One of the five second sound bites about Michele Bachmann is her take on her church’s (occasional) commandment that wives be “submissive” to their husbands.

Most non-Christians, and/or more liberal Christians (and I don’t belong to a denomination that preaches it, by the way) for that matter either misunderstand the idea, or know nothing but the distorted idea of “submission” fed to them by people like, well, Bachmann’s critics.

One of the areas where it’s irrelevant is, well, the presidency.  Michael Prell has an answer he’d suggest Bachmann give when she’s asked about the idea of “submission”.

Here’s the conclusion (read the whole thing here):

“Finally, as president, I will not be submissive to union bosses, to billionaire puppetmasters like George Soros, or to militant anti-American leftists who demonize our soldiers and preach ‘God damn America.’ And, unlike President Obama, I will not be submissive to indicted or convicted special interest groups like ACORN, or to Weatherman terrorists, or those who want to see Israel wiped from the map.”

“Instead, as President, I will be submissive to the American People, and to the Constitution, because as President I will honor my oath to serve both the Constitution and the People—unlike the current president of the United States and his minions who demonize patriotic and Constitution-loving Americans as ‘terrorists.’”

Submission is not the issue. It is who, and what, you submit to that matters.

That’s the real issue, and comparison, here; every tin-pot tyrant and banana-republic strongman is Barack Obama’s dominatrix.

Poor “Progressives”.

They can’t win elections.  Their politicians can’t do budgets (or, if they do, can never, ever make them work.  Even with years of unfettered control (from 2008 through 2010),  they can’t do anything useful with the economy.

And now even their protests suck:.

“We’re trying to find a caddy,” said a protester posing as Boehner. The Boehner impersonator stood beside impersonators of Minnesota Reps. Michele Bachmann, Erik Paulsen, Chip Cravaack and John Kline.

The “impersonators” were actually people wearing large cardboard cutouts of unflattering photos of the various politicians’ heads, looking like they were cut out from “Dump Bachmann” and blown up.  After eight years of constant caterwauling, they can’t even muster the energy to do those annoying papier-mache puppets anymore.

Cravaack wryly noted…:

“The people that we were speaking with were the job creators. They’re the people who employ Minnesotans,” Cravaack said of the attendees. “So we’re asking the question to them, ‘What is it going to take for you to invest in yourselves and create jobs?'”

He added that businesses are skittish about making that investment with the threat of new taxes and regulations from the Obama administration.

“Taxing companies right now in a recession is not going to create jobs,” Cravaack said. “It’s going to take jobs away.”

But to the progressive worldview, it’s government’s job to create jobs.

How?

By hiring lots of people who’ve never used shovels for a living for “shovel-ready” jobs? (What the hell is a “shovel-ready” job?  Outside of patching streets, what job in the world today actually uses shovels?)

By waving the magic government wand, perhaps?

They can’t even think of original chanting points:

Protesters accused the Minnesota congressmen of meeting with wealthy donors while proposing cuts to the middle class and not creating jobs. One sign read “People before profits,” and the crowd chanted “Hey-hey-ho-ho, corporate greed has got to go.”

Criminy – even Saul Alinsky is rolling in his grave.

“Paris Paramus”, a NARN listener and Romney supporter, sends a 14 point list of reasons to stay off the Perry bandwagon:

Supporters of Texas Governor Rick Perry are not going to like this article at all. Right now, Republicans all over the United States are touting Rick Perry as the “Republican messiah” that is going to come charging in to save America from the presidency of Barack Obama.

Any conservative that speaks in terms of “political messiahs” is as dumb as one of those slack-jawed, dreamy-eyed Obama bots three years ago.

No, Rick Perry is not going to save America. In fact, he would likely be very, very similar to both Bush and Obama in a lot of ways.

So let’s check this out:

#1 Rick Perry is a “big government” politician. When Rick Perry became the governor of Texas in 2000, the total spending by the Texas state government was approximately $49 billion. Ten years later it was approximately $90 billion. That is not exactly reducing the size of government.

It’s true – it’s not.  But; it amounts to about 7% a year.  Minnesota’s state budget grew 50% in the same period, mostly under spending-hawk Pawlenty – down from 10-20+% annual increases under Arne Carlson.  And it’s interesting to see that Texas, with almost 25 million people, has a state budget only three times as large as Minnesota’s.

Let’s call that a partial point against.

#2 The debt of the state of Texas is out of control. According to usdebtclock.org, the debt to GDP ratio in Texas is 22.9% and the debt per citizen is $10,645. In California (a total financial basket case), the debt to GDP ratio is just 18.7% and the debt per citizen is only $9932. If Rick Perry runs for president these are numbers he will want to keep well hidden.

