I read Lori Sturdevant’s piece on Betty “Rubble” McCollum’s waxing political fortunes.  It was the sort of paeon Sturdevant always writes for DFLers who aren’t being perp-walked:

On it, a list-maker was jotting names of — what else? — potential candidates to challenge Republican Norm Coleman for his U.S. Senate seat in 2008.

It was laughably early but irresistible…At the top of the list was the name “Betty McCollum.”I don’t know if she’d leave the House,” I overheard. “But if she wants it” — meaning the DFL’s blessing for a run at Coleman — “she’s our best candidate.”

Possible.

But it was the part I replaced above with the ellipsis that caught my attention:

…I leaned in, looked and listened…

Does anyone seriously believe that Lori Sturdevant – the most reliable DFL flak among the Strib’s columnists – had to “lean in” like some sort of spy to get the story?

I’m almost tempted to score tickets for this event:

We couldn’t wait until Friday! Tickets for the 2007 Blue State Ball are on sale NOW! Join Big Ed Schultz and Team Fargo for a night of food, music, and political celebration on Saturday, January 20. Attendance for the 2006 Ball was huge… almost too huge! So this year we have moved our party out to the Nicollet Island Pavilion so we can have plenty of room to spread out and celebrate! Keep your eyes locked to the website and your ears glued to your radio to find out who will be announced as the next special guest for the 2007 Blue State Ball!

Sounds like it could be a fun night out for conservatives needing a good, schadenfreud-y laugh after November 7.

Anyone in?

The sub-head on today’s piece on the Ventura Independence Party reads:

The third party’s dismal results on Nov. 7 are prompting a reassessment of the way it appeals to independent-minded voters.

Mark Brunswick – the Strib’s political writer who did the piece – knows better than this (and shows us so, later in the piece).  There is nothing “Independent” about the Independence Party.

Independent voters remain a relatively small bloc of the electorate, and even they are not a reliable source of support for IP candidates.

The week before the election, the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found that hard-core independents make up one in 10 Minnesota voters.

And exit polling showed that Peter Hutchinson, the gubernatorial candidate of the Independence Party, captured only 12 percent of the independents.

“Independence” was never what the Ventura Independence Party was about. After Ross Perot and before Jesse Ventura, the party drew the customary, embarassing 1-2% that the likes of the Libertarians and Greens drew in significant elections. Once Perot left the scene, the party was taken over by mushy-middle DFLers like Dean Barkley and Tim Penny – wonky Democrats who made “moderation” their big stump talking point, with about as much success as it always has.

Then along came Ventura, who won the governor’s race for the same reason Minnesotans run from hot saunas into cold lakes, or snowmobile through the dark while hammered, or root eternally for the Vikings despite their record – because it’s our nature to do dumb things for the fun of it.

Of course, you’d have to have been dumb enough to be a mainstream media figure to be fooled by the inner workings of the Ventura Administration, which was essentially Ventura’s irascible “personality”, with Dean Barkley and Tim Penny pulling Ventura’s  strings on all things policy-related.  It’s why Ventura ran – and won – on a promise of returning the entire budget surplus to the taxpayers, but governed on a wonky, picayune formula that divided the surplus up among puny refunds and spending.  Lots and lots of spending, which turned into a huge deficit when the economy recessed in the early ’00s.

DFL-Lite.

With Ventura gone, the party is back to its roots; wonks.  People who say things like “good government” with chipper earnestness, believing that government solves problems and that if you just twiddle the knobs enough eventually everything will work just fine.

The IP is like the AV Club for people with Poli Sci degrees who had to get real jobs after college.  Nobody is fooled.
Well, almost nobody:

While some idealize independents as more serious about politics than party adherents, in reality they tend to be less informed, less likely to vote and less interested in politics, said Kathryn Pearson, assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.

“These are not the people who constitute an active, viable party,” she said.

Pearson added that today’s partisan polarization makes it less likely that people will back a third-party candidate if they see it as a wasted vote.

So when people involved in the IP say things like…:

“There has been in the past a presumption among the Independence Party that we can simply state a good idea and people will flock to it. We know that presumption is wrong, but we have been slow to adapt,” wrote Peter Tharaldson, the party’s Fifth Congressional District chairman, in a rough draft of a position paper on the party’s future.

IP state chairman Jim Moore acknowledged that voter support for the party this year was weaker than hoped.

“Minnesota voters chose to remain on the teeter-totter that is the Democratic and Republican two-party system,” Moore said. “At a minimum, we can hold them accountable, but the reason why we’re in this is to win and show Minnesota a better way of governing. Flat out, we didn’t convince enough people that we could do that this time around.”

