balz probably doesn’t realize it – but he’s showing Pawlenty’s best qualities for the job.  He’s just still looking at it from Joe Scarborough’s perspective.

And that’s always a mistake.

Not for his steroid nutritional supplement-induced ramblings…rather for the one thing (at least that I can remember) he did for us as governor…

I wrote the check for my license plate tabs this week.

To:  Representative Betty McCollum, (D MN-4)

From:  Mitch Berg, your “Constituent”

Re:  Office procedure.

Dear Representative McCollum,

I realize that it might be easier to leave things be than actually deal with a constituent who differs from an approach you no doubt committed to take on the issue long, long ago…

…but would it kill you to clear out some space on your voicemail?

That is all.

MBerg

MN 7th District representative Collin Peterson will vote “No” on the House “Healthcare” bill this weekend:

Peterson says the bill doesn’t do enough to control health care costs, and that it continues unfair Medicare reimbursements that penalize Minnesota doctors and hospitals. Peterson says his biggest concern is the federal budget…

This is good news.  There was some doubt on this one; while Peterson is one of the bluest of the blue dogs, and represents a fundamentally conservative part of Minnesota, his vote seemed to some observers (including Rep. Bachmann, whom Ed and I interviewed last weekend) to be a bit of a tossup.

Earlier today, CD1 Rep. Tim Walz indicated he’d vote for the bill.

Walz, in his second term representing a slightly less conservative district than Peterson, is no doubt paying back chits to the DNC.  Someone check for strings above his arms. 

And get on the phone – to thank Peterson, to tell Walz you’re not amused, and to tell Oberstar you are a pro-lifer who is not amused by the “healthcare bill”‘s affordances for abortion:

Jim Oberstar:
2365 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6211
FAX: (202) 225-0699

Collin Peterson
(202) 225-2165

Tim Walz
Washington Office
1722 Longworth House
Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-2472

This is for all the marbles, folks.  Your healthcare, and your great-grandchildrens’ solvency.

You know when I knew we were headed for a big night?

It was probably 6:30 last night.  I was waiting for V to come on.  And on Drudge, I saw that the MSM was claiming, mirabile dictu, that they had all sorts of polling to show that this election was not repeat not repeat not about Obama.

That’s when I knew we were going to run away in Virginia, and probably win Jersey.

Ecker on the Christie win:

It is easy to overstate the importance of this election, as it is after all a local race which centers around local issues and personalities just as much as it does higher issues. But voter attitudes towards their government in general can influence how voters approach those issues. In this case, Christie ran on the issue of property taxes and other economic issues, where voter opinions are certainly strongly influenced by the Democratically controlled Washington DC.

It’s also worth mentioning that Obama invested heavily in both races, stumping for both candidates a number of times, including in the final days before the election. It is a sign that his majestic holiness is no longer enough to sway voters with flowery speeches and hollow hyperbole.

Virginia – a traditionally Republican state – was a “must make a good showing” state for The One.

But Jersey?  Not only have they not elected a Republican in sixteen years, but that “Republican” was Christine Todd Whitman, a woman who sent Rockefeller Republicans scampering for their Hayek.

Think that if Obama Deeds had won, or even kept it really really close, and/or if Corzine had won by the usual huge margin, we wouldn’t be hearing Katie Couric chiming that The Dream Is Still Alive this morning?

The most immediate effect of this will be in the outcome of ObamaCare/PelosiCare/etc. Already Blue Dog Democrats were feeling the heat of public opinion regarding the absolutely horrendous bill that is before Congress. Both Pelosi and Reid were already having problems convincing Democrats from swing districts to vote for the bill. This election is likely to reinforce that hesitation. If even an incumbent Democrats in a core blue state can lose, a Democrat in a swing or even a conservative district is officially on notice. Voters are not in a forgiving mood.

You listening, Tim Walz?

POlls in Virginia have been closed for 20-odd minutes, and CBS is saying   McDonnell is leading:

As the polls close in Virginia, CBS News estimates based on early exit poll results that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell is leading Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds.

The poll closing in Virginia is the first of several key votes tonight. Polls in New Jersey close at 8 p.m. ET and in New York close at 9 p.m. ET. Several mayors races and referendums are also up for a vote across the country.

Still 90 minutes until polls close in Saint Paul, and three months before Minneapolis’ Instant Runoff vote will be finally tallied.

UPDATE:  CBS is running a prominent story about how this election really, pinky-swear, isn’t a remferendum on Obama after all.  I figured there had to be a reason for that.

I wasn’t disappointed:

More than four in 10 voters in Virginia said their view of Obama factored into their choice on Tuesday, and those voters roughly split between expressing support for Obama and voting against him. People who said they disapprove of Obama’s job approval voted overwhelmingly Republican, and those who approve of the president favored Deeds, the Democrat.

Bonus question:  how many “Black Panthers” will be hanging out at polling stations in Newark?

UPDATE 2: I know, they’re early results, with a small percentage reporting – but McConnell is currently up 30 points over Creigh “Dirty” Deeds.  I know the gap won’t hold.  But it’d be nice if a few points could waft to Saint Paul tonight, if only karmically.

War is no time for half measures.

Military thinkers from Sun Tzu to George Patton to David Petraeus all echoed one of the key thoughts on the art of war; if you’re going to fight it, fight it to win, win big, and win now (or as soon as possible).  To do anything other than force your enemy to the negotiating table or into a shallow hole is to trifle with the lives of your soldiers.  If you are going to fight, then for God’s sake fight; close with the enemy and beat them.

Of course, counterinsurgency war is a different cat to skin entirely.  Rolling barrages of artillery fire that would work against a field full of enemy tanks or fortifications are counterproductive against an enemy that mingles among the civilians; the enemies that survive can crawl from the rubble and tell the civilians that survive “See?  You want to side with those guys, the ones that shelled your village back to the stone age?”  (Someone tell this guy).   The fight is more subtle; the template in the 2006 Surge in Iraq iterated the same pattern the US used in the Philippines in 1906-1911 and in Nicaragua in the ’30s and in Vietnam in the late ’50s (before Kennedy fouled it up by trying to make a conventional war of it), and El Salvador in the ’80s and ’90s, and the Philippines again in the 2000s, the same as the British used in Malaysia in the ’50s and ’60s, and in India from the 1500’s to the 1900s – co-opting the people against the enemy, protecting them from the enemy until they realized which way the wind is blowing, and making sure the rewards for joining the good guys, mainly security and the chance to live a normal, even prosperous life, are real and tangible.  It’s “low intensity” warfare, but it takes troops.  Especially infantry, and especially the infantry’s specialized cousins in Special Forces and Civil Affairs.

And as we saw in Iraq over the past three years, invoking this effort against a motivated insurgency that currently has the momentum against you takes manpower – not just to close with and kill the enemy, and to guard the locals against being closed with and killed by the enemy you miss, and to cut the insurgents off from the locals, but to do it decisively enough that you don’t overstay your welcome with the locals (as we did in Vietnam).  (I think I described the process on a dumb civilian level pretty capably, here and here).