While Texas is likely much better able to service the debt than California, because it’s not a basket case, it’s certainly a point against.

#3 The total debt of the Texas government has more than doubled since Rick Perry became governor. So what would the U.S. national debt look like after four (or eight) years of Rick Perry?

Worth a look – and I’lll roll it into point 2.

#4 Rick Perry has spearheaded the effort to lease roads in Texas to foreign companies, to turn roads that are already free to drive on into toll roads, and to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor which would be part of the planned NAFTA superhighway system. If you really do deep research on this whole Trans-Texas Corridor nonsense you will see why no American should ever cast a single vote for Rick Perry.

This is kind of a schizoid point.  On the one hand, privatizing roads is an eminently libertarian/conservative solution – switching roads from tax burdens to private fees.

On the other, you have the whole “trans-whatever highway” thing, which is something that glassy-eyed Paulbots chant about at meetings until everyone else is ready to mace them.

There may be a point against Perry here, but I’m not seeing it.

#5 Rick Perry claims that he has a “track record” of not raising taxes. That is a false claim. Rick Perry has repeatedly raised taxes and fees while he has been governor. Today, Texans are faced with significantly higher taxes and fees than they were before Rick Perry was elected.

Specifics would help, here.  What taxes?  Applied to whom?  How has the average Texan’s tax burden changed in ten years, and from what basis?

I’m willing to be convinced – but anyone who talks about “trans-Texas highways” had better bring actual numbers to atone for it.

#6 Even with the oil boom in Texas, 23 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas does.

Right – and how is that Perry’s fault?  Specifics, people.

#7 Back in 1988, Rick Perry supported Al Gore for president. In fact, Rick Perry actually served as Al Gore’s campaign chairman in the state of Texas that year.

This may be the least convincing point of them all.

So what?  In 1980, I was a liberal.  In 1940, Ronald Reagan was a New Dealer.  Many of the best conservatives started out as liberals.  And in 1988, Algore was seen, and positioned himself, as a blue-dog, believe it or not.

Of all the shots I’ve heard against Perry, this is the dumbest.

#8 Between December 2007 and April 2011, weekly wages in the U.S. increased by about 5 percent. In the state of Texas they increased by just 0.6% over that same time period.

Again – context?  It could very well be that wages in Texas grew slower – although it seems unlikely, or at the very least that someone is comparing apples and blowtorches.

This – and #6, above – echo the lefties’ “where are the jobs?” chanting point; as if any conservative would, or any government could, create jobs and raise wages by decree.

I suspect other factors are at work here.

This next one is a big one:

#9 Texas now has one of the worst education systems in the nation. The following is from an opinion piece that was actually authored by Barbara Bush earlier this year….

•  We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.

Limited focus on education is a problem throughout the South, though, and it’s a problem that long predates Rick Perry.  It predated Jefferson Davis, for that matter.  It starts with the Scots-Irish tradition, filtered through white “white trash” plantation culture, that still drives many facets of southern culture (like the south’s incredibly high violent crime rate), to say nothing of the other education problems plaguing urban school districts nationwide (including states with “good” education systems, like Minnesota).

If the author wants to make the case that Rick Perry could and should have turned this around, I’m all ears – but it seems like a stretch.  To be honest, 36th is higher than I’d expected.

•  We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.

This is Rick Perry’s fault how?

•  We rank 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.

If the point here is that teachers are overpaid for the performance they get out of the schools, it seems a stretchy one.

#10 Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg Group meetings in 2007. Associating himself with that organization should be a red flag for all American voters.

“Guilt by association” is an even bigger flag for any logical thinker.

Show me that Perry did anything.  Show me something incriminating that he said.

I was at the RNC when John McCain was nominated.  It doesn’t mean I was responsible for Barack Obama being elected.

#11 Texas has the highest percentage of workers making minimum wage out of all 50 states.

Given their SAT scores, that seems completely appropriate.

I’m a kidder.  I kid.  This is redundant with 6 and 8, and again, I’d need to see why this is supposedly the case.

#12 Rick Perry often gives speeches about illegal immigration, but when you look at the facts, he has been incredibly soft on the issue. If Rick Perry does not plan to secure the border, then he should not be president because illegal immigration is absolutely devastating many areas of the southwest United States.

Now we’re on to something.  Point against.

#13 In 2007, 221,000 residents of Texas were making minimum wage or less. By 2010, that number had risen to 550,000.

