Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Yesterday, the Pioneer Press reprinted a long Washington Post article (front page, above-the-fold, continued to page 3A) called Cash Versus Door Knocking.

Plucky under-funded Democrat Barnett and his earnest crew of ordinary citizens gamely soldiering against an entrenched establishment Governor Walker buying the election with dump-truck loads of cash from out-of-state fat cats.

Of course, if the national Democrats and unions who started this fight had delivered on their promises, the money advantage would have been evidence of a sweeping groundswell of popular support and proof the Governor should resign now to save the taxpayers the cost of his recall.

Almost as if the articles are written to fit the conclusion rather than the facts.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s hilarious that the WaPo and PiPress would have you believe that the unions are a bunch of scruffy underdogs.

Connie Doepke filed to challenge Dave Osmek in the primary for the SD33 Senate race.

At the SD33 convention two weeks ago Osmek, a conservative with 11 years’ experience on the Mound city council – beat Doepke,  a GOP representative who left an extremely safe House seat to campaign for Gen Olson’s old Senate seat, after voting for the stadium and the New Generation Energy Act, to say nothing of supporting light rail. Osmek won with over 80% of the delegate vote, after Bonn Clayton committed his delegates to Osmek on the fourth ballot (the battle had been between him and Osmek – Doepke never got out of the twenties).

If you live in SD33, and want the GOP majority to be something other than a lapdog for Lori Sturdevant and Zygi Wilf, you need to turn out to help Dave.

For that matter, if you live in the western subs – usually safe territory for the GOP – you need to find the time to help Dave.  IF you live in:

• SD20 (Wright County)
• SD34 (the Maple Grove/Rogers area)
• Carver County/SD47 (assuming Senator Ortmann doesn’t get a challenge in the primary),
• And even SD44 (Plymouth/Minnetonka)

Steve “Spotty” Timmer, writing in “MNLeft”, yet another lefty group blog:

“They Put The Phyrric Into Victory”

Perhaps they – Craig Westover and Jason Lewis,the subjects of Timmer’s piece  – disagree with Timmer about the current GOP Senator race, but Steve Timmer is the one who put “Phyrric” into “victory”…

…which, for those of us who even passed remedial history, is spelled “Pyrrhic Victory“, after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who, on noting the casualties he’d taken defeating the Romans at the Battle of Asculum in 280 BC, lamented (according to Plutarch) that “more such victories would undo him”.

Just keep chanting; “they’re the smart ones.  They’re the smart ones”.

Chant.  You heard me.

Oh, yeah – they think Kurt Bills hasn’t a chance.  Maybe they’re right.

The voters – the live, legal ones that the GOP tends to draw – haven’t actually spoken on that yet.

It could well be that A-Klo can eke out a…

…no.  I can’t go there.  Too cheap.

UPDATE:  They edited it.  And it’s still wrong.

Remember – Democrats are smart. Republicans – they’re stupid! Stupid and ignorant! Yepper!

UPDATE 2:  Third try’s the charm.

And, Steve, I’m working these days.  You?

The economy created fewer than 100,000 jobs this past month – and the numbers for March and April have been revised down, to boot – but in fact May’s labor force participation rate “jumped” from 63.6% to 63.8%.

However, the unemployment rate – the percentage of those 63.8% of the workforce that’s trying to work – crept back up to 8.2%.

Put it all together, and on 58.57% of the workforce is actually working. Which is almost exactly two points lower than it was when Obama took office, and only 7/100 of a percent higher than in October of 2009, when unemployment was 10%.  It’s 6/100 of a percent higher than in December of 2009 – the putative nadir of the recession.

By all means, let’s talk about the President’s freaking birth certificate.

Being as I am, of small-town Scandinavian extraction, I am not one to feel…

…well, optimistic.  I garnish all of life’s observations with a little sprig of protective pessimism.  It’s sort of a Pascal’s Wager for the mundane; if you expect the worst and get the worst, you’re not disappointed; if you expect the worst and get the best, it’s a wonderful day.

So I’ve always looked at the Wisconsin recall election as a likely loss, and have kept that point of view throughout the runup to the election this coming Tuesday.

But the polls are looking a little better, with some showing a 5-7 point lead for Walker.  I’m still calling “Defeat”, but I’ve got my fingers crossed, like any good Norwegian.

Of course, if you’re a liberal, you’re used to big institutional polls being in the bag for your people (examples: the Strib and HHH polls here in Minnesota). And when the big institutional polls turn against you – well, there’s just got to be a nefarious explanation for it.