Anyway.  A good chunk of Minnesota’s US House delegation spoke out on  Afghanistan this past week.  And to some extent, their reactions are predictable.  Former (and forever) Marine John Kline bleeds green, naturally:

Kline’s son is an Army helicopter pilot who is scheduled to go back to Afghanistan next year. Kline said the additional troops will not only stabilize Afghanistan but also target any potential unrest in neighboring Pakistan.

And Keith Ellison?  He’s from the “Please Forgive the US’ Sins” caucus”

DFL Congressman Keith Ellison disagrees and said sending more troops is a mistake.

“What is going to bring us a good resolution is helping build and strengthen institutions, training Afghans to provide security for these institutions and then getting out of their country.”

“This is not what is going to bring us a good resolution,” Ellison said. “What is going to bring us a good resolution is helping build and strengthen institutions, training Afghans to provide security for these institutions and then getting out of their country.

Which is a fine platitude – but until the country can be made safe for regular Afghans to openly side with the government, it’s all baked wind.

“History is trying to tell us that whether you’re the Brits or the Soviets or anybody else, this place is known as the graveyard of empires for a reason,” he said.

Right – but not the reason Rep. Ellison thinks.

But it’s “my” “representative”, Betty McCollum, that caught my attention.

DFL Congresswoman Betty McCollum said she doesn’t support sending 40,000 troops to the region but could support a smaller troop increase if certain conditions are met. For example, McCollum said she wants to see a stronger police force and a stabilized central government in Afghanistan.

While I try to avoid some of the more facile stereotypes the right throws out about public school teachers, I’m afraid this statement so utterly beggars reason that it makes teachers look dumb by association.

McCollum’s “philosophy” in a nutshell; give McChrystal a fraction of the troops he says he needs to do the job (in other words, ensure that he can’t do the job effectively), in exchange for two goals that are largely nebulous – but both of which require pacifying the countryside, which was the goal of General McChrystal’s original troop request in the first place!

If only we could give Rep. McCollum’s next re-election bid as effective a recipe for failure.

And for those of you who think McCollum’s position might give her some extra jolt of wisdom on this issue?  Please  – don’t.  Just don’t. This was what she had to say three years ago:

Article: Afghanistan, Iraq are like night and day, McCollum says; Rebuilding Afghanistan and pushing back the Taliban is “doable,” she said, unlike the no-win situation in Iraq.

Don’t blame me.  I voted for a competent candidate who knew some history.

Ed and I are talking with Rep. Bachmann on the air as I write this – and she stresses the importance of calling the representatives whose votes might be up for grabs on next week’s healthcare vote in the US House.  She notes that while she, Rep. Kline and Rep. Paulsen are going to vote against the bill, and there’s no real suspense about Ellison or McCollum either, that we could well put some pressure on Tim Walz (a liberal Democrat in a district that, in a rational climate, would have sent Gil Gutknecht back to office in ’06), Collin Peterson (a blue dog from the conservative northwest corner of the state) and…

…Jim Oberstar?  That’s right – the 224-term congressman from the Arrowhead represents a district that loves its pork, but is also very pro-life – and would not be impressed by the pro-infanticide aspects of Pelosi’s novel.

So call!

Jim Oberstar:
2365 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6211
FAX: (202) 225-0699

Collin Peterson
(202) 225-2165

Tim Walz
Washington Office
1722 Longworth House
Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202-225-2472

Remember – be polite (because if you say so much as “gosh darnit”, the media will accuse you of assault), and that Congressional staffs (and Reps) know that every caller represents 100 other people.

Mark Dayton.

He’s the darling of the public employees’ unions.

He’s the favorite of the chicken little set.

And let’s not forget – the 9/11 Truther-endorsed candidate for Governor!

We could have this in the Governor’s office!

Isn’t it a great day to be  Minnesotan?

No huge surprise here; AFSCME, the party that likes its politicians dumb, compliant, and voting for big government, endorses former Senator and State Auditor Mark Dayton, who…well, fits the description to a T:

Dayton, a DFLer, won the AFSCME Minnesota Council 5 nod over nine other DFL contenders as well as Republican candidate Patricia Anderson screened for the endorsement Saturday.

The AFSCME endorsement, which brings with it the campaigning might of the union, is Dayton’s first major endorsement.

“Mark Dayton has won statewide elections — twice,” Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, said in a news release. “Minnesotans know and like Mark.”

Well, yes – we “like” him because he makes us laugh.  For example, when he closed up his DC office and scampered back to Minnesota because of some unnamed terrorist threat that left every other senator’s office opened.  We got our yuks.  We did.

Seide had said earlier that union members would be very interested in candidates’ electability as well as their history and stands on issues important to union members. Democrats have not won the governor’s office in Minnesota for more than two decades.

And if Dayton wins the endorsement, they should continue this record pretty handily.

A month ago, Chris Coleman – mayor of Saint Paul – was on a roll.  He was simultaneously running his 2009 mayoral campaign and a 2010 gubernatorial bid.

And then – he stopped.  He abruptly ended his goober bid five days ago.

Why?  In the horde of candidates stampeding for the bid at present, he’s certainly not the longest shot.

And yet he became the first to bail.

Why?

Because he’s nervous?

What happened to put a stop to all the DFL schmooze parties where Coleman and his gubernatorial competitors have been lining up to schmooze all the prospective DFL delegates and voters?Could it have anything to do with the fact that the one, lone candidate forum between Coleman and his opponent, Eva Ng, took place about 48 hours before on Tuesday October 6th- and that Eva Ng mopped the floor with Chris Coleman?

Answer after answer, Eva Ng answered with specifics; I will freeze property taxes at their current level and then I will cut them, I will set up business zones downtown to spur entrepreneurial growth, I will hold weekly ward meetings where citizens can speak with me as their mayor and their concerns WILL be addressed.

Chris Coleman’s answers?

Chris Coleman has been in politics long enough (Ward 2 City Councilman for 2 terms, ’97-’03) to know you NEVER have to answer the question which you’re asked, and in his case, maybe it’s better in a way that he didn’t. Then he would have had to talk about his property tax increases over the last 3 years in office- 9% in ’07, 15.1% in 08, 8.6% in ’09 and a proposed increase of 6% for ‘10, as well as fee increases. Oy!

I’m not going to say “he’s scared of losing”.  But Ng, by all rational accounts, trussed Coleman up like a  hog at the “Forum” (not a debate) and parted out the roast, ham and bacon.  She didn’t beat him, she crushed, stomped and napalmed him.

And the DFL smear machine is out in force.  And as Mike Huckabee said, in perhaps his greatest contribution to American politics, “when you’re taking flak, you’re over the target”.

