The Legislature – really the GOP majority – has released its take on Congressional redistricting.

Two points:

Elections Have Consequences: If adopted – more later – this map will have some pretty hefty consequences.  While it leaves the three “safest” districts in the state – the solid DFL 4th and 5th, and the very red 6th – pretty much as is (if anything, more solid), it makes some changes that could have impact on the 2012 House races.

• It cuts Tim Walz’ mushy-left stronghold Mankato out of the 1st CD, putting it into John Kline’s solidly-conservative 2nd District.  This means the 1st CD’s fundamentally conservative, rural nature can be maintained.  It’ll be interesting to see how the DFL rationalizes pushing back against this, while fighting to keep the 5th and 6th districts uncorruptedly institutional-blue.
• Other than adding Mankato, the 2nd CD stays pretty solid.
• The 3rd CD’s “purple” days would seem to be over, with the addition of a stretch of solid red to its southwest.
• The 4th and 5th CDs become brighter-blue than before, from the looks of it.
• The 6th appears to jettison most of St. Cloud – the one place where Michele Bachmann faces serious opposition – and consolidate solid-red Wright County
• The 7th morphs immensely, losing the Red River Valley (and, it’d seem, Colin Peterson) and picking up Saint Cloud (blueish) and the far-northern Twin Cities exurbs currently in the 8th CD.
• The 8th swoops west, covering the entire northern part of the state, diluting the solid-blue Duluth and Arrowhead areas with good conservative northwestern counties.

Gerrymandering? That’s the claim you’re seeing from some lefties.  I think it’s worthwhile to note that most of the changes – the First, Seventh and Eighth – actually undo some of the gerrymandering that took place on the DFL’s watch (the Ventura-era court-drawn settlement in 2000 favored the DFL; Arne Carlson completely caved to the DFL in 1990, court settlement notwithstanding.   The DFL isn’t going to like it – but redistricting isn’t supposed to be predicated on the happiness of the party that loses the election.

Dayton has said he won’t pass any redistricting plan that doesn’t have “bipartisan support” – and when DFLers say “bipartisan support”, what they mean is they want to nag the GOP into giving them a victory they didn’t earn at the polls.  There was no talk of “bipartisanship” when the DFL controlled the process with an iron fist; it’s disingenuous, and playing to the ignorant (but typical politics) that they demand it now.

The office of the effort to recall one of the Fleebaggers has been burgled (emphasis added):

Green Bay police are investigating an apparent break-in at the office of the “Recall Dave Hansen”effort at 1136 W. Mason St.

Petitions, a computer and T-shirts were among the items reported stolen, police said.

I know that when I’m looking to score crack money, nothing draws my eye like page after page of signatures.

The Democratic state senator is among the lawmakers being targeted in recall efforts stemming from Wisconsin’s ongoing budget controversy.

The burglar or burglars broke a window to make entry, police said. The incident occurred between 5 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday, police Lt. David Paral said.

Organizers of the effort, in an email to media, blamed the break-in on “the (opposition) of ‘Recall Dave Hansen.'” Police said they did not have descriptions of suspects.

Total value of the missing items is slightly more than $1,000, Paral said.

Or, depending on how you view Wisconsin politics, several billion dollars.

Of course, we don’t know it was Wisconsin Democrats or Union supporters that pulled off the heist.

Really.  It could be a crack addict who figured she could pawn stacks of signatures.  Maybe she thought they were Packer autographs.

Hey, it could be.

The President serves up liberal leftovers in an effort the wrest the national fiscal agenda from Congressman Paul Ryan in his campaign speech this week.

Just one thing Mr. President:

According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans—most of whom are far from wealthy—were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.

These are desperate times for a Democratic President that can’t even keep Pennsylvania in the fold, a state where the last Republican who won it was George H. W. Bush.

At least Jimmy Carter had the good sense to turn apologetic, rather than imperious, when his policies tipped over the cliff.

Perhaps it’ll be Obama’s “Oberstar Moment”.

Hm.  Just in time for the Tea Party Tax Day Rally!

The Donald leads the field.  I blame women and independents.

Are his 15 minutes of this election cycle up yet? 

It may only be a poll of 385 Republicans nation-wide, but carrying the increasingly limited gravatis of CNN as the poll’s sponsor, few news outlets will miss the opportunity to write the following headline: “Trump GOP’s frontrunner.”