Again – so what?  Is it government’s, much less The Governor’s, job to see to everyone’s income?  In a recession?

And this is redundant with 6, 8 and 11.

#14 Rick Perry actually issued an executive order in 2007 that would have forced almost every single girl in the state of Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry would have put parents in a position where they would have had to fill out an application and beg the government not to inject their child with a highly controversial vaccine.

Now we’re on to something.  I’d have serious questions for Perry about this campaign; so, apparently, does Perry.

So out of fourteen ten points (six were redundant), we have one guilt by association, one aspersion based on out-of-context campaign positions from over 20 years ago, some things that I have trouble seeing as government’s responsibility much less the Governor’s, some social issues that no governor can control and that take generations or centuries to fix, and call it four actual problems – Gardasil, immigration, the state debt and the state budget.

And all of them are questions that need asking.

Immediately after Pawlenty withdrew from the presidential race, his name was getting bandied about on the GOP side (and in some cases, bandied right back).

Eric Ostermeier notes that out of twelve former Minnesota governors who’ve tried to run for Senate, only one has won the race:

Even presuming, for the moment, that Pawlenty does not need a breather from political campaigning after 10 years in the Minnesota House, eight years in the governor’s mansion, and the remainder seeking the GOP presidential nod, Minnesota history suggests taking on Klobuchar (or even Al Franken in 2014) is risky business.

A Smart Politics review of Minnesota electoral history over the last century finds that sitting or ex-governors were elected to the U.S. Senate just one time in 12 attempts since popular vote contests were introduced in the state in 1912.

The only Minnesota governor to go on and win a Senate election during the past century was Republican Edward Thye, who defeated DFLer Theodore Jorgenson by 19.1 points while serving in his second term as governor in 1946.

All of which is true – and an interesting read, as far as it goes.

And so was “The Eighth District is solid Blue, and has been for three generations”, this time a year ago.

The point?  Every election is unique. If things continue like they are, bikini car washes will have longer coat-tails than Barack Obama.  A Senator who’s actually helped deliver a good economy might just gain a few points on a Senator that’s  done…

…what?

Well, that may be A-Klo’s great advantage.  She’s been thoroughly innocuous in her five years in office; there really is no there, there.  She’s made no mistakes.

But in change elections, mistake-aversion and innocuity aren’t not always much insurance.  Ask Gil Gutknecht, George H.W. Bush and Gary Laidig.

Just saying – all political records stand, ’til they stop standing.  They we forget about them.

Hamline University poli sci prof Dave Schultz is a perfectly fine human being.  But it’d be a stretch to say he’s got the pulse of the GOP, much less its’ best interests in mind.

Over at Schultz’s Take, he writes about the straw poll:

Bachmann wins, Pawlenty is out. What do learn from the Iowa straw poll? Whatever political moderation existed in the Republican Party, it rapidly disappearing as the GOP is being remade in the image of Palin and Bachmann.

Schultz says that like it’s a bad thing.

OK, seriously, now?  Schultz is betraying just a bit of parochialism, here.  While personalities do indeed move the needle in politics – there’s a reason Michele Bachmann is a serious presidential candidate and Harry Reid isn’t – conservatism isn’t about personalities.  It’s about ideas.

So it’d be more accurate to say that the GOP is remaking itself in the image of Hayek and Goldwater.

And the talking heads who are moaning about the “death of moderation” in the GOP are being myopic at best, disingenuous at worst.

We’ll come back to that.

Schultz recaps the dynamics of Bachmann’s campaign and future outlook – you can read that over at his blog.

I called this post “Kael’s Take” for a reason:

Look beyond Bachmann. She received 28.6% of the vote, Paul 27.7%–together they accounted for 56% of the straw poll. These are two candidates who represent perhaps the most extreme agendas among the GOP field. Add to them Santorum who polled at 9.8% and one finds that nearly two-thirds of the straw poll went to what would appear to be non-mainstream candidates. Pawlenty, perhaps the most mainstream and establishment candidate who participated in the field, polled barely 14%.

Schultz, who teaches at Hamline, which is a reliably “progressive” echo chamber in the middle of Saint Paul (aka “Chicago on the Mississippi”) might be forgiven for thinking that Bachmann and Santorum aren’t “mainstream”…among Iowa Republicans who care enough about politics to drive to Ames on a gorgeous Saturday to vote. And Paul, nutter though he is, has at the core of his campaign plenty that resonates with an awful lot of mainstream libertarian-conservatives, myself included.