Can Eva Ng win this thing?  Maybe.  If every single Republican in Saint Paul turns out.  And if each of them convinces a not-so-political neighbor that Chris Coleman and an all-DFL City Council is a screeching disaster, and that the Saint Paul School board has been so derelict in its duties that it deserves to be perp-walked out of 360 Colborne under a hail of spitballs?

Why, yes.  Yes, she can.

And I can’t think of a better reason that a DFL gubernatorial front-runner, or at least not-back-runner, would abruptly bail out on the race.

Drudge, early this morning, reflected the first question of a fair chunk of whatever portion of the landed punditry follows these sorts of things, with a front-page photo of TPaw with the headline “CAN THIS MAN CONQUER OBAMA?”

The Strib noticed, and elaborates on the story:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty filed paperwork today with federal regulators to form the Freedom First PAC, a national fundraising committee he can use to aid GOP candidates in upcoming elections.

Simultaneously, he was featured — with a photo — at the top of the Drudge Report this morning with a headline asking, “CAN THIS MAN CONQUER OBAMA?”

The headline linked to a Politico.com story that reported Pawlenty “has been quietly assembling the blueprint of a presidential campaign even as he has stayed “under the radar of D.C.’s political community”

Now, Barack Obama is shaping up to be a pretty dismal president so far; many of us who on January 21 were resigned to eight years in the wilderness are making mental notes not to throw out the drape measurements, just in case. 

But can TPaw do it?

Let’s go over the strengths and weaknesses of a Pawlenty bid for the White House:

Weakness:  He’s from Minnesota.  Minnesota’s salad days as an incubator of exciting politicians and interesting races are long behind it.  Jesse Ventura, by the way, was more a “freak show” than “evidence of a vibrant culture”.  Minnesota’s only real significance is its ten electoral votes; not chump change, not a kingmaker.

Strength: On the other hand, TPaw has been working diligently on raising that profile.  If slow and steady wins the race, TPaw has got the first part down.

Weakness:  His profile is very low among the conservative base.  Pawlenty has a reputation, not so much as a “moderate” as as a “pragmatist”; he’s no movement conservative.  His showing at the last CPAC – about 2% – showed that he’s not especially well-exposed to the conservative base.  Some Minnesota conservatives call him (wrongly) a RINO.

Strength: But he’s right on the “conservative” issues that do matter to people outside the base – especially in a season where independents are getting serious buyer’s remorse over the neosocialist baggage that came with all the Hope and Change (TM).  His Thermopylae-esque stand against a two-chamber press (the DFL, Minnesota’s Democrats, control the Senate and have a prohibitive supermajority in the House) on two successive state budgets, battling back against a spending-crazy DFL phalanx, should be getting conservatives’ attention nationwide.  While TPaw does run to the center on the occasional issue – global warming, ethanol subsidies – these are “B” and “C” list issues, “nice to haves” compared to the bread-and-butter pocketbook issues. 

A story, for those of you who don’t follow Minnesota GOP trivia: when Pawlenty sought the nomination to run for governor, he faced a very stern challenge from conservative businessman Brian Sullivan, who ran well to Pawlenty’s right.  The state convention in 2002 came down to many, many ballots – and was finally clinched when Pawlenty broke down and took the Taxpayers’ League’s “No New Taxes” pledge.  And for the past six years, come hell or high water, he has held to that pledge, at fearsome political risk, and against the kind of pressure that would have made a real RINO buckle and scamper for cover.

Weakness:  I don’t know that the American conservative “base” knows the above.  They should.  Of course, the national media will follow the lead of the Twin Cities’ media to do their best to obscure this from the legions of moderates and independents who are bailing on the Democrats today.

Strength: Pawlenty is, in theory, the kind of “conservative” who should be able to reach out successfully to independents.  For all the Minnesota left’s incessant whining, he’s not a dogmatic conservative.  He’s focused less on conservative dogma, and more on results in his six years.  His results, unless you’re employed by or addicted to the state bureaucracy, are excellent.  If the American independent street knew the truth about Pawlenty – who’s branded his politics “Sam’s Club Republican” – they’d see there’s a lot to appreciate.

Weakness:  Remember the last time we had a Republican that the media anointed as the “Republican who can reach out to Democrats?”  Remember when Democrats would intone with straight faces that “McCain is the one Republican I’d ever consider voting for?”  Of course, once McCain became a threat, that all changed; the knives came out; the media and left (pardon the redundancy) began finding a “radical conservative” John McCain (whose American Conservative Union lifetime rating is a point to the right of Jim Ramstad, and down there with Chuck Hagel) that had eluded even us on the center right for his entire career. 

Strength: The media matters less than it used to.  Not enough less, but we’re getting there.

Weakness:  Of course, the main vehicle for the weakening and outflanking of the mainstream media – the conservative and center-right alternative media – is an area where Pawlenty has traditionally gone slower than a lot of other candidates.  Along with the Minnesota GOP as a whole, Pawlenty’s been very much a traditionalist in dealing with both the major media (who will eventually turn on him) and the conservative alternative media, talk radio and the blogs. 

Strength: The Minnesota GOP shows signs of being able to change that.  We’ll see if they do, and if TPaw follows suit.

Weakness:  He’s chasing some powerful frontrunners; Palin, Romney and Huckabee have big name recognition and established machines.

Strength: I’m not sure that a machine established in 2008 is all that much to brag about anymore.  To be sure… 

Weakness:  …Pawlenty lacks the name recognition of a Sarah Palin or a Mitt Romney.  But…

Strength: …he’s got some strengths, too.  Since about 2001, I’ve called Pawlenty “the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today” – and although Rep. Tom Emmer may have taken that title in-state, Pawlenty has formidable stage presence.  He’s much more polished onstage than Sarah Palin – but can fairly be said to match her folksy bonhomie; he plays the “Son of a meat-packer” card with consistency but grace.  As important, he exudes the same sense of gravitas and competency that Romney does – he has paid his dues with interest – without sounding like a CEO in the process. 

I’m not saying Tim Pawlenty is the next “Great Communicator”.  I am saying that enough raw material is there that you can’t rule it out out of hand.

It’s going to be a fun couple of years!

I’m not going to claim to be an expert on taxes or state funding.  Far, far from it.  I certainly don’t have the depth of knowledge or research that, say the folks at MN2020 have on the subject.

This subject, anyway.  (Charter schools?  They’re another story completely).

Anyway – MN2020’s Jeff Van Wychen responded to my critique of MN2020’s take on Local Government Aid last week.  And he made a few valid enough points; my interest in the subject (as opposed to, say that of charter schools) is, admittedly, more polemical than academic.  I claim no special expertise…

…which doesn’t take away from the overriding points; Minnesotans are taxed too much; our government spends too much; the system we have enables units of government to conceal and dilute that spending.  In some cases, that’s acceptable and even advisable.  In others?  Not so much.