CNN/Opinion Research 2012 Republican Nomination Survey

• Donald Trump 19% [10%]
• Mike Huckabee 19% [19%] {21%} (21%) [14%] {24%} (17%)
• Sarah Palin 12% [12%] {19%} (14%) [18%] {15%} (18%)
• Newt Gingrich 11% [14%] {10%} (12%) [15%] {14%} (8%)
• Mitt Romney 11% [18%] {18%} (20%) [21%] {20%} (22%)
• Ron Paul 7% [8%] {7%} (7%) [10%] {8%} (8%)
• Michele Bachmann 5%
• Mitch Daniels 3% [3%] {3%}
• Tim Pawlenty 2% [3%] {3%} (3%) [3%] {2%} (5%)
• Rick Santorum 2% [3%] {1%} (2%) [2%] {3%} (5%)
• Haley Barbour 0% [1%] {3%} (3%) [3%] {1%} (1%)
• Someone else (vol.) 3% [4%] {5%} (7%) [6%] {5%} (8%)
• None/No one (vol.) 4% [3%] {4%} (4%) [0%] {5%} (2%)

Trump may be nothing more in the current field than a name ID with an awful comb-over, but the Trump Brand apparently has some political value – especially with Republican-leaning independents and women.  Trump is the first choice of both demographics in the poll, with 24% and 23% respectively. 

The poll may well represent the zenith of Trump’s 2012 candidacy.  On the same day that Trump may capture headlines with his likely dubious polling “lead”, the real estate mogul of New York City politically shot himself in the foot – twice.  First, by publicly claiming that he’d run as an independent if the GOP didn’t nominate him and secondly, by writing scathing notes to a Vanity Fair blogger over a profile.

Harry Truman once wrote an angry letter that caught the public’s eye.  Of course Truman, writing to Washington Post music critic Paul Hume, was defending his daughter against what he believed to be an unfair assault.  Truman’s critique was equal parts Oscar Wilde and Rocky Marciano in it’s prose.  And to channel Lloyd Bentsen: Mr. Trump, you’re no Harry Truman.

Donald’s “Trumpisms” have only continued in recent interviews.  In addition to his “birtherism” fetish, he’s “only interested in Libya if we take the oil,” “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take over the oil,” and “I would tell China that you’re either going to shape up, or I’m going to tax you at 25% for all the products you send into this country.”

Trump has said he’ll wait until June to make a decision – or perhaps until “The Apprentice” gets off the TV renewal bubble and signed for another season on NBC.

P.T. Barnum runs for president. 

He’s vowed that he’s taking a presidential bid seriously.   He’s sent aides on “exploratory trips” for his nascent campaign.  He’s pledged millions of dollars towards his candidacy.  And what’s more, he’s taken seriously – by the media, the punditry, and the polls. 

Of course, all of that was in 2000.

When it comes to the media’s political fascination with eccentric billionaire millionaire massive debt holder Donald Trump, few could argue that the Donald is the rightful heir to 19th century showman P.T. Barnum.  For Trump’s multiple aborted presidential candidacies, ranging from 1988, to 2000, and now, prove Barnum’s misattributed cultural epitaph that indeed a sucker is born every minute.

Like Charlie Brown convincing himself that this time Lucy will not pull away the football, much of the media has engaged Trump’s third would-be presidential bid with increasing seriousness.  And why not?  Trump polls surprisingly well against the expected Republican field, placing fourth with 11% just days ago in a Fox News national poll.  Even Trump seems to be taking his latest political dalliance seriously enough to risk his most important attribute – his brand – by claiming to seek the nomination of one of the two major parties rather than another circa 2000 independent bid.

What remains harder to fathom is Trump’s appeal in the first place.  For a man known for his super ego, getting to the id of Donald Trump is vexing for many in the punditry.  Some view Trump as a symptom of the weak Republican field.  George Will likewise dismissed Trump as part of the gaggle of “spotlight-chasing candidates of 2012.”  Charles Krauthammer looked pained to even have to discuss Trump’s candidacy.  Others view Trump as the closing argument in their case of the failure of the political class:

Trump is suddenly “winning” as a political figure because the political class has failed. The authority of our political institutions is weak and getting weaker; it’s not that Americans ‘lack trust’ in them, as blue ribbon pundits and sociologists often lament, so much as they lack respect for the people inside them.

There is a lot of crazy surrounding the Trump phenomenon — some excellent, some embarrassing. But the massive fact dominating it all is that never before has such a famous outsider jumped into national politics with such an aggressive critique of a sitting president and the direction of the country — and never before has the response been so immediate and positive.

Um, not quite.

The novelty of Trump 2012 isn’t that novel.  The celebrity politician is nothing new – nor is Trump’s anti-Obama bravado.  Trump’s “aggressive critique” has largely been an ad hoc foreign policy mixing neo-conservative bluster and paleo-conservative isolationism with a chaser of paranoia that Obama is the country’s first super secret Nigerian sleeper agent.  Perhaps the only true novelty of Trump’s “candidacy” is that he would link his image to “birtherism.”  Or maybe Trump is merely projecting and he’s the sleeper agent sent to undermine the GOP.  After all, he did call Nancy Pelosi “the best.”

Understanding how an arrogant, over-the-top self-promoter has risen in the polling ranks of the GOP field doesn’t require searching for some sort of meta answer.  After a number of political cycles in which the presidential race started incredible early, for once the field is not settled nor is any candidate dashing out of the gates.  Trump represents a known name whose actively in the news – for better or for worse.  Few other contenders or pretenders can claim the same. 