…I have to wonder if even the the IP’s tiny film of partisans even believes this crap anymore?  The IP’s showing in governor races drops by a little over half in each election.
The Independence Party needs a celebrity.  A big celebrity with huge name recognition and a big mouth with lots of big-sounding but very shallow ideas to appeal to people who really don’t think about politics all that hard, like boat fees and license tabs, but who’s willing to govern as a marionette for Tim Penny, Dean Barkley and Peter Hutchinson.

I’m thinking an appeal to Madonna, Tim Robbins or Michael Moore might work.

Sharkbait from Anti-Strib comments on the expansion in number of Minnesota House committees under the new DFL regime:

You’d better hand on to your wallet…because I am sure that all of these committees will find new ways to spend your hard earned money!

Read the list in Bait’s post; each of those committees is eyeing your wallet.

Via Curmudgeonly and Skeptical.

I saw the City Pages cover “Story” about the GOP non-victory party – basically a printed liveblog.

On the one hand, it was a potpourri of fiskable blather.

On the other hand, fisking dumb newspaper articles in a town like Minneapolis is like throwing spitballs at Mormons in Provo; it’s not very challenging, and eventually the mind yearns for other things.

But it did need to get thrashed. So thank goodness for Learned Foot, who did the job.

“Highlight”:

1600: I continue to be looked down upon, condescended to, and ignored by every person in the building. It sucks to be so unhip, what with me having children and refusing to wear non-prescription eyeglasses and all.

Read the whole thing.

Of course, some parts of the CP “article” fisk themselves. Given the City Pages’ record of seeing what they want to see (or, according to some reports, what their editors want them to see) when in rooms full of Republicans, it’s perhaps no surprise that this fella turned up:

8:35 p.m.: In the Navigators bar on the hotel’s ground floor, a group of five revelers expounds on race relations. “There’s a difference,” explains one of them. “It depends on what kind of blacks you’re talking about. There’s the light-skinned blacks and the dark-skinned blacks. And they’re different. But you can’t just say that.”

I doubt that these five “revelers” said any such thing, any more than this happened:

And Sen. Michele Bachmann offered praise for blogger Mitch Berg: “You’re my hero!” she exclaimed, while hugging him from behind.

Paul Demko and G.R. Anderson; while I have no doubt that some Republican, somewhere, might have said such a thing, I have my doubts that any at the Sheraton last Tuesday said it to either of you (Got a tape?) – and in any case, so waht? The most toxic, noxious, xenophobic racist I have ever met face to face in my life was a DFL organizer. No, no tapes, although I could provide an eyewitness or two from among those who knew him. Do we write this person off as a dolt, or do we use him to titter about what a bunch of ignorant racists the DFL are?

Well, y’all have pretty well made that choice. But how about the rest of you?

UPDATE AND BUMP:  Gary Miller is less accomodating:

Bull.  Shit.

Norman Lear could not have concocted a more bogus “conservative” archetype.  Demko and Anderson spend a grand total of 5 minutes outside the Sheraton ballroom (for a quick cocktail, apparently) and just happen to stumble across five young jackboots plotting some sort of apartheid-like “homelands” based on skin pigmentation?

In my 20+ years of involvement with conservative politics I have never stumbled across even one such hateful conversation.  Indeed, it is my experience that conservatives are markedly less fixated on matters of race than are our opponents.  But we are invited to believe by Messrs. Anderson and Demko that such parlays are commonplace where conservatives congregate.

It has been twelve years since the GOP endured a drubbing like they did last Tuesday so Anderson and Demko can be forgiven the mirth and schadenfreude bleeding through their chronicles.

What they can not be forgiven is making stuff up.  There is little doubt in my mind that is exactly what was done in this shameful potboiler.

Given the CP’s record of making sh*t up about Republicans, I’m going to amend my earlier request for that tape.

Lassie at Freedomdogs notes that the left is falready planning to try to disrupt the ’08 GOP Convention   here in Saint Paul:

Not placated after a major DFL win this election, area hippies are plotting street theater at the 2008 GOP Presidential Convention in St. Paul.

“[Executive Director of MN ACLU, Chuck] Samuelson said he expects the Minnesota ACLU eventually will get involved in lawsuits to guarantee convention access. He said he expects that authorities will be prepared to handle tens of thousands of arrests, possibly using a large venue to hold those arrested and process them.”

A “veteran” of ProtestWarrior and FreeRepublic, I remember reading reports of delegates harassed in New York. Hundreds of PWs and FRs joined to counter-protest agitators and escort delegates. Below, PWs got in front of unsuspecting protesters at their anti-war march:

Go to the Dogs to see the photos.