Although Van Wychen’s reliance on the academic leads him down some strange corridors:

Mitch’s primary gripe is against the Minnesota Miracle, a major restructuring of the state-local fiscal relationship enacted in 1971.   In his screed against the Minnesota Miracle, Mitch blames it on “gigantistic DFLers and a Republican minority.”  In fact, Republicans held a majority in both the Minnesota House and Senate when LGA and the Minnesota Miracle were enacted.  Since 1971, many GOP state lawmakers have fought to preserve these reforms.  In short, the fingerprints on the Minnesota Miracle and LGA are bi-partisan.

Of course, the GOP – the “IR” through most of those years – was pretty indistinguishable from the DFL.  Remember – the “Reagan Revolution” came to Minnesota, or at least the MNGOP, almost two decades late.  “Limited government” was something to which the “IR” of Dave Durenberger and Arne Carlson paid unconvincing lip service, if any service at all.

So Van Wychen’s point is both correct, and doesn’t change mine at all; the “IR” that helped bring us the “Minnesota Miracle” practiced the same kind of “bipartisanship” the DFL still wants from Republicans; the kind where you go along with everything the DFL wants.

Mitch fails to mention an important fact about the Minnesota Miracle.  While it is certainly true that the Minnesota Miracle included a large increase in state revenue to local communities, the state also took local governments’ ability to levy sales taxes and placed limits on their ability to levy property taxes.  In short, the redistribution of resources that Mitch whines about was a mixed blessing for local governments.

What Jeff “fails to mention” – indeed, what Jeff “whines about” (Note to Mr. Van Wychen – down this road leads madness.  Turn around – Ed.) is that I didn’t “fail to mention it”, at least indirectly.

My claim – my big complaint about how the “Minnesota Miracle” and its detritus have manifested themselves over the past couple of decades – has been that it has been a shell game, allowing cities to conceal their spending by shuffling it up to the state level.

So if the “Blessings” were “mixed”, it was in that if you were a government that needed to spend more money than it had (say, tiny towns outstate with no tax base but serious improvement needs), or just wanted to (Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth), it allowed you to detach that spending from your taxation, spreading the pain and attendant desire for accountability far afield.   In exchange, the cities lost some ability to levy some local taxes – meaning they had to get creative about finding new ones.  And local governments are boundlessly creative at that.

But I digress.

Mitch disputes the fact that CPA cuts have been disproportionate.  During the entire span of the Pawlenty administration, real per capita state general fund spending is projected to decline by 16.9 percent.  (This decline is somewhat overstated due to the fact that some of the cut in state spending is being shifted or replaced by federal dollars.)  After the July unallotments, the cut in real per capita CPA over the same period is 51.4 percent—three times greater than the cut to the state general fund.  Only the ill-informed or the innumerate would dispute the fact that the cut to CPA has been disproportionate.

Ill-informed?  Perhaps.  Innumerate?  5 out of 4 times.

Disproportionate?  Yes.  And justifiably so.

Mitch appears to assume that county spending is driven entirely by local decisions.  Not so.  In addition to human service and corrections costs, counties must also implement state mandates in the areas of solid waste management and recycling, wetland mitigation, and burial of indigents, to name a few.  Given that state government imposes substantial costs on counties, it is incumbent on the state to provide the dollars to help pay for these costs.

Mitch’s defense of Pawlenty’s aid cuts would have some intellectual credibility if he was also calling for the elimination of state mandates on counties.

And Mr. Van Wychen’s call for my intellectual credibility would be more intellectually credible if he’d broken out how much of this local and county spending goes to social engineering projects…

No, Mr. Van Wychen, I’m all for rationalizing of state mandates on the counties.  Can’t say as it comes up at parties much, but since you bring it up, let’s go find that list and start slashing.

Deal?

Anyway, my complaints about the LGA system really break down to two things:

1. LGA is part of a complex shell game that diffuses accountability for local government spending, enabling local and county governments to hide their spending.
2. Timing notwithstanding, its part of the noxious Minnesota media myth about the “Minnesota Miracle”, which has become a rhetorical pipe-wrench that the “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota” crowd trots out to try to flog the myth that Minnesota isn’t over-taxed.

Van Wychen:

However, Mitch’s blog is silent on this subject.  To defend the massive cuts in state aid without also noting the role of state decisions in driving county costs is irresponsible.

[Closed-Circuit to audience:  Do you feel like you’re in a high school debate class?]

Rather than reducing state mandates, more costs have been shifted on to counties during the tenure of the Pawlenty administration.  For example, additional medical assistance and felony offender incarceration costs have been dumped on counties. This was done because it was easier for state leaders to shift their budget problems to counties rather than deal with them responsibly by increasing state taxes or by making deeper cuts to state spending.  Mitch might want to note these costs shifts the next time he chooses to preach about “accountability.”

Duly noted!

Of course, Jeff might want to check into the root causes for all of this corrections and social spending – which is a larger subject that I also didn’t address, which I’m sure is also irresponsible of me, but then Van Wychen didn’t either, so let’s call it a wash.

Local property taxes have increased not because of real growth in local budgets, but because state leaders have chosen to solve their budget problems disproportionately on the backs of counties and other local governments.

…by transferring spending that the counties and cities should be doing, fairness of any mandates notwithstanding, back to the local and county government!

And therein lies the problem: for all the pearl-clutching of partisan, pro-spending pundits like MN2020’s stable of tax paladins, spending has been growing in Minnesota, vastly faster than inflation, in good times and in bad.  When times are good, the DFL wants to spend the (temporary) surpluses; when times are bad, the DFL wants to raise taxes, so that government wants for nothing.

You can niggle about with where any given dollar goes and how it gets there; the main issue is that there are so many more of them being spent, and the DFL wants to take so many more of them from you and I (and then launder them through a system designed to obfuscate where they come from and what they go to).

In a bit of a digression, Mitch asserts that the prosperity that Minnesota enjoyed in recent decades would have likely occurred “without government intervention.”  In the same paragraph, Mitch notes the role that “a highly-educated” workforce played in promoting Minnesota’s economic growth.  That highly educated workforce was largely the product of the public investment that Mitch appears to spurn.  According to Art Rolnick, Senior Vice-President at the Federal Reserve Board Bank of Minneapolis:

Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Minnesota was an economic laggard, the state made a long-term commitment to upgrade its education system.  That kind of foresight helped forge a strong economy that has lasted for decades.

Mitch would have us believe that public investment has been irrelevant to Minnesota’s prosperity.

Well, no. That’s a bit of a strawman that relies more on the belief that if you support any “Public Investment” government taxation spending,  you have to be justify it all or risk being called “inconsistent” or “hypocritical”.   Some of us are a bit more nuanced than that.

The University of Minnesota – a leading land-grant university, an institution that was itself a key example of how “public investment” can shape society, usually for the better – long predated the explosion of statism in Minnesota.

Contrary to Mitch’s assertions, the economic prosperity that Minnesota enjoyed since 1970 was far from inevitable.