It’s because GOP activists, now, a year and a half away from the election, are doing what I wrote about three and a half years about in this space; staking out what they absolutely, positively want out of the party in 2012.  At this stage of the race, politics isn’t a horserace; it’s a tug of war – or rather, eight of them.  And the goal at this point of the campaign is to grab the rope that represents what you believe, and want out of the GOP, and to pull like hell.

Which is what Iowa Republicans did on Saturday.  They drove to Ames, and grabbed the ropes marked “cut taxes”, “repeal Obamacare”, “pro-life”, “get the state off our backs”, “Balanced Budget Amendment” and such, and they pulled like mad.  They pulled so hard that Tim Pawlenty, seen as more “moderate”, dropped out of the contest (and John Huntsman would, too, if he had any sense).

The GOP has moved to the right.  Why do you suppose that is?

Schultz:

This is a party that has moved dramatically to the right of the one that picked Romney as the Iowa straw poll winner and McCain as their nominee in 08.

And why does Professor Schultz suppose that the GOP would move away from a tack that lost in a near-landslide?  One closely tied with the ideological, inside-the-beltway rot that led the party to the debacles of 2004-2008?

That worked so well for us before.  Perhaps that’s what Schultz wants – it’d be understandable – but it’s hardly rocket science.  Perhaps Schultz thinks Republicans are stupid – but even we know that rejecting the “moderate” GOP was behind the wins in 2010.  The mood of the nation, to say nothing of the party, has left Schultz’s “moderate” GOP in the dust (with Pawlenty as collateral damage).

The GOP had redefined itself. It is–as I have argued for months–no longer the party of Ronald Reagan.

Dave Schultz has stolen Ronald Reagan.  I’m here to steal him back.

Schultz argues:

Sarah Palin successfully remade the party into one captured more firmly by the Tea party and owing much of its ideological allegiance to a blend of Barry Goldwater, Pat Robertson, and Ayn Rand.

I have to ask – what does Schultz think Reagan was?

More “moderate” than Bachmann?  Perhaps in some rhetorical terms – but in his era, he had to remake the GOP itself from a moderate-left to a moderate-right party.  Still, the left – and Schultz himself, I’d imagine – responded to Reagan’s calls to limit government, and to face down Communism, in terms no less rabid, foamy and Alinski-ite than they do Michele Bachmann today.

And Schultz is aiming at the wrong target – because there is no battle between a “moderate” and a “conservative” GOP; the battle is between Northeastern conservatism (pro-business, socially-moderate, comfortable with big government – think Romney, Huntsman, George HW Bush), Southern conservatism (socially conservative, fiscally all over the place; think everyone from Pat Robertson to Mike Huckabee) and Western conservatism (fiscal hawks, social libertarians – which includes everyone from Goldwater and Reagan to the Tea Party and its candidates), and a few candidates that try to split the difference (Pawlenty being a great example).

And so Schultz’s argument is wrong; the Tea Party is the Reagan legacy – if you leave off the edges to that legacy that Schultz has sanded off to make it fit his premise.

Schultz concludes:

Within a party of vanishing moderates, Bachmann can win.

And within a nation that’s moving to the right – the Western, small-government, sick-of-utopian-promises-that-are-leaving-our-grandchildren-in-debt-from-whatever-party right – any conservative can win.  The “moderate” GOP is irrelevant to that goal; even Romney is going to have to tack to the right to stay in contention.

Because that’s where the party – and, I argue, the nation – is.

And that’s the message from Ames.

Cue the Bachmann Derangement Syndrome ward!

And cue the conspiracy theorists who will be wondering how Ron Paul could possibly lose an open straw poll…

…from early childhood, President Obama…

…and you are no Martin Luther King:.

And now that King has his own memorial on the Mall I think that we forget when he was alive there was nobody who was more vilified, nobody who was more controversial, nobody who was more despairing at times.  There was a decade that followed the great successes of Birmingham and Selma in which he was just struggling, fighting the good fight, and scorned, and many folks angry.

Heh.

But what he understood, what kept him going, was that the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.  But it doesn’t bend on its own.

Yep.  We understand it, and it keeps us going too.

And I’m starting to think it might just bend back in November of 2012.

News just broke that Tim Pawlenty has dropped out of the Presidential race, after coming in a weak third in the Iowa caucus.

On the one hand, he got a bad rap; he’s a great stump speaker, and those who said was “too blah” have no idea what he did when facing two DFL chambers in the legislature.

On the other hand, his campaign focused on electability rather than principle – a strategy that, along with his record, could have worked in the GOP of 2000 or 2004. But this year’s crop is all about the principle; firebrand conservativm sells.