In the case of the Uppity Wisconsin blog (oddly misnamed, being as they’re plumping for the most establishment of all institutions, Wisconsin unions, but whatever), the bad polls for Barrett have just got to be either a mistake or a fix.

Polls are only relevent if their sample is reflective of the electorate. As the graph demonstrates, compared to exit poll data (averaged from 2010, 2008 and 2006) the recently released Marquette poll grossly oversamples conservatives and undersamples moderates.

Image from "Uppity Wisconsin"

Perhaps.

And it could be that the poll grossly shorted liberals and moderates.

It could also be that the two years of exit polls used – 2006 and 2008 – were anti-GOP wave elections with a lot more identified non-conservatives than 2010.

This is, of course, quite significant considering that the same poll shows Barrett beating Walker 50 to 42% among moderates

Well, we’ll see.  Because as we always say, the only poll that really matters is on election day.

At any rate, it’s possible the Marquette Poll is wrong.  But if it were, and other polls – say, the White House’s internal polling – weren’t seeing about the same results, then you might be seeing more national Democrat involvement in this election, which promises to be such a pivotal one both for this fall and for the role of unions in public governance.

But you’re not.

MoveOn.org – an early adopter in the “mobilize low-information voters behind vague but simple chanting points” market – is claiming it’s going to need to triage its races:

MoveOn, a giant in the progressive political world and an early endorser of Barack Obama in 2008, warns that it might have to “pull the plug” on key campaigns to help Obama and Senate Democrats if its 7 million members don’t pony up with at least $5.

Without a rush of new cash, MoveOn says it will have to give up efforts to elect Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, help the recall fight against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and energize younger voters who’ve soured on Washington.

On the one hand, I suspect MoveOn is trying to scare its base into action.  There is no way they’re short of money; someone, George Soros or Paul Allen or Warren Buffett, will pony up.

On the other hand, Democrat enthusiasm can’t be especially high; even “progressives” aren’t better off than they were four years ago.

The homepage of MoveOn, which helped organize the 2004 anti-war movement, includes a “chip in” button preset at $8.

Hearing that MoveOn might be short of money is like hearing the mullahs have a computer virus problem.

One of the most difficult jobs in politics is running for office as a Republican in Saint Paul.  You’re in a city that might, in a good cycle, be 30% Republican, and where a fair chunk of the city depends on government for a living, one way or another – university faculty, government workers, teachers, and of course many,. many clients.

It’s an uphill road.

And most years, what that means is districts with no GOP campaign – or, almost worse, “campaigns” that are intended to be warm bodies on the ballot to make it look like there’s some kind of contest going on.  The GOP in Saint Paul has no money, gets not much response.   There is currently not a single elected Republican in office anywhere in Ramsey County, and precious few conservative-ish Democrats (and even they are being purged, bit by bit).

Which leads, over the course of a few decades, to a debilitating ennui.  There are Republicans in Saint Paul; 30% of my Senate district voted for Tom Emmer and John McCain.  If every last one of them had turned out to vote in the SD66 Special Election last year, the GOP candidate would have won, and won big.  But Republicans in Saint Paul don’t turn out for local elections.  It’s my theory that they believe that their vote only really counts when it’s for a statewide or national office.  It’d be an easy thing to believe.

Last year, when I was “the establishment”, I figured it’d be a ten year job not only to make the 4th District GOP – which, after redistricting, covers St. Paul, Ramsey County, and the ‘burbs east of St. Paul all the way to the St. Croix – a functional party unit, but to get some sort of tradition of not losing badly all the time established, barring some sort of upheaval.

It’s too early to tell if the Ron Paul surge in Minnesota is that upheaval – but as I noted around convention time, there is at least the raw material to build some hope.

Six GOP candidates in the Fourth CD are getting together to hold a joint press conference at the Capitol today to push for a repeal of the stadium deal:

Meeting on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol on the morning of May 31, 2012, a coalition of six GOP candidates from the Twin Cities area announced their candidacy by setting the “Repeal of the Vikings Stadium Funding” initiative as their key legislative objective. Citing the irresponsible decision to use public funds for a private business and imposing new taxes and fees on the citizens of Minnesota without their consent, the legislative candidates expressed their frustration with the Minnesota legislature. If elected they plan on making their first legislative action the immediate Repeal of the Vikings Stadium Funding.

The press release for the event quoted Andrew Ojeda, the candidate from the Mac/Groveland area:

“Although a full repeal of the stadium bill (HF2958) appears politically infeasible at this moment, the 88-page document represents the fiscal irresponsibility that has engulfed much of the legislature. It is not based on honest T-Charts and balance sheets, but rather on ambitions of the here-and-now.”