Well, doy.  Nothing but death and, er, taxes are “inevitable”.

But since the ongoing hagiography of the “Minnesota Miracle” focuses on Minnesota’s  prosperity in reference to the region (you don’t see many comparisons with, say, California or Texas or Arizona or New Jersey, right?), let’s do compare apples with

Our natural resources, while notable, are certainly not extraordinary relative to other states.  Our climate is a drag.  We are not particularly well situated in terms of our geographic location to major markets.  To prosper, smart public investments are essential.

Our resources are notable, though, compared with four other states; the Dakotas, Iowa and western Wisconsin; our climate no draggier (indeed, better than most of the neighbors’); our geographic location is indeed precisely why the Twin Cities and Duluth became not only the key cities in the state but in the region; the rivers and the railways always focused on the Twin Cities, and always connected the entire region and its immense agricultural wealth to the rest of the country and world.  And yes – among the land-grant schools in the region, the U of M’s access to a critical mass of population, communication, exposure and capital gave it advantages that, say, the University of North Dakota, another contemporaneous land-grant school, did not.

For Van Wychen to paint Minnesota as a cold, hapless South Dakota (or…Omaha?  Hmmm?), waiting for the beneficent hand of government to rescue it, is curious.

While reasonable people can disagree on whether CPA is a smart public investment, the debate on this subject should be based on fact, not ludicrous appeals to ideological co-religionists.

And there’s the clinker, right there.

Remember the grand finale to MN2020’s attack on charter schools (which I pretty thoroughly attacked earlier in the summer)?  How John Fitzgerald (and John Van Hecke) tried to tie the critiques of his deeply flawed analysis to partisanship (ignoring the fact that the vast majority of charter school families, especially in the Cities, are traditional DFL constituents)?  Say what you will about the numbers and the history – but at the end of the day, Minnesota’s tax and budget policy is a Holy War between sets of “co-religionists”, as opposed to a fundamental difference in outlook on government’s mission that we get to settle, by his leave, via the political process.

Van Wyche’s critique seems to boil down to…:

• Berg didn’t do his research: I’ll cop to it, since it really doesn’t take away from the larger point.
• If you question any government spending, you question all government spending: That’s just an absurd way to try to frame ones’ opponents. 
• Opposition to the tax and spend policies that MN2020 supports (and needs), and that LGA in its various forms helps to conceal is based on pseudo-religious superstition: Minnesota’s culture of spending needs a sober assessment, preferably in the context of a two-party debate with two different points of view.  Am I the one to carry on the debate on LGA’s technicalities?  Let’s not get crazy here.  But does the system we have dispel accountability and effectively launder spending?  Absolutely.

And that’s the part that actually matters.

The primary mission of society is to keep goverment at all levels supplied to its satisfaction.

Well, no, that’s absurd.  Or at least, so think most of us.

But to Jeff Van Wychen of MN2020 – writing an “op-ed” at the MinnPost?  Maybe not co much:

Since last December, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has unilaterally cut state investment in Minnesota’s counties by $144 million using his unallotment authority.

Let’s strive for accuracy here; Governor Pawlenty has cut spending.  Government doesn’t “invest”, except in the most gauzy, metaphorical sense of the term. 

 After the 2010 unallotment announced in June, general purpose state aid to counties in 2010 will be nearly 20 percent less than the amount certified to counties in 2008 and nearly 29 percent less than the 2002 aid amount. And this is before taking into account inflation and growth in county population.

Which, depending on your point of view, means one of two things:

1. Counties are getting screwed
2. Given inflation (which is another word for “increases in salaries and costs of living”) and population growth, counties’ abilities to raise their own money for their own spending has risen.   

But in Minnesota, we are saddled with a fuzzy, soft-focus myth; the “Minnesota Miracle”.

In the late sixties, Minnesota was a sleeping giant whose alarm clock was ticking toward “wakey-wakey” any way you sliced it; while outstate Minnesota was poor and underperforming, we had a highly-educated, stable, hard-working population, a top-flight university, immense natural resources, and a powerful industrial, manufacturing, technological and management culture (centered in the thriving Twin Cities metro area, in which much of the state’s wealth was concentrated).   Minnesota was poised for growth, and would likely have grown immensely without government intervention.

And so the state embarked on an epic program of social engineering, redistributing money from the Twin Cities (which at the time were the state’s success stories) to Greater Minnesota.  “Local Government Aid” was the vehicle of this redistribution; it set government – led, we must point out, by a coalition of gigantistic DFLers and a Republican minority even more cowed by decades of post-New-Deal politics than the GOP in the rest of the nation – up as the regulator for a massive money shift…

…which was coupled by the establishment of almost unfettered power in the state’s urban cores, the Twin Cities and Duluth.  DFL leveraged their immense power, and the financial oomph of immense money-laundering, accountability-obscuring engine that was LGA, to turn the state’s major cities into spending engines and social engineering laboratories; the Twin Cities became warehouses for the poor, and welfare-state hothouses that, inside a generation, because net consumers of resources, even given the frequent booms – the sixties, the eighties, the nineties – that swept the region.

During that time, successful feckless DFL administrations used the LGA shell game to jack up spending to unprecedented levels, without having to be accountable via directly taxing their own (few remaining taxpaying) constituents to pay for it.

And then, to balance a budget knocked askew by generations of DFL profligacy, Governor Pawlenty told the counties “start passing your costs directly to your consumers, rather than laundering it through the state”. 

Which brings us back to Van Wychen:

While some reduction in county aid was inevitable given the size of the state’s budget deficit during the FY 2004-05 biennium, the scale of the cuts forced deeper budget cuts on counties than state government made. Thus began a trend by which Pawlenty shifted the state’s budget problems disproportionately to counties (along with cities and towns) and property taxpayers.

“Disproportionately?”

What would be “proportionate”?  The obvious answer – to those not cursed with a Democrat’s innumeracy – is for a county to provide 100% of what it spends. 

Minnesota politicians have been bred out of the “local accountability” business, though.

There have been two major effects of the cuts in county revenue imposed by the state over the last eight years. First, county budgets have shrunk. Total real per capita county revenue is projected to drop by 7.1 percent from 2002 to 2009, which is greater than the decline in state revenue net of transfers to local governments. This is an indication that the budget balancing measures taken by the state have hit counties harder than they have hit state government.

Alternate explanation, for those who don’t believe “funding government no matter what the consequences” is the proper mission of government; counties have had to adjust their spending to account for reality – that they are less able to fob their profligacy off on the state.

A disproportionate share of the state’s budget problems have been shifted on to local governments, causing property taxes to increase at the same time that funding for local services and infrastructure falls.

No, Jeff Van Wychen; a disproportionate share of the counties’ budgets were pushed up to the state to finance an epic DFL power grab; the curtain’s been cast aside, and the counties are having to deal with reality. 