While Pawlenty got painted with the “moderate” brush – one he certainly deserved in the state House – he was a political engineer who worked that could be fairly called miracles on the conservative issue that matters most, budgets and taxation.

I’d hoped he’d go a lot farther.

Let me be clear about this: I believe that Barack Obama will win four more years.  Indeed, I believe the electoral landscape is shaping up such that if he wins with less than 55% of the vote – he’s an incumbent running before a fawning media and a hysterical following, for crying out loud – and the Dems don’t take two seats in the Senate and retake the House completely, they should consider it a crushing loss for the party as a whole.

Still, there are signs all is not well for front-runner and favorite Obama:

U.S. consumer sentiment worsened sharply in early August, falling to the lowest index level since 1980, even though retail sales posted the biggest gains in three months in July, separate reports on Friday showed.

1980?  Why, I remember that.  That was the golden age of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale! The era of stagflation!  The Iranian Hostage Crisis!  13% inflation!

Make no mistake; I think Obama’s going to win, and if he doesn’t win big, it’ll be the same as a loss.  But this would seem to be a bit of a hurdle…

According to Drew “Don’t Call Me Michael” Westen, Obama’s problem is that he wasn’t interventionistic, imperial, demigogic…progressive enough!

No, I’m not going to quote it.  Read it.  On an empty stomach.

It’s no secret – Obama’s priority isn’t the economy.  All that “I’ll be fine being a one-term president” was so much baked wind; he wants four more years to get his addled agenda across.

The guy’s got a nation to destroy:

Of course, this by no means is an indication the President has lost the Huffington Post. Arianna, Alex, and everyone at this liberal abomination will be campaigning for the former junior senator from Illinois next year as if he’s a close relative.

But the disappointment on the left is palpable, and if the economy really is double-dipping, it will be interesting to see whether the rats leave the ship or figure out a way to blame it on Republicans.

And it’s in this cycle that the Tea Party, and all of those millions of newly-minted fiscalcons, needs to earn its bones.

As NewsBusters previously reported, there already is an effort underway to use the debt ceiling agreement as the culprit for any downturn.

Whether or not the American people will buy it is another thing altogether.

The media is already working overtime try to rig that part the equation.

I’ve been listening to some of my fellow conservatives – especially Tea Partiers – complaining about the debt ceiling deal, in terms that start with “it’s awful” and often as not end with “well, it was a great run – time to start hiding gold under the mattress”.

To which I answer, as appropriate, “what did you expect when we only control the House?” and “if you’re not storing gold, ammo and food even in the good times, you’re nuts”.  But I digress.

Ed Morrissey – with whom I co-host a radio show every Saturday on AM1280 – notes in The Week that it wasn’t a perfect victory for the Tea Party – there was no way for that victory to happen, at least not via democratic means, in this Congress with this President – but it was a victory nevertheless:

Who won, and who lost? Did anyone win? If we gauge winners and losers by the reaction from politicians and activists across the political spectrum, no one was satisfied with the deal reached between Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress and President Obama. Though it is arguably true that few actually advanced their agenda much in the deal, that doesn’t mean everyone came out of this deal equally worse off. Indeed, despite some dissatisfied rumblings from within the Tea Party, one lesson is clear: They succeeded in transforming Washington.

The codecil to that – one that the Tea Party needs to remember?  Politics is not like a championship game, with a final end result that stands for all time.  It’s a season – one that never actually ends.  It’s one where everything that happens in this game – hurt quarterbacks, momentum gained and lost, everything – affects the next game, and the game after that, and games played after your children take things over.

The example I keep coming back to: handgun carry reform in Minnesota.  When Concealed Carry Reform Now first formed, and started trying to change Minnesota’s racist, sexist, patriarchal weapon carry laws, they couldn’t even get time to talk with legislators – with “friendly”, Republican ones.

I can’t help but feel that some of the Tea Party conservatives who are complaining about the debt ceiling deal today would have fumed about the unfairness of it all back then, thrown in the towel and spent the next six years silently stewing.  But I’d hope it’d be a teaching moment.

Because the next year…well, only a few legislators talked with CCRN.  But it was more than the previous year.  And CCRN’s mailing list bloomed, and outstate voters started paying attention.

And the next year?  A few more legislators opened their doors.  And CCRN’s mailing list started having an effect – legislators started hearing from more people, which opened still more doors.

And the next year?  There was talk of a bill.  It never happened, but legislators were getting the message in droves; CCRN’s volunteer lobbyists were getting audiences with key legislators.