And, more pithily, Carlos Conway, from 65B:

“This is nothing more than legislation that keeps the rich, rich and the poor, poor!”

Which puts them (and the other four, and yes, I’ll list ’em in a bit) squarely in the wheelhouse with the freshmen in the Legislature that fought so hard to keep this abomination off our tax rolls, and keep it from gutting what had once been due process in taxation in this state.

Quixotic?  Sure.  But as Lincoln said, “The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

A little more – OK, a lot more – follow-through like this and maybe this can be an interesting campaign season.

I’ll stick by everything I wrote last spring – if everyone that bum-rushed the caucuses for Ron Paul turns out to support this wave of candidates who are putting their shoe leather today where there mouths were at caucus and convention time?  And by “support” I mean “donate time for lit-dropping, phone-banking, door-knocking, sign-planting and, of course, money”?  And if the “establishment” buries its grudges for next caucus and convention time and turns out (as, I should add, it largely is)?   This could be a lot of fun.

Will we win?  The odds are very, very long.  In this election, barring a Cravaack-like miracle (which, like most “Miracles”, was built from hard work and organization), success will likely be measured by moving the needle.  And in two years, moving it some more.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

And that’s good in and of itself – because the DFL knows that if the GOP gets above 40% in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, they can never win another statewide election.

There are two sides to that knife, by the way; if the GOP is ever to turn this state red, we need to find new voters.  And we’ve pretty much gotten all the GOP voters we can out of Maple Grove and Isanti and Benton counties; the new GOP voters are going to come from the Iron Range, and the West Side of Saint Paul, and the scrappy little businesses along East Lake Street, if they’re going to come from anywhere.

By the way, as we noted last week, campaigns have until July 30 to meet their fundraising thresholds – $1,500 for House races, $3,000 for Senate, and only the first $50 of any donation counts toward the threshold – to qualify for campaign aid from the state.  Yeah, it’s not very libertarian, but you’ve already paid for it – why not help it go to a better cause?

The six candidates out there on the steps today were:

• Ben Blomgren, HD66B
• Andrew Ojeda, HD64A
• Daniel Lipp, HD 65A
• Carlos Conway, HD65B
• Rick Karschnia, SD 65
• Paul Tuschy, HD 52B

If you’ve got a few – even $10 – to spare, it’d go a long way.

As Jim Treacher notes in The Daily Caller, “It’s appalling and undemocratic to raise more money than the Obama campaign” .

Or something. David Axelrod is purporting to be alarmed by a Politico story on how Republican super PACs are planning to spend $1 billion on the election.

David Axelrod

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@davidaxelrod

This election aside, anyone who cares about our democracy should be appalled by this: bit.ly/LedsqA

30 May 12

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Um… Why? Are these guys going back to saying super PACs are evil, now that we all know their own PAC, Priorities USA Action, sucks? “Being better at this than we are is a threat to democracy!!”

It’s Berg’s Seventh Law (“When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds“) in action; it’s easier to declare something the Democrats do badly a vice than it is to do it better.

It’s happening on an even bigger scale in Minnesota, where the DFL and its media enablers have spent the past six months painstakingly attacking the utterly innocuous and mundane American Legislative Exchange Commission as Alita Messinger’s network of plutocrat-and-union-funded organizations make ready to try to buy this election.

More on that later this week.

As of today, barring a major electoral cataclysm, Mitt Romney should get enough delegates from the Texas primary to clinch the nomination.

Now, three months ago – back around caucus time – we had a lot of flags planted in a lot of beaches; “I’m for Newt, and if Mitt wins I’ll sit this thing out” and such.

Which was fine, back then, when the goal was to push for your candidates.  You wanted them to win; that’s why you push for them.  And as a secondary goal, you do it to push other candidates in the desired direction (and for most of us, that direction is “right”).

But today it’s all but official.  Romney’s going to be the nominee.

So – has that changed your approach to the campaign?

I don’t do “open thread” posts around here – but feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.

Today’s example of the DFL’s exposed intellectual id is Nicholas Dolphin of (where else) Minneapolis, who wrote a letter to the editor in the Strib – featured, naturally, as their “letter of the day” about a week ago.

Mr. Dolphin wrote:

State Rep. Kurt Bills, newly endorsed by the Republican Party in the U.S. Senate race, is quoted as saying “we sent a lawyer, a community organizer and a comedian to Washington, D.C., and we get an economy that looks like it does today.”

The line is cute, “quippy” and closely follows the Republican playbook established years ago by Karl Rove. In football, it is called a misdirection play.