The Donald wouldn’t mind being president but would rather use his candidacy as a perpetual trump card whenever his media image needs a boost.  Once the more serious candidates get underway and the early measures of success – fundraising, debate performances, endorsements and volunteers – become the most important yard markers, attention towards Trump will shrink.  With fewer and fewer onlookers to his latest political act, in Barnum like fashion, Trump will fold his tent and move on to his next show.

Tim Pawlenty hits all the right notes in the video announcing his “exploratory committee”.
He’s not the perfect conservative. We know this.

But compared to the rest of the field? We could – and probably would – do worse.
Some lefties titter that he’s “boring”. After two years of “exciting” star power, I think a little “boring” competence sounds like a really really good trait.

(And I don’t get “boring” from Pawlenty. He’s affable, low-key, and pretty much the guy next door. He’s also politically about as sharp as they come. How sharp? He’s a Republican from Minnesota, and yet he’s on the short list for President. Don’t get me wrong; the right, Bachmann and Gingrich, will need to keep him honest to the base. I’m fine with that too).

Former Governor Pawlenty is making a “big announcement” on Facebook at 2PM Central (3PM Eastern) today.

And you need to “like” his Facebook page to see it…

I think it’ll be to announce he’s taking over as head coach of the Wild.

What do you think it’ll be?

The news just broke; North Dakota’s long-serving Democratic-NPL senator Kent Conrad is retiring after 2012:

President Obama said in a statement that he was “saddened” about the news of Conrad’s retirement but added: “I look forward to working with him during the next two years on the important issues facing our country.”

Conrad, who currently chairs the Senate Budget Committee, has been in office since 1986 and risen to become one of the most influential — and intellectual — policy makers operating in the nation’s capital.

Conrad had been open about his ambivalence about running for another term and had taken several actions in recent months that suggested he was leaning against running again.

Conrad turned down a chance to chair the Senate Agriculture Committee — an industry of huge import in North Dakota — to stay on at the helm of the Budget committee and supported the debt commission report, a decision that would have almost certainly put him in political hot water in the context of a political campaign.

And with that, North Dakota’s trifecta of Congressmen, which two years ago was pound-for-pound among the most powerful threesomes in Washington – Conrad, plus Byron Dorgan, who retired last year and Earl Pomeroy, who was soundly thrashed last November – leaves the stage after a combined total of something close to eighty years in Congress, leaving traditionally-conservative North Dakota with a decent shot of being represented by…conservatives.

Think you’ve seen the Best of BTO (So Far) when it comes to the media’s obsession with Michele Bachmann (and vice versa)?  You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Let’s not bury the lede – she isn’t going to run. 

In politics, the rumored presidential campaign for many office holders is a cry for attention about one step removed from binging on aspirin.  For near total unknowns like former Godfather’s CEO Herman Cain or heyday politicos like Rick Santorum, the seeking of the White House is game of trival pursuit.  Lacking resources and with few political options, candidates like these have nothing to lose and everything to gain with a quixotic bid that likely ends in the hometown of Iowa State sometime in early August. 

Bachmann doesn’t lack for attention nor resources, as her $13.4 million campaign haul demonstrated.  But she may lack options.  Hemmed in by Minnesota’ s statewide left tilt, likely ruling out any statewide bid, immediate or otherwise, and having lost out as Chair of the House Republican Conference to Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Bachmann’s present trajectory would be to become the best known backbencher in the history of Congress.

A bid for the presidency likely wouldn’t change that – but a possible bid for president might.

Actually running for president involves far too many “make or break” moments for any candidate, let alone a three-term congresswoman who, despite her numerous media forays over the years, isn’t exactly a household name to the average Iowan or New Hampshirite.  An exploratory committee or even merely a rumored campaign allows Bachmann the best of both worlds.  She can raise copious sums for her Michele PAC, get mentioned in every discussion of the 2012 Republican Primary, dismiss any poll that shows her doing poorly (she isn’t even a candidate, of course) and conversely celebrate any poll that shows her non-campaign campaign gaining momentum.  It’s the Fred Thompson strategy – which worked as long as he wasn’t formally running.

6 or 7 months of presidential media footsie and Bachmann can raise her national name ID even further, stockpile cash, and thus potentially leverage her pull within the House GOP Caucus.  Bachmann hasn’t exactly been embraced by the new House leadership, and the feelings are probably mutual.  It’s hard to ignore the comments and demands of a media saavy politico.  It’s even harder to do so when that politico is seen as gunning for the nomination.

It’s a somewhat deft political move by Bachmann as the end result harms few politicians not named Tim Pawlenty – who suddenly runs the risk of spending the summer of 2011 being known as that other Minnesotan running for president.

…and there are more Republicans in the stands than Democrats.

the largest number of Republicans in the nation since December 2004 and the lowest number of Democrats since November 2002.

…but will it last?

In each of the recent election cycles, the winning party gained in net partisan identification during the course of the election year, Rasmussen Reports said, noting that gains can be short-lived. After the 2004 election, the Republican partisan decline began in February 2005, the pollster said, while the Democratic edge in 2006 began to slip as soon as the party took control of Congress in January.