I’ve been in an extended conversation with a bunch of Democrats on a St. Paul politics discussion group. Over there, among the coterie of dedicated lefties, trying to distinguish between peaceful demonstrations (a perfectly fine thing) and violent provocation is completely fruitless; it would seem some of them (at least the more vocal ones) don’t think there is a difference.

As for me?  Bring on the peaceful protesters; it’ll be fun.  But keept he violent provocateurs in Seattle and San Francisco where they belong.

As to having a “large venue” for holding the scuzzbags that get arrested – rubbish.  Rent a bunch of barges on the Mississippi.  Put up tarps for shelter.  Violent provocation should have consequences.

And if the Saint Paul Police need a backup water cannon operator – you got my number.

More constructive, perhaps, is Protest Warrior’s idea.  Go read the Dogs!

The good news: Hatch lost the governor race. The Napoleon of the Range’s political career would seem over – scuttled, in part, by the same raging temper that made the Attorney General’s office such a pleasant place:

But on Wednesday, Hatch acknowledged that in the final days, “there were hiccups galore. A lot of things went wrong. I put my gaffe right up at the top.”

His “hiccup” was an outburst in which he called a reporter either a “Republican whore” or “hack,” a temper flash that came after punishing attacks that followed Dutcher’s blunder.

In defending Dutcher, Hatch said he made matters even worse at one point by telling his attackers to quit picking on a woman.

“I was thinking, don’t pick on the lieutenant governor, pick on me,” Hatch said. “But at one point I said don’t pick on a woman. That was a dumb, dumb, dumb comment to make.”

Ultimately, he said, that may have cost him more votes among liberals in the metro area than his original outburst.

And therein lies the better news: Hatch’s defeat may have also rid us for good of Judi Dutcher, former uberliberal Republican who changed parties, thus becoming the Most Qualfied Woman For An Office as far as the DFL was concerned, earning endless soft-focus praise that was only recently outstripped by Barack Obama.

Hopefully we’re done with that, now.

Blois Olson (who is apparently on track to be the “Larry Jacobs of the 2020’s”) notes:

Blois Olson, a co-publisher of Politics in Minnesota and a DFL commentator, said most in the DFL were “too happy about other wins” to be upset about Hatch’s defeat or his e-mail.

And, he said, he wouldn’t count either Hatch or Dutcher out for future runs.

“If a cat has nine lives,” Olson said, “a politician has at least 10.”

Blois: I think the metaphor you’re looking for involves garlic and wooden stakes through the heart.

When inaugurated to Congress in 1991, Paul Wellstone took the occasion of his first meeting with President George “41” Bush to harangue the president on the buildup for the Gulf War.  The President responded with the immortal aside “Who is this chickensh*t?”

The ongoing lesson of the moment, of course, had nothing to do with Wellstone’s courage (it was irrelevant); it related to his propensity to take a tradition that was there for the institution of the Senate, and make it all all about Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul.

Yesterday we saw our first Keith Keith Keith Keith Keith moment:

While his fellow incoming freshman were attending a private White House reception with President Bush Monday night, Rep.-elect Keith Ellison had what he considered a more important appointment to keep.

“I went to the AFL-CIO reception, because I wanted to meet and greet leaders of labor, and get to know them,” Ellison, D-Minn., said in an interview during a break from freshman orientation Tuesday. “Those are the people who I came here to support.”

“It wasn’t even a close call,” added Ellison, who is replacing the retiring Rep. Martin Sabo, a Democrat. “Maybe one day I’ll get to meet the president. He’s the president, and I respect him in his role as the president, but I have exceedingly sharp differences with him on a policy level.”

But the event, and the moment, weren’t about your policies, or the President’s, Ellison.  It was about the institution of the relationship between the Congress and the Executive – something much, much bigger, if you care about this nation’s history and future, than you, your policies or your party.

Perhaps it’s a way to show his constituents he’s not been seduced by the Beltway.  But a better time to show that would be in, say, a couple of years.

I’m betting “against”.

In reading Swiftee’s response to Michael Moore’s snark to disheartened conservatives, he said something that got me thinking:

You talk about “being in a funk”. Mikey, you cannot imagine our dismay when it became obvious that none of your big mouthed, anti-American buddies really didn’t have the balls to follow through with their childish little threats to leave the country in ’04, but we’ve gotten over it.

Hey – I don’t recall any conservatives threatening to leave the country if the election didn’t go their way.

I also didn’t hear anyone yapping about seceding from the union and joining a nation friendlier to conservative beliefs.