At the risk of saying “I know you are but what is Kurt?” that is, itself, a misdirection.  Not only did Rove himself not invent that “play”, Mr. Dolphin would divert the conversation from Mr. Bills’ point, which was “Have the efforts of the lawyer, the community organizer and the comedian made your life better than it was four years ago”?

That’d be a laughable premise, wouldn’t it?  Obama, Klobama and A-Frank have presided over an economic debacle!

But that’s apparently not the real subject to Mr. Dolphin::

In politics, it says that when your qualifications are nowhere near those of your opponent, go personal and cute while avoiding actual résumé or accomplishment comparisons.

The avoidance/misdirection here is the omission of the qualifications of that lawyer (Sen. Amy Klobuchar), community organizer (President Obama, who’s actually a lawyer, too) and comedian (Sen. Al Franken).

“Accomplishment comparisons”.

“Qualifications”.

Heh.

We’ll come back to that.

The three possess undergraduate degrees, respectively, from Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Klobuchar’s and Obama’s law degrees come from the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively. And none of these individuals received a legacy admission.

Depending on the source, the lowest-ranked of those five degrees is Harvard Law, at No. 5 nationally. Franken, with his undergraduate degree from the No. 2 undergraduate university in the United States (No. 2 in the world) is really pulling down the average here.

Well, isn’t that special.

Look – the very best thing that an Ivy League or Tier 1 education says about someone is that between the ages of 14 and 25 (give or take a few years either way) they understood the importance of playing the paper chase well enough to punch all the academic, extracurricular and social tickets it took to impress an Ivy League or Tier 1 admissions committee enough to admit them, and to get the scholarships, loans and aid it took to get a shot at spending four to seven years getting sufficient grades (adjusted for Ivy-League grade inflation) to get access to that most coveted benefit of the Ivy League education; the alumni directory.   And that is the very, very best thing it says; in most cases, it bespeaks family social connections, generations in the upper-middle class, family wealth, or political correctness.  Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those, but none of them imply any special merit…

…and that’s just with a brand-new graduate.  After one has gotten that precious diploma copy of the alumni directory, the only question any rational person cares about is “what  have you done lately?”  People who barber on about their Ivy League diplomas after age 25 resemble Andy Bernard from The Office more and more with every passing year.

And those who do it on their behalf?  That’s just sad.

Because in this, an election year, the only question that matters is “What have you done for us lately?”

Do Obama’s degrees from Columbia and Harvard make his multiplication of our national debt, turbucharging our spending and embarkIing on a regulatory and tax course that will sooner than later cripple our private sector and send us briskly down the Greek and Spanish path seem like good ideas?

Does A-Klo’s time at Yale and U-Chi make her sotto voce vote for Obama’s medical device tax – which is already hammering Minnesota industry, and we ain’t seen nothing yet – anything but a disaster for the state she “represents?”

Have Franken’s Harvard degree and decades as  smug snarksmith evolved him into anything but a reliable legislative ticket-puncher on the road to ruin?

Have all their degrees made your life any better than it was four years ago?

Because that is the only question anyone should care about today.

And it’s Mr. Dolphin that’s doing the misdirecting – because while none of Obama, Klobama or Mr. Smalley’s degrees have helped any of us one iota, they sure do look impressive!

Bills’ alma mater, Winona State University, is a nice local school that doesn’t attract the same caliber of student and whose graduates would be better served not denigrating people whose academic accomplishments dwarf their own.

And leaving aside the misdirection, Mr. Dolphin has done Minnesotans one sterling service here; he’s highlighted as clearly as anyone ever has the smarmy authoritarianism of “progressivism”.   You mere peasants with your degrees from state schools should shut up and pay your taxes let your betters do your thinking for you, doncha know.

Mr. Dolphin; Abraham Lincoln was self-taught.  Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College.   Most of the world’s great achievements (outside of medicine and hard science) came from people who did things, rather than waved their degrees around.

I’ve come to the opinion that an Ivy League degree should be, if not a disqualifier for higher office, at least a hurdle to be overcome with some counterbalancing achievement in life since graduation.

And that’d be a hurdle over which Obama, Klobuchar nor Franken have all stumbled, fallen and face-planted.

The Wisconsin Recall…

…looks like it probably won’t.

Last night I drove out to Wayzata to give a seconding speech for Dave Osmek and his candidacy for the MN Senate.

For starters, I love driving from Saint Paul and its stifling, smug DFL rule to the parts of the state that actually work – and thus are governed by the GOP.  Places built by hard work, merit, frugality – conservatism.  I love the smell of an R+20 district; it smells like…

…freedom.  Freedom and liberty and prosperity and everything that makes America great.