And the next year?  Well, the CCRN mailing list grew some more, and the DFL had to start playing defense.

And the next year?  And the following?  More of the same.  The DFL – and their point man on the issue, Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund – had to crank the smear and lie machine up into full force, since it was becoming clear they had no basis in fact.

And the next year?  There was a bill – and it died on the table (as I recall – I could very well have the specifics wrong, but it doesn’t really detract from the point).  And CCRN’s mailing list told voters which legislators voted against it.  And they got an earful, and a few of them – outstate DFLers who’d voted against the bill – lost their return tickets to Saint Paul.

And the next year?  We won.

(And two years later, we won again, after a DFL-pet judge struck down the law on ludicrously selective grounds).

Viewed from the perspective of 1995, and 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, we lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost and lost again.

And yet without all the effort – and there was a lot of effort – expended from 1005 through 2002, there would have been no victory.

And the victory wasn’t won by simply wanting it badly enough – although you gotta have that.  It was won by playing grassroots politics better than the other side.  We – the pro-Second-Amendment movement – had to win over a lot of hearts and minds in the legislature, the media, and on Mainstreet Minnesota.

The Tea Party did transform American politics – once. It did it by convincing the American people last Fall that they had the best ideas for taking this nation forward.

And now they need to do it again – to win the Senate, the White House, and a bunch of State Houses and Legislatures, enough to really, seriously, totally revamp the way this nation views the relationship between The People and government.

And it’s not a sprint, or a single game; it’s a marathon, an endless season.  Something that’ll challenge many Americans’ addled attention spans.

All the better.

Looking back through my archives, I think this piece from last December – when Dayton “won” the recount – was pretty dead-on.

Dayton has agreed to the GOP budget:

Gov. Mark Dayton said Thursday morning that he is willing to accept Republicans’ June 30 budget offer, which would close a $1.4 billion budget difference by delaying payment of school funds and borrowing against the state’s tobacco settlement.

“This is the only viable option that’s potentially available,” Dayton said.

It’s not a complete, 1940-NFL-Champtionship-style blowout – I think we started negotiations too high, and may have handed Dayton a propaganda point on the school shift, yet again.  And not getting VoterID and King Banaian’s Sunset Clause – those hurt.

But let’s focus on the big picture here.   We held the line on new taxes.  The line is drawn in the sand; government will live within its means, even if “its means” have been stretched more than conservatives want.   With redistricting coming up, it’ll be a good message to take back to the voters.   And nobody had to do without their Miller and Coors.

Kudos to the legislative freshmen class!  I can’t imagine this sort of outcome happening with the MNGOP of ten years ago.  Salut!

More later.

The next order of business, of course?  Press this win onward.  Dayton’s down (in a gauzy-focused, politically-sanded-off kind of way); we have to keep kicking.

UPDATE:  Was I too exuberant?  Perhaps, but I’m not apologizing, since it’s fun to spike the ball even if the play gets called back.  Friends of mine in conservative political circles say yes, Dayton’s conditions are too onerous, and the deal is DOA.

So hang in there, folks.

More tomorrow.

Music rights are a funny thing.

When I was in radio, I learned that music rights and royalties work something like this:

1. To play music in public – on a radio station, television show, movie, in-store muzak, jukebox, elevator, nightclub, TV or radio commercial or whatever – you pay a fee to one of the big three music licensing agencies – ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.    The agencies distribute the fees to the songwriters (the names that used to be listed under the song title in incredibly tiny type on old albums and .45s)  via an incredibly complex (the better to hide the cheating) formula.
2. If you didn’t pay the licensing fee, the songwriter and publisher could haul you in to court and charge “mechanical royalties” – better known as “a court judgment”.

And that’s pretty much it.

We’ll come back to that.   Rolling Stone is “covering”  Michele Bachmann’s campaign in…

…well, the same way all the media are “covering” it:

Michele Bachmann hasn’t exactly gotten her campaign off to the best start. It’s bad enough to confuse movie legend John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy and crazily insist that John Quincy Adams was a founding father at the age of nine…

Because goodness knows we can’t have a gaffe-prone president or vice president atop the executive branch…

…but now she’s gone and pissed off Tom Petty. The Minnesota congresswoman played “American Girl” yesterday when she walked onstage at a rally, and Rolling Stone has confirmed reports that Petty’s management team immediately sent the Bachmann campaign a cease and desist letter.

So I’m wondering – provided that Bachmann’s campaign paid her licensing fee, what recourse does Petty really have?