The Democrats took power in 2008 and squandered their short-lived majority for the sake of deforming health care while more pressing liberal issues and campaign promises were shelved. Their anti-Bush-fueled sweep of Congress and the White House delivered them without a policy mandate.

They brought a baseball bat to a football game. They ignored reality, went with ideology, and America handed them their asses.

The GOP should not be thusly confused. Their mandate is clear and may have even less time to prove they are worthy.

…they are looking to score early, albeit symbolically for now, and act on that mandate and set a vote to repeal Obamacare…yet this month, and are also drawing a line in the sand as it relates to the federal debt ceiling. This might be messy folks, the Democrats will predict Armageddon if we don’t raise the limit on their credit card, but if not now, when?

Meanwhile, while those Americans that have work return to it today, the President suns himself.

If the final day of a vacation defines how it will be remembered, the Obamas will be packing memories of teal-colored water, soft breezes and plenty of sunshine — at least until clouds rolled in and the wind picked up in mid-afternoon. But that lead to a quick stop at Island Snow Shave Ice — an island (and Obama) favorite.

Maybe he can squeeze in a round of golf when he gets back.

The Saint Paul Pioneer Press‘ Bill Salisbury wrote a valedictory yesterday in the Pioneer Press about the career of outgoing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So far, anyway.

He left it to Pawlenty to sum up the crux of his legacy:

“This is a state that was on a spending binge for a long time with a liberal-leaning political culture that goes back decades or generations, and to try to change the direction of the state was a big undertaking. But I think we did that,” Pawlenty said during an extended interview Tuesday with a group of Capitol reporters.

Making that change was not easy, the Republican governor said. He had to call a predominantly Democratic Legislature into special sessions, issue a record number of vetoes in one year and use a government shutdown to force the changes.

“This will be known as the time Minnesota finally came to terms with its excesses and got itself on a more sustainable and responsible path,” he said.

That legacy, he asserted, is more significant than any new program or building he might have created.

Pawlenty’s right – and in ways the article isn’t scoped to explore, in and of itself.

Not only did Pawlenty’s years start the process of breaking the state of the culture of “the people exist to keep the government fed” school of government, but he set the stage for this years’ GOP sweep (Republicans flipped control of both chambers of the Minnesota legislature, controlling the body for the first time in recent history) in ways that I don’t think he’ll get credit for – even among conservatives.

Maybe especially among conservatives.

Until 1998, the Minnesota GOP was a “moderate”, even “progressive” party.  James Lileks once joked on the radio, around the time he lived in or came back from DC, that he’d tell his friends in Washington “Minnesota is the place where you have your pro-abortion, pro-gun-control candidate – and the Democrat!”.

Former MN governor Arne Carlson (who served from 1990-1998) was a typical pre-Pawlenty Republican.  In many respects, he was a bigger “liberal” than the DFLer he replaced, Rudy Perpich, and he was hardly alone.  The GOP during the “Independent Republican” era – the years after Watergate, when the MNGOP rechristened itself the “Independent Republican” party, to break with the national GOP – was a throwback to the national GOP of the Eisenhower years, which was vastly more “communitarian” than libertarian or fiscally conservative.

And there are plenty who wanted, and still want, the GOP to remain that party – basically DFLers with better suits; a party that believed “Fiscal Responsibility” meant making sure you tax enough to run government…

…but that keeping government fed and fat and happy came first and foremost among government’s  missions.

And, predictably, there are many in the Minnesota’s GOP who pine for the old days:

But a lot of Pawlenty’s financial savings were “smoke and mirrors” instead of permanent cost reductions, said John Gunyou, finance commissioner under former Gov. Arne Carlson’s and a DFL candidate for lieutenant governor this year. Pawlenty relied heavily on delaying payments, raiding funds set aside for other purposes, unilateral spending cuts that the state Supreme Court ruled overstepped his authority and federal stimulus funds.

“He didn’t really bring costs under control,” Gunyou said.

Unmentioned by Gunyou – or any of the other outdated impedimenta, “GOP” or DFL, that keep repeating that particular chanting point – is that Pawlenty was hamstrung throughout his eight years, for four years by a DFL-controlled Senate and a GOP majority in the House that was addled by too many old-school, “IR”-era Republicans to do much more than hold the line on spending – which he did! – and for the last half of his administration by facing a rapacious, money-crazed DFL majority in both chambers of the legislature.  Against such grossly, irresponsibly, blindly spenthrift ideologues as Larry Pogemiller, Margaret Kelliher, Sandy Pappas and the rest of the Twin Cities metro-area DFL clacque that ran the Legislature, the only way to meet his statutory responsibility to balance the budget and keep his “no new taxes” pledge was to defer that which he couldn’t cut.

Pawlenty will leave his successor, Democrat Mark Dayton, with a projected $6.2 billion budget deficit.

Well, no – the Legislature did, and the 6.2 billion number is a made-up figure with no legal meaning, but the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) don’t want you to know that.