The inclement weather offered an opportunity…

…as I’d hoped there’d be a huge crash of thunder when I hit my big applause line.

That was not to be.  But the rest of the evening went pretty well.

My first clue I wasn’t in CD4 anymore?

There were nearly 300 voting delegates.  In a Senate district.  That’s more than we had in all of CD4.

It's a full house - almost 300 delegates That's retiring Senator Gen Olson speaking.

Dave’s a long-time friend of the NARN, so it was absolutely my pleasure.  He was running against Connie Doepke, as well as longtime conservative activist Bonn Clayton (who, I did not know, is the father of Tea Party majordomo Mara Souvannasoth.  You learn something new every day!).

It took four ballots – which was the maximum according to the convention rules – but Osmek pulled out to an early lead, and was within two votes of the 60% threshold at the third ballot.  Clayton withdrew and threw his delegates to Osmek after the third, which led to an 81-19% endorsement.

Then the district split into two rooms.  I walked to the cafeteria to cover the House District 33B contest between incumbent Steve Smith and challengers Pam Langseth and Cindy Pugh.

I got a sense of the tenor of the event; Smith, a moderate (who’s earned my personal ire by opposing Joint Physical Custody legislation for years) seems to have been districted out of much relevance, at least within the party.  He had a small clutch of supporters wedged between a large group for Langseth, and an even bigger group for Tea Party organizer Pugh.

I had no idea how much bigger, of course; when the first ballot came back, Pugh had about 68% of the vote, blowing past the margin for endorsement.  Langseth netted about 20 points, meaning that the incumbent Smith netted around 10% of the vote.  I was sitting next to his delegation; he did not look happy, and it did sound as if he was ready to go to a primary against Pugh.

As, scuttlebutt had it, Doepke was going to do too, against Osmek; Twitter traffic painted her as still thinking about it.

As to the A side?  That race – former Senate candidate Joe Arwood and another challenger – are going to the primary too.   They came, literally, to a tie; 75 votes each, 35 shy of endorsement.  So to the primary we go!

But that’s all for August.  For last night?

It’s a great sign when a Republican CD votes conservative.  While both Doepke and Smith   made reassuringly conservative-sounding speeches, both seemingly got hung up by positions they’d taken in Saint Paul that weren’t so much; Doepke voted for the New Generation Energy Act and the Stadium, and against Stand your Ground; Smith voted with the Real Americans on Stand your Ground, but has caved on more than a few other issues.  The district didn’t buy it, clearly.

And it’s gratifying to see a district that doesn’t give a crap what Lori Sturdevant’s going to say about it.

It smells like…victory.

Two years ago, during the run-up to the Minnesota Gubernatorial election, I published the results of some GOP-friendly internal polling that showed that Tom Emmer was leaving votes on the table, not so much for opposing gay marriage per se, but by not pushing a referendum on the issue (as opposed to the legislature or the courts deciding it).   Although I and many of Emmer’s libertarian base considered this a feature rather than a bug, it retrospect it may have been a bit of personal and philosophical integrity but a political mistake.

If it wasn’t a fluke.

And a new Quinnipiac poll indicates it wasn’t:

Quinnipac’s latest poll of the Sunshine State finds that 25 percent of voters say Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage makes them less likely to vote for him. On the other hand, 11 percent say that it makes them more likely to vote for him.

Among independents, 23 percent say that they’re less likely to vote for Obama over same sex marriage. Older voters (55 and older), born-again evangelical Christians, lower income voters and military veterans are all more likely than other demographic groups to say that Obama’s backing of same-sex marriage will sway them towards Romney.

And even a low-information DFL voter knows that 23 is bigger than 11.  Probably.

By the way, the Q-poll (insert all May polling disclaimers here) is bullish on Mitt:

On the whole, Romney beats President Obama by six points in Florida, leading 47 to 41 percent over the incumbent president.

We all know what polls in May are worth.  I’m disinclined to put much stock in any of them until Labor Day, when all the low-information voters (mostly Democrats) start putting their voting caps on.

Still, it’s a bit of a morale booster, seeing the Democrats racking up the unforced errors.

As we noted yesterday, House of Representatives candidates that can raise $1,500 in $50 increments can qualify for a sizable bump in financing from the state.

Each Senate district covers double the area,  so it has to raise double the money  – $3,000 – for double the bump.

Here are the MN Senate candidates in CD4.