Responsible state leadership is needed to honestly deal with the state’s fiscal mess rather than merely shifting the problem to counties, cities, and schools.

Better idea;  responsible leadership is needed at all levels – especially the gabbling, spendthrift State Legislative level, but also at the counties, cities and schools – to stop treating the taxpayers’ wallets as entitlements.  Keeping government running is not the primary goal of a free people.

I’ll be joining a few thousand of our closest friends at the Minnesota Tea Party in a few hours. 

It’ll be at the Minnesota Capitol Grounds, starting around 5PM.  I’ll be joining a list of other speakers – Constitutional lawyer Marjorie Holsten, Doug Dahl, KLTK personality Sue Jeffers, Free market majordomo and AM1280 host David Strom, Healthcare reform powerhouse Twilia Brase, Dennis Madden, Doug Malsom, and KTLK-FM host Chris Baker, along with Bradlee Dean from “You Can Run International” and AM1280’s “Sons of Liberty”.  KKMS’ Lee Michaels hosts.

Me?  I’ll be speaking bright and early; just like when I was playing guitar in the bars, I’m the opening act.

And it’s gonna be fun!  See you there!

Let’s take a trip back through the history of Nick Coleman.

In 2004, to impugn Governor Pawlenty’s budget-cutting platform, he paid a potemkin visit to an inner city school (one where my daughter had attended kindergarten) and bellowed “YOUR SCHOOLS ARE BURNING” – as if the academic and social failure, financial wastrelcy and generalized collapse of public schools were something that only happened under Republican governors who twiddled with the budget (and hardly touched education funding).  It was a fairly bald-faced swat at the governor and the state’s thin film of fiscal conservatives.

And, of course, it was wrong.  Theatrical, and wrong.

Later still in 2004, when Coleman tried to tie the idea that people had to go all the way to Minneapolis for free flu shots to Pawlenty:

“It was time to leave the PROFESSIONAL BUILDING. I wished everyone good health and walked out onto Hennepin Avenue. When I looked down the street and squinted, I could almost see Lakewood Cemetery, four blocks away. The gates were open.”

In 2007, Nick Coleman – bailing desperately as his effort to tie the 35W Bridge disaster to budget-cutting slipped beneath the waves – reacted badly to news that engineers were about to tie the collapse to an unfortunate but fairly mundane and utterly non-political material failure; “get ready to be gusseted”, he snorted, like a third-rate illusionist hoping to push back the laws of physics by the sheer force of his rhetoric.

So are we starting to see a pattern?

After seven years of success at taming the state budget monster and running a state that just plain runs better than most of the rest of the country – especially better than the liberal cesspools that Coleman seems to admire so much – Pawlenty is spending the legislative off-season pre-campaigning for President.  And that means knocking around the country.

And just like the burning schools and magic cemetary gates and flying gusset plates, Coleman’s going to try to twist it into some sort of malfeasance.

Because for some reason, Coleman thinks Pawlenty has left something undone back home:

It’s called Minnesota, and although Pawlenty can find 49 other states, he’s having trouble feeling his way around his home state. For good reason: Minnesota’s problems could trip up his ambitions. As Pawlenty travels the Republican rubber chicken circuit, Minnesota is heading into uncharted waters.

And its governor is AWOL.

Minnesota’s “uncharted waters” are these: things are tough, but better than in most of the country.  We have a nasty budget situation – but at least the Governor balanced it (over the DFL’s politically dead body).

But to Coleman, it’s not about substance or those pesky numbers.  It’s about appearances – in this case, appearing to take the yapping schnauzers of his opposition seriously [emphasis added by me]:

Pawlenty’s refusal to participate in a legislative summit designed to stave off looming fiscal disaster was nothing less than nonfeasance. Instead of doing his job at the Capitol last week, Pawlenty attended a shmoozefest in Eden Prairie, surrounded by business leaders and loyalists (not to mention his adoring staff). In shirking his duty, he broke faith with voters and broke bonds with the legacy of his party.

This may be the most perfectly, inscrutably dumb paragraph Coleman has ever written.  I have literally spent five minutes trying to encapsulate the torrent of dumb and wrong; the best I can come up with is a list:

1. The “legislative summit” is a do-nothing charade being thrown by his incompetent, spendthrift opposition to try to make them look like they’re marginally less useless than they are.
2. Er, Nick?  Wasn’t the premise that the Governor was galavanting around the country and couldn’t find his way around Minnesota?  You do know that Eden Prairie is in Minnesota, right?
3. “Nonfeasance” is not a word.
4. Not to be pedantic, but neither is “Shmoozefest”.  It’s “Schmoozefest”.
5. It seems a bit of an abuse of rhetorical license to say that Pawlenty’s staff “adores” him; worse still to say it as if it’s a bad thing.  Perhaps Coleman’s experiences at the Strib newsroom have programmed him to think colleagues should hate each other?

It gets worse:

The Capitol event drew dozens of former state government leaders,

[I’m wondering; I know who elects “government leaders”, but I am trying to think who elects or selects “former government leaders?”  What is their significance?  Why would we care what they think?  Get back to me on that…]

including a bevy of mainstream Minnesota Republicans such as former governors Al Quie and Arne Carlson, who warned the state is steering toward an iceberg with no captain at the helm. He was correct: The “captain” has gotten his own boat and is rowing toward the horizon.

I’m going to depart for a moment from fisking Coleman, and take a shot at fisking the entire DFL. The whole “Arne Carlson was the mainstream” meme was the DFL’s dork-fingered version of Alinsky’s approach to campaigning long before anyone in Minnesota had heard of Saul Alinsky.  Of course, Arne Carlson is not a mainstream Republican. He’s a throwback to a pre-1976 world (which survived until 1998 in Minnesota, where the Reagan Revolution bypassed the MNGOP for twenty-odd years), trotted out purely to try to score points against the GOP.

But the lesson of this last two elections – conservatives win, “moderates” lose – is so obvious, even the MNGOP seems to have been getting it lately.

Both major parties — and the governor — share responsibility for the deep partisan divide that is hampering solutions to Minnesota’s problems. They also share a responsibility to put the state on sound footing.

And, unlike the DFL – which dithered its way through the session, thumbing its nose at the GOP all the way, and then tried to ram through a bloated monstrosity of a spending bill at the last second behind a foul rhetorical cloud of demands for “bipartisanship NOW!” – Pawlenty carried that responsibility out.  He fought – alone – against a two-chamber press.

And won.Twice.

I think he’s carried out his responsibility – the job for which he was elected – just fine.

Now, of course I’ve saved the worst for last.  As I predicted on the show this past Saturday, Coleman – being purely a monkey of the Minnesota mushy-left establishment – is so devoid of insight that he has to resort to casual defamation.