But I digress.

Salisbury turned to talk of Pawlenty’s legacy.  In discussing the big takeaways from Pawlenty’s eight years, a group of assembled poli-sci wonks phumphered that Pawlenty didn’t leave much in the way of “big achievements”:  the inevitable quote from U of Minnesota poli-sci professor Larry Jacobs was “Huge promise, remarkable intelligence and understanding of the issues but uneven or limp follow-through”.  Salisbury points out that Pawlenty “…was excellent at diagnosing problems and generating ideas, such has providing health care for all kids or funding transportation projects after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed. But he dropped many of his creative ideas, often because they would have cost more tax dollars, which his conservative base opposed”

The observation is partly right.  The part they miss; conservatives were never “his” “base”, where “base” means “people who ideologically support him through thick and thin”.  Pawlenty came into the governor’s race as the moderate.  He had to earn every conservative vote he got, starting at the 2002 GOP convention, where he held off a charge by conservative businessman Brian Sullivan after 17 ballots, largely by adopting the conservative Taxpayers League of Minnesota’s “No New Taxes” pledge – pledging to balance the budget by controlling spending rather than hiking taxes.  In many ways, Pawlenty never entirely won conservatives over;  he still hasn’t entirely won “conservatives” over, although I believe that, being as perfect is the enemy of good enough, he should have.  I believe Minnesota’s conservatives shorted Pawlenty.

Poli-sci prof Steven Schier from Carlton College provides the key caveat that the U of M’s Jacobs didn’t, pointing out that Pawlenty “never had a fully cooperative Legislature”.  That’s putting it lightly.  When the DFL took complete control of the Legislature in 2006, DFL Senator Cy Thao famously remarked “When you people [Republicans] win, you get to keep your money; when we win, we take your money!”.  Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller said in 2008 “it’s silly to think that people can spend their money better than government can”.

So when Salisbury quotes Jacobs…:

A governor must build coalitions to get things done, Jacobs said, but Pawlenty had a hard time finding “honorable compromise” with DFL legislators.

…one can forgive him for not adding “because the DFL had no interest in compromise, and were largely not honorable”.

But I will.

My real point is that Pawlenty’s legacy goes waaaay beyond simple, material things like programs and departments and government real estate.  Tim Pawlenty did something that’s needed doing since long before I came to Minnesota.  Because for all of my hard-core paleocon friends’ grousing about “impact fees” and “travelling with Will Steger”, it’s a simple fact that Pawlenty’s political leadership helped drive the Minnesota GOP to the right; it helped the GOP provide a real policy alternative to the DFL for the first time in recent memory.

Pawlenty was the first important political figure in recent Minnesota political history to define “fiscal responsibility” as “controlling spending” rather than “making sure we make the people cover all of government’s bills on time!”.

I think there’s a pretty airtight case that Tim Pawlenty is the most vital, transformative figure in Minnesota politics since Hubert H. Humphrey.

The leadership of the Tea Party, and of Minnesota’s newly-empowered conservative legislative majority, might quibble with the statement, but in every way that mattered, Tim Pawlenty paved the way for everything the Tea Party and the new conservative majority stands for.

And because of this – because Minnesota now has, for the first time in recent political memory, a genuine two-party system, with two sides that are actively holding each others’ feet in the political fire, and a genuine conservative opposition to Minnesota’s generations-long tradition of spend first, think later  – Tim Pawlenty has left this state a vastly better place than he took over.

Economies rise and fall.  Budgets work themselves out (and, with a new GOP majority that owes more than it admits to Pawlenty’s legacy now in charge, they’ll likely work themselves out a whole lot better than they would have).  But changing a state’s political system, vastly for the better?  That’s a wonderful thing.

I think Tim Pawlenty is getting grossly short shrift from conservatives in his all-but-certain bid for the presidency.  His record as a solid, commonsense fiscal conservative (on all the things that truly matter in the long view) deserves a serious look on the national stage.

Because while you can quibble about the details around and about the edges of his record, Tim Pawlenty’s real legacy is that of eight years of true political grit.  Pawlenty was doing the Tea Party’s work before there was a Tea Party.

And Minnesota needed that.  We needed it bad.

Pawlenty is leaving this state in good hands – at least, two chambers dominated by those good hands.  That new majority, in all their enthusiastic numbers, has two big shoes to fill.

Thanks, Governor Pawlenty.  I hope to write about you a lot more in the next two years.

In a bizarre perversion of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inspirational platitude, the only thing today’s Minnesota DFL Party has to offer is fear itself.

The DFL (and its chanting points repeater blogs MNPublius, mnpACT and Minnesota “Progressive” Project, among others, not to mention the regional mainstream media) are tossing about the figure “$6.2 Billion” as the defict the next Administration and Legislature will need to deal with.