SD 38 – Roger Chamberlain – I haven’t actually heard if incumbent Chamberlain has hit the hit the threshold yet – I wouldn’t doubt that he has.  But if you’re a Tea Partier, a Ron Paul supporter or a fiscal hawk of any stripe, Chamberlain is one of the brighter spots in what was a dismal year in the Senate.  It’d be a nice sign if he were not merely to win his race, but to crush his opponent.  He hasn’t updated his page for the new race yet – I’m sure that’s coming – but I suspect his “donate” link works just fine.

SD 39 – Ray Vandeveer Another incumbent, Vandeveer is a hawk that voted against the stadium and has been a solid conservative throughout.

SD 41 – Gina Bauman – Bauman, a New Brighton businesswoman and city councilwoman, is in her second campaign for the Senate.  She’s the kind of person we need more of in the Senate.  And SD41 is winnable – but getting the bump from the state would be a huge help. She’ll be up against Barb Goodwin.  Need I say more?.

SD 42 – April King is running in the new 42; the good news is it’s an open seat; the less-good news is that it’s one of those twisty-turny gerrymandered districts that pairs some good right-leaning districts up north with a few bat spittle crazy ones in Vadnais Heights.  But this is winnable; that extra bump from the state would help a lot. (UPDATE: I had an outdated link up there before; if you haven’t been there, go!  If you went to the old one, go back!)

SD 53 – Ted Lillie – Ted’s another fiscal hawk.  I suspect he’s doing fine – but again, the worse he crushes his DFL opponent, the better.  Any help will be appreciated.

SD 65 – Rick Karschnia‘s got a tough race – but I’l be donating, since it’s my district.

Speaker Zellers and Senator Senjem had barely brought the gavels down on the session when the DFL’s paid PR organs – Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and the unions – and their unpaid ones in the media started chanting the meme: it’d been a “do-nothing” legislature.

That is, of course, objectiively wrong.  The GOP went into the session with big plans, and threw itself into carrying them off.

The DFL and Governor Dayton went into the session with smaller plans:

• Run out the clock
• Veto everything they could
• Hope redistricting would pull their chestnuts out of the fire come November.

It’s not a bad strategy, really; it ties in seamlessly with the DFL’s strategy this past several elections: “lie about everything convincingly enough to sway the stupid vote”.

But in addition to being a really really cynically ofay political strategy, it’s just plain not true. Here’s a sampling of what the “do-nothing’ legislature managed to get past a sluggardly DFL minority and a Governor whose only activities this past session were vetoing legislation and kissing Roger Goodell’s ass:

• Brought the deficit from the “nearly seven billion” of two years ago to a billion dollars and change in surplus today.
• They passed a Voter ID Amendment, which promises to help make MInnesota elections less like Chicago’s
• Furthered policies that led to the creation of 41,000 jobs – almost making up for the 47,000 jobs lost jn 2009 and 2010 when the DFL controlled the legislature.
• Brought Health and Human Services spending increases down from the double digits under DFL mismanagement to just over the rate of inflation.
• King Banaian’s “Sunset Advisory Commission” did something I do not believe any DFL government has ever done; eliminated government offices that had outlived their usefulness.
• Tort Reform
• Changes in school choice laws.

Oh, yeah – and they passed a ton of other bills, which Dayton then vetoed.

Put another way:  a legislature elected by over 50% of each district’s voters was stymied by a governor elected by barely over 40% of the people.

But that matters not to Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, and its new astroturf spinoff, “Alliance for a Better Legislature”.  WIth nothing to show for their own session, the DFL and its astroturf partners’ only really strategy is…:

• Find a big lie
• Tell it constantly
• Peel off enough stupid people…
• …or fake and duplicate people to flip the Legislature while they still can.

I never endorse candidates.

Partly it’s because I can’t imagine anyone really cares what a schnook blogger from the Midway thinks.

Partly it’s because on the off chance I do have even the faintest shred of clout about these things, I’d rather use them to help people think for themselves.

Partly it’s because my vote really doesn’t matter; I’m sixth alternate in a district with ten delegates of whom nine have been pretty disciplined about showing up for conventions.

So I don’t believe I’ve ever endorsed anyone on this blog.

I’m not entirely going to go back on that today.

———-

I could vote for any of the three significant (sorry, Harold Shudlick) GOP Senate candidates with a clear conscience.  I haven’t always been able to say that during nomination battles.

Kurt Bills is a smart guy with stances I largely agree with.  He’s one of the good legislators, a freshman, so while he doesn’t have the longest voting record, it’s a good one.  He’s been polluted with some delegates, I think, by the tit-for-tat retributive onslaught of the Ron Paul supporters that have carried him to front-runner status, which obscures, I think, an excellent candidate.   If he gets the nomination, I’ll work for him without hesitation.