I mean, for over 20 years Rush Limbaugh has been using “My City Was Gone”, by the ultra-socialist Chrissie Hynde, as his theme song, right? Hynde can’t have been thrilled

Say, if I were to play “American Girl?”

Would he object? Even if I were to be a rebel…

…and reject his california-liberal politics?

Because I certainly won’t back down. (Wait – I don’t like that song that much).

Because a good chunk of the right is singing…

Anyway – this one’s for you, Mark Dayton and Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen:

…you knew that was coming, didn’t you?

Gallup released a poll earlier this week showing that Americans’ cold feet about voting for a Mormon for President has been holding steady for a long, long time:

Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party’s nominee for president in 2012 if that person happens to be a Mormon, 22% say they would not, a figure largely unchanged since 1967.

Here’s the part that I did and didn’t expect:

The new Gallup poll, conducted June 9-12, finds nearly 20% of Republicans and independents saying they would not support a Mormon for president. That is slightly lower than the 27% of Democrats saying the same.

So now we see which party is really clogged with bigotry and hatred.

Nah.  I’m a kidder.  I kid.  Maybe it’s just that the libs’ most prominent Mormon is Harry Reid.

It makes sense now, doesn’t it?

So…

…are you better off than you were in 2007?

Romney’s asking.

It was probably Sunday or Monday when the lefties started tittering about Sarah Palin’s visit to the Old North Church.

And “tittering” was all they managed.  Even Erik Black, one of the phalanx of “deans of Minnesota political journalism”, was reduced to embedding a “ThinkProgress” flakvid without any additional commentary – which is, in and of itself, a pointed commentary on the regional leftymedia.

Jill  Burcum, editorial writer for the Strib, is seemingly being groomed to take Lori Sturdevant’s place in the “smug, entitled DFLer” slot on in the stable of columnists.

And she boldly strode where no talking head had gone before.

During a visit this week to Boston, she recounted a twisted take on Paul Revere’s historic ride. In a nearly incoherent stream of phrases full of folksy dropped “g’s” (ringin’ those bells, warnin’ shots), Palin appears to have said that Revere warned the British, when in fact he warned Americans about the British.

I’m a kidder; I kid. Burcum followed the same narrative the entire leftysphere follows. up and down its chain of command, from Media Matters down through the Strib’s editorial row to the Twin Cities’ leftyblogosphere; “Wimmins who are conservative are teh stoopid”.

With the dropped g’s and the history flub, Palin is such a caricature of herself that it’s hard to tell if this now-viral video is a Saturday Night Live skit or the real thing.

For whatever reason, Burcum comes back to Palin’s accent over and over in this piece – to a degree that I’d call “a Saturday Night Live skit”, if SNL ever did skits about Midwestern editorial writers so desperate to confirm their parochial need to feel superior that they have to resort to catcalling someone’s accent.

And I have a hunch you could look in vain through Jill Burcum’s entire clipfile in vain, trying to find any mocking of Hillary Clinton’s artificial swerves into “Sista” slang, or President Obama’s curious habit of slipping out of his Ivy-League pronunciation into a phony “Black” patois, when speaking in front of black audiences.

Revere, according to historical documents, was captured by the British. Under questioning, sometimes with a gun to his head, Revere said he had warned revolutionary forces that the redcoats were coming.

Arguments that this means he warned the British, as Palin defenders claim, are more than a stretch. That Palin had that detailed level of knowledge about Revere’s ride is even more unlikely, especially in context of her meandering statements about Revere’s “ringin’ those bells.”

It’s “unlikely”?  One wonders why Burcum is slaving away as an editorial writer when a career as a mind-reader awaits.

The Massachusetts Historical Society was asked about the matter on Monday. In a statement, it said Revere’s mission was to warn the revolutionary forces: “The Society holds three accounts written by Paul Revere. Based on these accounts, Revere was sent out to warn colonists that troops were marching west.”

Gauging by the excited people around Palin in her video — none of whom went “huh?” at the Revere reversal — she’s lost none of her star power. That should concern the Minnesota Republicans who also harbor presidential ambitions.

But gauging by the excited people around her — none of whom went “huh?” at the Revere reversal — she’s lost none of her star power. That should concern the Minnesota Republicans who also harbor presidential ambitions.

Bachmann – unfairly derided as Palin-lite — is expected to declare her presidential candidacy soon. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty has already announced his bid.

A quote that didn’t make the Palin video makes her gaffe even more head-scratching and hilarious.

Somewhere during the course of her Boston visit, she uttered this phrase, according to the Boston Globe: “You’ve got to know a lot about our past in order to know how to proceed successfully into the future.’’