For a guy who acted as if the sky was falling when the president asked to speak to schoolchildren, Pawlenty sure seems laid back about his own obligations. He has dived so deep into the right-wing tide pool that by Thursday, he had joined Sarah Palin and a few other GOP confederates in threatening to invoke the 10th Amendment — in effect having Minnesota secede from the union on health care reform with little regard for the effect on Minnesota’s 450,000 uninsured citizens.

“Secede from the union”.  Just like those slave owners.  Tenth Amendment equal slavery!

Tim Pawlenty is too busy primping for the GOP presidential beauty contest and bizarrely making himself into a financial Pollyanna. Predictions put the next deficit at as high as three or four times the 2009 deficit — and without billions in federal stimulus funds to help close the gap.

Then perhaps the lesson will not be lost on Minnesotans; it’s time to quit electing  spendthrift DFLers to the Legislature.

But Pollyanna’s take on the coming crisis: “It’s a very manageable number,” he told the lovefest in Eden Prairie.

Waiter, I’d like whatever he’s having.

All together now:  Nick, you’ve had more than enough.  You’ve always had more than enough.

UPDATE:  A commenter notes that Coleman’s “prediction” – that next year’s deficit could be four times what it was projected for this year – would mean the deficit would be 85% as large as the budget itself.

And while I put nothing past the DFL, especially the current horde of hamsters in the Senate and House, that seems just a tad implausible.

So far.

I do try to get along with people.  Even liberals.  Even leftybloggers.  Part of it is that I grew up a liberal, in a liberal family; I’m not one of those who sees liberals as an evil “enemy”, necessarily – because I used to be one of them, and I was no more “evil” or “enemy” then than I am now. 

And there are some good leftybloggers out there.  I’ve called them out when I see them. 

Which doesn’t change the fact that the Twin Cities’ leftysphere is one of the world’s mother lodes of Mittyesque fantasy, deranged paranoia, hopelessly hatred-addled ranting masquerading as “thought”, and (at the end of the day) mindless passing-on of what ones’ superiors want passed on.

But every once in a while, a leftyblog tries to actually “report” the “news”.

Now, as I noted last weekend, a couple of minions from Dustrytrice.com (a DFLer whose blog is to Minnesota Democrats Exposed as Debbie Gibson was to Chrissie Hynde) were busy videotaping GOP gubernatorial candidates’ appearances on the NARN last weekend.   They stood there for two hours, getting vid of Paul Kolls, Pat Anderson and Marty Seifert and, as I got off the air, I saw they were getting ready to film Laura Brod.

I mentioned this to Laura, who is the sort of irrepressible conservative that will no doubt get her labelled as “crazy” by the DFL noise machine in fairly short order here.  Always looking for a scrap, she walked over to introduce herself to the camera guys.

And I thought “Hm.  I wonder how this is going to come out?”  I already had a hint; earlier, Trice had twittered that the utterly mild-mannered Paul Kolls – easily the lowest-key of the four three and a half gubernatorial hopefuls – was “hateful”.  I figured “this is gonna be a doozy”.

So I was mildly shocked to read Trice saying that Brod – who is nothing if not a good GOP trooper – had “said”:

Over the busy opening weekend a few DUSTYTRICE.COM tipsters were volunteering to help tape over at the Patriot Radio booth. They caught up with Rep. Laura Brod as she was getting ready to go on air. One of the tipsters mentioned that none of the GOP candidates were speaking at the GOP booth.

Well, according to Laura Brod they aren’t letting them speak.

Huh. 

Well, I took the liberty of talking with Brod before our NARN interview yesterday, and emailing her this morning just to make sure.  And while the both communications were off the record, let’s just assure you that that was not what Laura Brod said.  She said nothing about the GOP not “allowing” candidates to speak at the booth.

So what I want to know is why the MN GOP is preventing their candidates from speaking to the 1.6 million Minnesotans at the Fair?

And what I want to know is, given that Brod said nothing of the sort, and Dustrytrice.com has absolutely no corroboration of this rather odd charge, where does this curious claim come from? 

Oh, yeah.

We know their booth is only seeing light traffic,

[althought not nearly as light as the DFL’s; I spend two hours a day watching the place from my vantage point across the street at the Patriot booth; it’s a morgue, even though it’s at one of the highest traffic intersections at the fairgrounds.  And I’m seeing easily 2-3 times as much GOP swag and flair as I am DFL as I wander a, which is a huge turnaround from last year] 

 so are the GOP party bosses afraid nobody will be there to listen? Are they worried that the extremist right-wing candidates (Pat Anderson, Tom Emmer) may drag down the more moderate candidates (Bill Haas)?

Nah, Dusty.  In the age of Obama, conservatism is not a drag. 

Fresch Fisch – a longtime friend of this blog and of the NARN – attended F Rep. McCollum’s “Town Hall Meeting” at Macalester last night.

Yes, I was there with my big red sign that read “More debt? Print more money?”. I got in, one of only 400. I would presume that more than a couple thousand were there by 6:00 PM, and the show didn’t start till 7:00PM.

Astroturf?  Betty had it! 

And could you believe it? The place was packed with pre-made Obama signs that said “THANK YOU”. I didn’t see any pre-made signs from the insurance lobby, just simple homemade signs.

Part of me wishes I could have been there – but I couldn’t have made it by 4PM anyway. 

Anyone else make it?  Please leave a link or a comment…

A prior family commitment makes it impossible for me to attend tonight’s Betty McCollum town meeting.

Anyone who goes – email or leave a comment in this thread.  If you’re blogging it, send me a link. 

The subject is constituent meetings related to healthcare.

Senator Klobuchar:  “Meets” with constituents via a “tele-town hall”.  To te accurate – the technology was exceedingly buggy. To be fair, she and her people by all appearances tried to put on a fair show; it’s also worth noting that her stance on Obamessiahcare Kennedycare differs from the orthodox left’s stance, to the point that she’s angering liberals.  Fair is fair.

Representatives Ellison and McCollum: Held a healthcare rally for, basically, supporters.  At the DFL headquarters.  That’s it.

Representative Bachmann: Held a town hall meeting in which she welcomed supporters and detractors.

Just saying.

In reading Doug Grow’s account of A-Klo’s “Tele-Town Hall” “meeting”, it occurs to me…

One caller tried hard to pin her down.

“Do you support a public (health insurance) option?” he asked.

That seemed to call for a “yes” or “no” answer.

The caller got neither.

Sen. Amy KlobucharInstead, here’s what he got: “I will tell you this,” the senator said. “I’m open to a competitive option. You need to put pressure on the insurance companies. One way to do that [is allow the public to join] the federal health care plan or one just like it. The government does administer it, but it’s a private plan. That’s one way. And then there’s this co-op plan proposal [in the Senate]. That really hasn’t been formed yet. Those are some of the ideas. I want to make sure whatever option we choose works for our state. Make sure it makes it easier for small businesses and the self-employed.”

…that in the wake of Minnesota’s eight-month recount ordeal, that Minnesota has gone from having one Senataor in DC…

…to none.