Pete Hegseth is untried – at least in legislative bodies – but is a blazingly smart guy and an excellent organizer.  His association with “Vets for Freedom” gives him some big advantages (big fundraising potential)  – and Pete is a great candidate who is, I think, headed for a great future in politics at whatever level.  If he gets the nomination, I’ll be there.

But this week, at the convention? I’m supporting Dan “Doc” Severson.

Part of it is the experience.  Dan spent eight years as a legislator, he knows how that’s done.

And as Andy Aplikowski points out, that’s a two-edged sword.  Any legislator who’s had to balance the waves of special interests, in Saint Paul as well as back in the home district, against principle is going to wind up with a few regrettable votes.  Dan has a few.  So will Bills if he stays in the legislature.  So will Hegseth if he wins.   Dan’s got a few.  He’s also got a long record of fighting the same fight the conservatives fought in 2000, that the Tea Party fought two years ago, and that the Paul crowd at least in part fights today – the fight to try to limit government – from an actual seat in the legislature.

Dan’s not perfect, but he’s been plenty good enough in a place and time that’s counted – in a seat in the legislature, after getting worked over by all those interests.

But Dan’s done one other thing that may be the single most visionary effort undertaken by a Republican leader in recent history in this state.

This state is a toss-up state.  Where does the GOP think its new voters are going to come from?   We’ve already mined the good GOP districts for every vote they have.  How many more votes are we going to get from Maple Grove and Benton County?

No.  While there may be pockets of un-reached Republicans out there, the long-term future of the Republican party, in Minnesota and nationwide, as a vessel for the conservative movement lies in the tens of thousands of Minnesotans who have come here recently from places like Laos, Guatemala, Eritrea, Mexico, Vietnam, Russia, Somalia…

…from places with strong traditions of family, faith and honor – things the GOP is supposed to uphold, although which it seems to do imperfectly lately – and whose way forward in this country, like all previous immigrants, is hard work and entrepreneurship.   Which are values where the GOP has a good track record, and are  values the DFL holds in sneering contempt.   These are people who are conservatives, and who vote DFL because the DFL has successfully painted the GOP as racists who want them all rounded up and sent back home.

I’ve railed at GOP candidates – from Mark Kennedy through Tom Emmer – for failing to poke their noses into the city, for not meeting with charter school parents (who in the city are mostly minorities, and who mostly vote DFL, and mostly don’t know that the DFL will kill charter schools before they kill cockroaches), or with H’mong leadership, or with Latino groups to discuss their view of immigration reform (to Emmer’s credit, he did this.  And hint: it’s a lot harder-line than most Republicans are).   My railing has been met politely, and ignored.

But Dan Severson has led the way on this.  He’s forged links with immigrant and ethnic communities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul that are a first in Minnesota Republican politics, and may be nearly unique in the US outside of Florida and the heavily-Latino southwest.

And that is the first step on the way to the future of the GOP and conservatism in Minnesota.

Also because Cathy Jo Severson will kick my butt if I don’t write this.

So I’m supporting Severson for Senate.

It’s become clear this past few days what “Governor” Dayton’s only real goal has been this past session: provide chanting points for the DFL and its paid messaging service, Alliance For A Better Minnesota.

Well, that and providing Wilfare.

Yesterday, Dayton vetoed a tax bill aimed at helping jump-start small business:

The plan would have given tax breaks for research and development, investment in new businesses, historic preservation and the Mall of America expansion. Tax rebates on capital equipment purchases would have been replaced by upfront tax breaks to small businesses purchasing capital equipment. Included was a provision Dayton sought: giving tax breaks to employers who hired veterans.

And in this lies the three biggest lessons of this entire fiasco of a session. They are simple, but apparently not simple enough to penetrate some moderate Republicans’ heads:

1. The DFL – and especially the media that supports them – loves “bipartisanship”.  Provided it’s solely on the part of Republicans.
2. The DFL’s goal isn’t improving Minnesota, or making a better life for Minnesotans.  It’s getting and keeping power.
3. To get the power back that they lost in 2010, the DFL is engaging in a Big Lie – really, a series of small lies, aimed at winning over the votes of the naive, the addled, the stupid, the ingenuous, the disingenuous and the illiterate.

That third bit?  Right here:

But Dayton said the bill tilted too heavily toward business, to the virtual exclusion of homeowners, renters, farmers and senior citizens…”There is no question that Minnesota businesses have been hit hard by recent property tax increases,” he wrote. “But so has everyone else! … I remain committed to broad-based, comprehensive property tax relief for all property taxpayers, including — but not limited exclusively to — businesses.”