Words to live by.

Oh, yeah – according to historians, Burcum and Black and “Think” “Progress” are wrong, and Palin was, well, closer to right than any of then would credit her for being:

Palin prompted howls of partisan derision when she said on Boston’s Freedom Trail that Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”

Palin insisted yesterday on Fox News Sunday she was right: “Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms.”

In fact, Revere’s own account of the ride in a 1798 letter seems to back up Palin’s claim. Revere describes how after his capture by British officers, he warned them “there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.”

Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”

Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.

You should read the whole thing.

And remember – a conservative is smarter after a concussion than a liberal who’s just graduated from Princeton when the subject is history, as anything; if you read it in the leftymedia, distrust but verify and, almost inevitably, distrust even more.

Nate Silver talks a little history, noting that well into the 1980 campaign, Jimmy Carter seemed to be defying the bad economy.  Carter was…:

…holding his own against Ronald Reagan. Some polls, even well after Labor Day (that’s Labor Day 1980, not 1979), showed the horse race to be tied or even had Mr. Carter with a slim lead.

Mr. Reagan would win overwhelmingly, however, claiming 44 states (even Massachusetts and New York) while limiting Mr. Carter to just 41 percent of the vote. He surged in the final week of the campaign after he posed the following question to Americans in the presidential debate of October 28, the first and only such event in which he and Mr. Carter participated together:

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Where was the unemployment rate four years ago? Four points lower.

Where was our national debt? Bad, but not this bad.

Where was our budget? Settled, and while waaaaay too big (Bad Bush!), much smaller than today.

How was our standing in the world? Leftymedia yammering aside, about the same as it’d always been.

One could argue in a macroeconomic sense that I’m better off because my house doesn’t have all that mortgage-bubble-based false valuation on it. Someday I’ll look back on that had laugh.

Otherwise?

Nope. Worse off.

ABC/WaPo poll shows Romney in a dead heat with Obama:

New Post-ABC numbers show Obama leading five of six potential Republican presidential rivals tested in the poll. But he is in a dead heat with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who formally announced his 2012 candidacy last week, making jobs and the economy the central issues in his campaign.

Among all Americans, Obama and Romney are knotted at 47 percent each, and among registered voters, the former governor is numerically ahead, 49 percent to 46 percent.

As with all leftymedia polls, the results need to be scrutinized; the mainstream media will always try to build up the GOP contender they think they can either beat outright, or effectively marginalize (see McCain).   Romney is weak among the conservative base…

…although pressure from the likes of Gingrich, Palin and Bachmann in the primary chase can only help that.  And given my belief that “perfect is the enemy of good enough”, I think a Romney that’d had to move hard to the right, a la Pawlenty in 2002, would be a huge step up from what we have.

This bit – the one in bold – puzzles me:

In another indicator of rapidly shifting views on economic issues, 45 percent trust congressional Republicans over the president when it comes to dealing with the economy, an 11-point improvement for the GOP since March. Still, nearly as many, 42 percent, side with Obama on this issue.

Who are these people? And do they read the news…

…oh, yeah.  Never mind.

From ABC News This Week with Christiana Amanpour’s interview with Tim Pawlenty:

PAWLENTY: Any doofus can go to Washington DC and maintain the status quo or incrementally change things, for the country the hour is late.”

AMANPOUR: “Define doofus?”

And, with Goddess as my witness, I would not have been able to resist that high, hanging curveball.

The Good News:  Romney’s right on Israel and Obama:

President Obama “disrespected” Israel and threw it “under the bus” in a wide-ranging speech on the Middle East on Thursday, GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney charged.

The Bad News?  A serious candidate for the GOP nomination used “disrespect” as a verb.

Obama’s campaign – really, has his administration ever not been a campaign? – now claims Texas is winnable in 2012:

Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, speaking to big-money Lone Star State Democrats at closed-door meetings in Austin and Dallas in March, predicted Obama could make a “serious play” in the cornerstone of GOP presidential politics, according to people in attendance.

And Obama’s senior adviser David Plouffe has told fellow Democrats the nation’s second most populous state might add to his national “map” of contested states, arguing that the huge increase in voting-eligible Hispanic Texans in recent years could bring the state into play sooner than expected.

It’s a theory.  Not a good one; Obama”ll need every penny he’s got in his war chest defending putative Dem strongholds in the next election.  Allahpundit has more.

But just out of a sense of personal endzone-spiking, I gotta ask; where have we heard Obama’s people making absurd claims about their power to turn conservative states on with his smile?  To take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Why, it was right here, folks, and you should know it!