So after writing about the apparent bollix-up with Senator Klobuchar’s “Tele-Town Hall”, I figured that in the interest of presenting a balanced picture of the news I’d invite the Senator to appear on the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the Fair next week.

So I went to the Senator’s “Press” page, and noted the contact name and phone number…:

…and called.

The guy on the phone had never heard of a Linden Zakula.  “Anyone in the Senator’s press operation at all named Zakula?”  I prodded.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of her…”

So I took whomever I could get.  I told the non-Zakula staffer who took the message that our Senator would have her choice of times, from Monday the 31st through Saturday the 5th of September (Friday the 28th and Saturday the 29th are booked solid), and stressed that Ed and I do the most civil, respectful interviews in town; indeed, we’ll put anything we do up against anything MPR or NPR do in terms of overall tone and quality, and if they doubted it they should ask A-Klo’s former boss, RT Rybak. We’ve got tough, legitimate questions, but it’s not going to be a Jerry Springer show (provided the SEIU stays home).

I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while:  issue a call to the MOB.

MOB bloggers – of all political persuasions – did you get an “invite” to Amy Klobuchar’s “tele-town-hall?”

Did you get the “callback” from A-Klo’s office to join the meeting?  Did you actually get to “attend” the meeting?

And presuming you got the “callback” – did you attend?  How did the meeting go?  Was there a balanced set of questions?

I plan on trying to listen to the audio later today. 

If you have a blog, write about it and either leave a link in my comment section, or email me.  If you do not have a blog, leave your story in my comment section.  I will update this post as needed.

I wanna see if there’s a story here.

Fresch Fisch got an invite to Senator Klobuchar’s  “Tele-Town Hall”:

And it sure sounded on the up-and-up:

Dear :_____

As someone who has previously contacted our office to share your thoughts on issues important to you, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate in a live statewide healthcare tele-town hall meeting this Sunday, August 23 rd , at 7:00 PM…Once you’re registered, you’ll get an automated reminder phone call on Friday evening and you’ll be called again on Sunday to be joined to the call.  The phone number you provide will be kept private.

I look forward to hearing from you on Sunday.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator

I’d have certainly taken that as an encouraging sign!

As did Fisch!

I was really pumped! Maybe all those calls to her Minnesota and Washington offices paid off! I even received my follow up call on Saturday. I was really looking forward to Sunday night.

But we were both wrong:

6:45, 6:50, 7:00, no call, maybe they are just busy, maybe it’s running late. Then at 7:15 I received my recorded message from Amy saying she “missed me”. How could she have “missed me”, I was home since 5 or so. She explained I could listen to a recording of her town hall on her website. If my call was as 7:15, was it over yet? I guess when no one is dissenting, things go pretty fast.

A fifteen minute town hall?  For government work, that is pretty dang amazing!

Seriously – I know there were a few conservatives out there who’d heard from A-Klo about these meetings.  Did anyone actually get “the call?”

Or did A-Klo’s office decide you were racist Nazis?

Fisch:

I guess maybe I didn’t call her office enough I’ll start calling more.

I think that’s a fine plan.

Maybe a bunch of us need to call on her.

I’ve spent years bagging on Dave Mindemann, blogger at mnpACT!.  Now, when I say “bagging”, I mean “on Mindemann’s policy stances and analysis”, mostly; I disagree with the guy, but he’s no drooling cretin.

And he’s in the midst of a thoughtful – if, I believe, flawed – analysis of the Sixth District race. 

Much to go after – and I’ll leave it to 6th CD residents King Banaian, Andy Applikowski and Gary Gross to go after most of it. 

But Mindemann, even as he notes that traditional social conservative issues deeply resonate with the Sixth’s voters, thinks he sees signs of “Bachmann Fatigue”:

Additional clues seem to come from the county numbers [from the ’08 election]. Bachmann clearly underperformed the Republican vote. McCain did much better county by county in the district. Now, the first thought is….. of course, that’s true, because of the three way race for the Congressional seat. However, that doesn’t explain Tinklenberg’s numbers. His support mirrored Obama’s and even exceeded it in places. That clearly indicates we have McCain voters moving to the Independence Party in the Congressional race.

The obvious question would be why? The answer can only be speculated upon, but it would seem that Bachmann’s antics are beginning to “fatigue” her marginal support. They are looking for an alternative, but can’t bring themselves to pull the DFL lever.

The other answer – the one that seems “obvious” to me – is that McCain and Obama’s numbers fairly closely mirrored the fortunes of their parties in a year that was a generational low-water mark for the GOP, especially given the phenomenon that Obama’s candidacy was (and the coattails he didn’t extend; check out Franken’s relative performance).  And in cases where McCain outperformed Bachmann, he may have a point, although I’m tempted to chalk it up to the fact that people are less engaged in down-ticket races than in the Presidency, even places like the Sixth. 

But in that context – that of a year that was a GOP bloodbath – having Bachmann come in five points lower than she did in 2006, in a year that saw catastrophic GOP results and against a massive full-court out-of-district financial onslaught and that rare Ventura “Independence” Party candidate that was remotely palatable to Sixth District voters (the otherwise apocryphal lapsed Republican Bob Anderson, who may have been the first IP candidate since Jim Gibson to draw nearly as many GOP and DFL votes) is probably a sign of strength. 

But Mindemann brings up an interesting question; do “antics” affect voters’ appreciation of an incumbent that otherwise reflects their values as closely as Bachmann obviously does those of the Sixth District?  As I noted during the campaign, Bachmann is an unusual specimen in national politics – someone who leads with her chin and wears her heart on her sleeve.  She’s the polar opposite of politican “engineers” like Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman, people who figure all the angles and consequences before going public with a stance or position (which makes it sound more cynical than I intend; it’s a perfectly legitimate approach).  And – this is important – every single voter in the Sixth knew this long before Bachmann ran for Congress.  Bachmann was a prominent Senator, and before that an equally-prominent and outspoken eduation reform advocate.   And the thin film of Sixth voters who didn’t know about Bachmann got whatever they may have missed from the small cottage industry in hysterical Bachmannphobia that sprang up while the Representative was still a state senator.

So is there anyone, anywhere in the Sixth, who doesn’t know that Rep. Bachmann is a live wire who wears her heart on her sleeve on all subjects, and who hasn’t long since made up their mind, pro or con?   And if there are, does anyone seriously think that the inevitably-eroding fortunes of the Democrats, as the price of the Obama administration starts to sink in in rock-ribbed fiscal hawk sanctuaries like the Sixth, is going to skip the Sixth?

Add to that the power of incumbency – I mean, if you want to talk about “antics”, remember that people keep returning people like Maxine Waters, people whose “antics” passed “amusing” and swerved into “bizarre”, to office.

Bachmann may be vulnerable, some day, against someone.  But at this remove, I find it hard to believe 2010 will be the election where anyone proves it.