This, of course, is the first step in the Left’s big-government-through-fear playbook:

1. Note a gap between planned spending and available revenue.
2. Warn of the “Service” cuts involved in cutting planned spending.
3. Ram that warning home with threats to gut police and fire departments, along with draconian cuts among teachers (while, mysteriously, leaving administators, pensions, convention and visitors bureaux, human rights offices and other such waste untouched) if politicians at all levels don’t raise the revenue needed by any means necessary – which means, inevitably, tax hikes.

As Tom Emmer pointed out over and over during his gubernatorial campaign, it was nonsense, of course.  The “budget” against which revenue left a “deficit” was not a “budget”, it was an “autopilot” adjustment of the existing budget based on increasing existing “services” by the amount the DFL-dominated bureaucracy says they’ll need to be increased.  It’s like setting a family budget according to your kids’ Christmas wish lists.

Gary Gross at LFR breaks it down (with emphasis added):

…what’s being called a $5,000,000,000 deficit is based on last biennium’s budget tails, which were wildly oversized vs. the projected revenue. According to the figure from the campaign trail, Minnesota is projected to take in almost $33,000,000,000 compared with $30,700,000,000 for the current biennium.

When omnibus spending bills are put together, the spreadsheet contains the amount that will be spent for that biennium and the amount that they’d like to spend in the next biennium. The second biennium request is called a budget tail. It’s what the MMB people are required to use for their budget projections. It isn’t something that must be spent.

The media don’t tell you this because – well, I’m not sure.  Maybe they figure that everyone is a government wonk and they already know all this. 

The DFL and its chanting-points-bots won’t you because, again, all they have to offer is fear.   And because an ignorant citizenry is a DFL citizenry.

It’s rare that they spend what the tails call for. In fact, the legislature can just as easily choose to spend significantly less. In fact, I suspect that’s what will happen, partially because Republicans have a number of reforms that will save significant amounts of money, starting with King Banaian’s reform to ZBB and Steve Gottwalt’s Healthy Minnesota Plan.

Those 2 reforms will save Minnesota taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars this biennium.

Your mission this next month, before the next session (which starts on January 3, a month from today): when you hear your neighbors and co-workers worrying about “the six billion dollar deficit”, set them straight.  And tell them to call their Reps and Senators; the GOP ones need the encouragement to do the right thing; the DFL ones need to know that the long electoral knives of last autumn aren’t nearly done yet.

Back during the 2008 campaign, I noted one of the immutable truths of American politics; the only reason the institutional left ever builds up a Republican candidate is to tear them right back down.

The classic example, of course, was John McCain; the left spent the better part of a decade solemnly declaring that “McCain is the good Republican”, willing to “compromise”  – praise that Mac curried aggressively.  But once Mac became an endorsed candidate, the knives came out; the “moderate”, “post-partisan” McCain was suddenly – and had always been – an “extremist”.

Is the left trying to set up Sarah Palin in the same way?

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters has a theory:

Would you ever in your wildest dreams imagine Chris Matthews flatteringly comparing Sarah Palin to former President Bill Clinton?

During a lengthy opening segment about Palin’s political future on the syndicated program bearing his name, Matthews said, “There’s one unlikely Democrat you might compare to Sarah Palin when it comes to being a natural: the generally incomparable Bill Clinton”

And why would Tingly do that?

After all, it’s got to be one way or the other: media live to build people up and/or knock them down. We’ve grown so accustomed to the latter with their treatment of Palin that we haven’t considered the alternative.

Of course, this could all backfire miserably since the more attention they heap on Palin, the more folks currently with a negative opinion of her might change their minds.

It’s a little early to speculate about 2012.

But not about the left and media’s (pardon the redundancy) manipulation of public opinion…

If I were the President of Harvard University, I might wanna have a word with Matt Yglesias.

Matt – a prominent leftyblogger who’s gone on to write for a bunch of liberal rags – has a BA from Harvard.  Like a lot of leftybloggers, he profited from the leftyblog audience’s hive mentality and got promoted far beyond even his Peter Principle value, to say nothing of his actual perception.

And it’s gotta be undercutting the value of that expensive Harvard sheepskin.  Especially when he’s writing bilge like this, about planning ahead for the new GOP majority in Congress:

But the specific thing I would worry about isn’t gutting of health care legislation or endless investigations. It’s the economy. Anne Kornblut reports that the White House understands the basic political dynamic: “Even more important, senior administration officials said, Obama will need to oversee tangible improvements in the economy.”

So I know that tangible improvements in the economy are key to Obama’s re-election chances. And Douglas Hibbs knows that it’s key. And senior administration officials know that its key. So is it so unreasonable to think that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner may also know that it’s key? That rank and file Republicans know that it’s key? McConnell has clarified that his key goal in the Senate is to cause Barack Obama to lose in 2012 which if McConnell understands the situation correctly means doing everything in his power to reduce economic growth. Boehner has distanced himself from this theory, but many members of his caucus may agree with McConnell.

And Yglesias’ conclusion (emphasis added)?

Which is just to say that specifically the White House needs to be prepared not just for rough political tactics from the opposition (what else is new?) but for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage.

Truly, truly dreadful.