Hm. Not that I’d ever say such a thing, but it’d almost seem that conservatives care more about this country…

The Brady Campaign to “Prevent” Gun Violence

, by way of its mission to attack the Second Amendment, is working with speech-rationing “campaign finance reform activists to gut the First Amendment:

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, Nov. 1, asking the FEC to investigate whether the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America are in violation of Federal Election Commission regulations and Federal Election Campaign Laws.The complaint about the National Rifle Association asks the FEC to determine whether the NRA has engaged in prohibited activities, including electioneering on behalf of federal candidates, by expressly advocating the election or defeat of federal candidates in communications to the general public, beyond its membership, through its Web activities.

The complaint against the Gun Owners of America GOA is similar.

A couple 0f notes here:

• The Brady Factory’s influence among voters, which peaked in the early nineties (when the group had about 150,000 member versus 3 million at the time for the NRA) in terms of popular support, hasn’t so much swerved into the worlds of the media, the PR war, the courts and the bureaucracy as simply realized that that was its rational home. Brady knows it’s long lost the battle for America’s hearts and minds; they seek now only to grab America by the shorts and pull hard.
• All of you gun owners who stayed home or voted Constipendatarian because of your ire over ethanol subsidies or the picayune inner workings of a candidate’s immigration stance, or voted Democrat because you thought we needed a “change of course” or you thought “the GOP needs to get shook up”? This is your decision beginning to come home to roost.  The Dems are the party of Speech Rationing; McCain-Feingold was aimed at least partially at stifling the Second Amendment lobby, whose grassroots efforts had been so powerful in previous elections.

The Democrat gains are going to embolden the gun grabbers. Not that it’s going to be a complete disaster – even the Democrat leadership has learned that gun control is a complete nonstarter more than ten miles from either coast. But it does mean that we’re going to have to spend time and money to defend the progress of the past six years, rather than press ahead for further progress among friendly legislatures.

Thanks!

Via Joel Rosenberg

From Our House:

What does a Democrat/DFL victory mean when

• All gay marriage bans passed but one, including Wisconsin’s more comprehensive civil unions ban? In Arizona, a similar ban was rejected by a tiny margin.
• Prop 2 passed in Michigan banning affirmative action?
• The death penalty advisory passed in WI?
• Arizona passed legislation requiring proof of citizenship for getting state benefits and for voting. Also passed bans on illegals getting bail on some felonies, being able to get money for civil suits in some cases.

As noted even as the counts rolled in – conservatism did just fine last Tuesday.

And I thought this bit was interesting:

Catholics and Evangelicals have been the backbone of the anti-abortion movement since it started. If this is now a settled question, where will they go next? The evangelicals and some Catholics will go on to other social issues, like banning gay marriage, homeschooling and educational choice related issues.

And that can only be a good thing.  While abortion is a solid moral issue (make no mistake, I oppose it), the issue as a whole has long settled into iron-clad categories:  A thin slice on either extreme either opposes it under even the most extreme medical circumstances or thinks it should be a sacrament for participation in society; thin layers of growing moderation follow as you drill your way inward to the vast majority of Americans.  Abortion is a wedge, all right – a wedge that in and of itself has worn out.  The votes to be gained (to speak cynically and politically) are all in the sub-issues; partial-birth, parental notification, etc.

Most Catholics however, may be in play and there have been widespread efforts on the part of the left to get them back, based on the “social teachings of the church.” This is a murky area, consisting of a particular interpretation of a couple of papal encyclicals, some of the documents of Vatican II and the writings of some theologians. Its been used to justify government action on issues like affordable housing and now even global warming. It’s been coming down the road for years and it may be here now.

It’s been one of the big theological stories ever since I was a kid; are the liberal American catholics going to split from the “conservative” Roman church?  What effect will it have?

Mainstream American Catholic churches have been following their mainstream Protestant cousins to the left for decades.  I think the political shakeout within the church and between the churches is going to be an interesting thing to watch over the next twenty years.

Recall how Tony Blair saved the Labor party from a certain death: he waited until he had seniority and then chucked all the old hard core trade unionists out of the party. The rest may be retired or may be biding their time after he retires in a year or so. But he did a good deal of housecleaning based on elements of the Conservatives’ policies that actually worked. Some people argue that if Bill Clinton hadn’t had so many personal weaknesses he might have been regarded similarly. We will just have to see how the ideological wars on both sides play out. It may well be that Conservatives will have roles to play in both parties.

Interesting concept – and a scary one, if you value conservatism.  Far better for conservatism to be a majority (or strong, obstreporous minority) in one party than a weak minority in two.

What do you think?

TheHill.com – Kennedy’s cancer in remission