The left; not only do they believe their ends justify their means, they believe everyone else believes it too.

John “Not Jon” Stewart, of the official Clan Stewart blog, Night Writer, finds an analogy I wish I’d beaten him to; re-staging Braveheart with Michele Bachmann as William Wallace, and John Boehner and the GOP establishment as Robert the Bruce and the Scots nobles:

In 1297 the central players in an uneasy alliance were William Wallace, the upstart rebel who shocked and demoralized the English with a dramatic victory in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, and Robert Bruce, the scion of a wealthy and politically powerful Scottish family. In 2010, Republican lion and presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner plays Robert the Bruce to Michelle Bachmann’s Wallace. Bachmann was out-front for the burgeoning Tea Party movement, driving her enemies to distraction and helping spark a historic Republican rout that changes the balance of power in much the same way that Stirling Bridge did. Her decision to now run for a leadership position in the Republican caucus has been greeted coolly by her nobles. I know there are those who will raise an eyebrow or a guffaw at equating Michelle Bachmann with a figure as historically significant as William Wallace but at the heart of the matter there are similarities.

Bachmann is derided by her enemies (both in and outside the Republican party) for being out-spoken, outrageous and deliberately provocative. That’s pretty much how Wallace was presented in Braveheart: coarse, blunt and sometimes appearing to be making it up as he went along. The way the Scottish nobles fought the English in those days is also not too different from the way the Republican leadership has historically contended with the Democrats: a show of force before the battle which merely sets the stage for a parley in the center of the field that ends in negotiation. When Wallace showed up — nearly unwanted — before one battle he was told to hang back and be quiet. When he rode forward to be part of the parley anyway someone asked him what he was doing and his response was “picking a fight.” The passion and taunts of Wallace and his men discomfited the “civilized” combatants who weren’t expecting to be mooned or to be told that their general could bend over and “kiss his own arse.” Similarly, Bachmann and her unwillingness to “play nice” is barely tolerated by the party elite, while the passion and populism of the Tea Party rallies and town halls has shaken the political professionals and pundits who hope it is an aberration and not a new fact of life.

Rrread the whooole thaing, Jimmeh.

Dear father in heaven, or whatever is up there:  if I promise to live a life of service and virtue and praise, can we please, please, please let this be true?

Jeff writing at National Debt Busters writes about the history of the national debt:

How do the Presidential Administrations compare?

President George Washington through President Gerald Ford, Presidents 1-38, 1791-1976

Debt Increase: $707,142,528,417.78

President James Earl Carter, 39th President, 1977-1980

Debt Increase: $276,666,000,000.00

President Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President, 1981-1988

Debt Increase: $1,672,127,712,041.16

President George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President, 1989-1992

Debt Increase: $1,462,282,943,480.50

President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, 42nd Presidnet, 1993-2000

Debt Increase: $1,609,557,554,365.20

President George Walker Bush, 43rd President, 2001-2008

Debt Increase: $4,899,100,310,608.44

President Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President, 2009-present

Debt Increase: $3,031,935,408,476.43 (as of 10/28/2010 report on TreasuryDirect.gov)

Obama is on track to triple Bush’s already-criminal debt load – and that’s if Obamacare’s bill comes in where they project it will, which it will not.

The new GOP House has its work cut out for it.

Let’s all make sure they get to it.

Yeah, I dug it:

The die has been cast.  The votes have been counted.  They’ll be counted again, shortly, as re the governor race.

So what’s next?

It’s time someone investigated the Star-Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll” and the Hubert H. Humphey Institute’s poll.

The Minnesota Poll – especially the one released one to seven days before every gubernatorial, presidential and senate, election – may not be an effort to drive down GOP voting, per se.

But if they were, it’s hard to say now the polls would be any different.

Investigation next week on Shot In The Dark.

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

We sent a class of Congresspeople to Washington.

They arrived in Washington – and then they went Washington.

They turned into creatures of the Beltway.

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

We elected them – and then we trusted them.

We can not make that mistake again.

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

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

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

That’s why we gave you the mandate.

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

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

Chalk up the list of minority groups on whose votes the Minnesota DFL party believes they can count, no matter how brazenly they abuse them; blacks, women, gays, asians, latinos…

…Catholics?

This is a mailer the DFL sent out:

… a picture of a priest wearing a button that says “Ignore the Poor”.

The picture takes up the entire side of the postcard!

How low has the DFL party sunk that they would mail out pictures of a priest urging people to ignore the poor?

In their haste to try to run from the Democrat agenda of Higher Taxes and ever more Inefficient, Ineffective and Expensive Government programs, the DFL has gone too far.

The other side of the postcard talks about Government Health Care. Government run health care means the end of Catholic Hospitals. I guess the Democrats have to demonize Catholics in order to justify their stand on Government Run Health Care

I’ve long since given up on Minnesota Catholics following their church’s direction on, say, abortion; apparently those that convenience doesn’t win over, ideology trumps.

But Catholic Charities is not only among Minnesota’s largest charities – it’s among its most efficient, in terms of dollars reaching the actual poor.

Are Minnesota’s catholics satisfied being yet another kick toy for the DFL to demonize with impunity?

CORRECTION:  I inadvertently credited the postcard to the DFL Central Committee.  It’s actually the DFL State Committee.  I have  corrected the error, and regret any confusion caused by my mistake.

You could almost call it a “malaise“…

Vice President Biden said Thursday the conservative Tea Party movement might be “the best thing to happen” to Democrats with the midterm elections approaching.

…couldn’t you?

I’m mildly shocked to see the same pack of peace creeps that led the bedlam about the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul is leaping into action now that Minneapolis is on the short list for the 2012 Democratic National Convention:

About 20 protesters chanted and toted placards on Sunday near Target Field, hoping to send a message to the Democratic National Committee that it isn’t welcome to hold the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Minneapolis.

I’m amazed that the Strib didn’t jack the number up to 200, or 2,000; maybe there’s progress.  Or maybe it’s because it’s the Democrats they’re bagging on, this time.

By the way, I loved one of the comments to the story:

I had 6 adults on my deck last night.  And there were 8 kids in the pool. I guess we fell short of the 20 person mark for ongoing coverage. And we were so close!

Minneapolis is duking it out with Charlotte, Cleveland and St. Louis. 

There’s been no official confirmation, but protesters Dave Bicking and Janet Nye said their group has information indicating that DNC officials were in Minneapolis this weekend, checking out the city. So the protesters gathered Sunday on a small bridge leading to Target Field, chanting as Twins fans passed by, hoping to get their message through.

“They might not see us because they’re up in the fancy sky box, but they will certainly take notice that we’re here,” Bicking said.

Bicking, 59, and Nye, 63, both of Minneapolis, also protested planning of the 2008 Republican National Convention…

I can’t imagine that any sentient Tic staffer would put the convention here; Minnesota, barring a miracle, is probably still pretty safe Tic territory in 2012; the Dems are in much worse shape in Missouri and Ohio, and North Carolina is legitimately swing-y.

But on the off-chance that Minneapolis gets the nod, let me go on record to say something that not a single DFL politician or significant DFL-leaning blogger could bring themselves to say in 2008;  notwithstanding the fact that virtually all political violence in America today is inflicted by some shade of “The Left” or another, not to mention the fact that fewer Republican-sympatizing protesters have been arrested for violence at DNC conventions in the past six years than were standing across from Target Field yesterday, I call on all protesters planning to incite violence and threaten attendees of all political orientations to stay the hell out of Minneapolis, and furthermore hope that if you do come to this city and cause mayhem that you are all arrested and put into holding cells with very lonely lifers.

Just so we’re clear on that.

Andrew Malcolm in the LATimes h notes for the benefit of his audience…

…exactly what all of us were telling the nation two years ago; that legislators’ experience is lousy preparation for the Presidency:

American voters have taken many zigs and zags over the years when choosing their country’s chief executive.

But one of the amazing consistencies is: They prefer chief executives in the executive office. Five of the last six presidents have been executives — four governors and one sitting vice president.

The only exception is the current incumbent, Barack Obama, who as his bipartisan critics tried to point out in 2007-08, had never even run a candy store, let alone a country.

Huh.  Do tell, L. A. freaking Times?  Do you finally think so?

He was a law lecturer

…which was put out there as a key qualification.  “Constitutional Law is great background for a president!”, they say.  To which I, and a growing plurality of the American people, respond the President doesn’t need to litigate the constitution; he just needs to follow it.  The President needs to know the Constitution exactly as well as a fairly competent policeman to do his job.

a state senator and, briefly, a U.S. senator.

And it looks like the American people are finally starting to catch up with the GOP:

Overall, a new Rasmussen Reports poll indicated Wednesday, only 42% of Americans currently approve of Obama’s job, while 57% disapprove. Or compare Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 66% state approval for his hands-on spill work vs 60% disapproval for the presidential visits, all four of them now.

Jindal is a great comparison of the difference between a real executive – someone on whose desk the buck stops, someone who makes decisions and gets things done – and a fake one like Obama, who is seemingly more into

Fact is, the two main political parties didn’t give American voters a….

… choice in 2008, nominating legislators for three of the tickets’ four spots — Obama, Joe Biden and John McCain. The fourth — gee, her name escapes us right now — was an elected top state executive, who seemed to gather more public attention than any of the others.

Pity it was the wrong kind.

Rob Port at Say Anything on Mitch Daniels’ soft-footing social issues:

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is pro-life and a Christian but wants focus on fiscal rather than social issues given the state of the nation’s economy and budget.

Does this kill off his hopes for a candidacy in 2012?

Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”

And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,”

I think that’s the big lesson of the Tea Party so far, not to mention of the Reagan administration:  if you don’t conquer government’s addictions to spending and taxes, then we’re screwed on the social issues anyway – and as luck’d have it, most candidates that are conservative on spending and taxes are on the right side of the social issues anyway.