And there’s a Big Lie.  Dayton knows that property taxes are set by local government.  They – accountable at the lowest, most intimate level with their taxpayers – control their own spending.  Dayton, like all the bobbleheaded leftybloggers who also get their chanting points from Alliance For A Better Minnesota, is trying to convince just enough of the ill-informed that this is not to to eke out a legislative victory.

And here’s the message I want to make sure gets out:

After weeks of intense lobbying, state business leaders were unhappy with the veto.

Jobs – real jobs that help the economy grow, not state jobs – come from business.  Now, I’ve heard some business owners say they are disgusted by the performance of the MNGOP in this past session,.

In response, here are  your two answers:

• Yesterday, we noted that the GOPers that were sent to kick butt for lower taxes have been largely holding their ground.
• Here, in this veto, you see the bloody conundrum; sending the GOP home this November to “teach the party a lesson” will leave Mark Dayton in complete control.

If you are a Minnesota businessperson, the lesson is clear:  if you are Zygi Wilf, government is here to serve you.  If you are not?  Then government is here to tax you, regulate you, to force you to unionize…

…and eventually strangle you.

I mean, the only poll that matters is five and a half months away.  We all know that.

But a guy can dream; what if the Gallup Poll isn’t wrong?:

Well, it means conservatives are going to have to not screw up, and keep a hypothetical Romney Administration honest and, ahem, non-RINO-y.

Which means flipping the House and Senate.

More on that tomorrow.

I’ve heard not a few conservative voters groan in frustration over the stadium vote this past few weeks: “why did we even bother voting for the GOP in 2010?”

And watching the way some “conservative” legislators caved in at the first sign of beer-gutted yahoos and their husbands flouncing about the halls of the capitol with their faces painted purple and the bratwurst-grease stains on their sweatpants concealed by the crocodile tears they were squirting at the thought that the taxpayers would let Zygi Wilf take all their precious family memories to California, it was easy to feel discouraged.

One might feel justified in asking – do any of these people have any cojones at all?

But a look at the numbers from the vote shows there’s a little more than that to be hopeful for.

———-

As I noted this morning, the Legislature voted by a  thin majority to support the stadium.  That majority included a sizable minority of the GOP caucuses.

Most of the GOP caucus did, in fact, vote against the stadium.

But it’s when you break down the caucus by class that you see the real distinction.

Let’s look at the House first.

Of the 71 House GOP caucus members, 33 voted Yes and 38 voted No.   Ten of the votes came from Freshmen Republicans (Fabian, Kiel, Kriesel, LeMieur, Murray (Rich), O’Driscoll, Schomaker, Swedzinski, Vogel and Woodard ) voted “Yes” – all of them but the retiring John Kriesel from outstate.  The other nine certainly owe us some answers.

But 18 of the “No” votes came from first-term Representatives (Anderson (Diane), Banaian, Barrett, Benson (Mike), Bills, Crawford, Daudt, Franson, Gruenhagen, Kieffer, Mazorol, McDonald (Joe), McElfatrick, Myhra, Petersen (Brandon), Quam, Stensrud and Wardlow).   They’re from all over the place; they were a majority of the GOP “No” votes, while the Freshmen were about a third of the “Yes” total.

Put another way?  The “No” voters had served an average of less than 2.5 terms; the “Yes” votes, an average of four terms.

In other words, the average “No”-voting Republican in the House came to office after the debacles of 2006 and 2008, and most of them in 2010; they remember the price of moderate hamsterism, and they rejected it when the chips were down.   The average GOP “Yes” voter has been there a while – in the cases of some of the old-timers, maybe too long.

In the Senate, the pattern holds: of 37 Republicans in the Senate, 15 voted “Yes” and 22 “No”.  That’s 60% of the Senate GOP caucus holding the line (it was 54% in the House).

And if you look at shelf life?

Of the “Yes’ votes in the Senate, only five (Carlson, Magnus, Miller, Nelson and Pederson) were freshmen.

But on the “No” side, of 22 votes, 15 were freshmen (Benson, Brown, Chamberlain, Dahms, Daley, DeKruif, Gazelka, Hall, Hoffman, Howe, Kruse, Lillie (Ted), Newman, Thompson and Wolf).

Put another way, the average “Yes” voter has spent just shy of three terms – almost 12 years, on average – in Saint Paul (and if you leave out the freshmen, it’s closer to four terms on average).

On the other hand, the average “No” voting Republican has been there a little over a term and a half (the seven long-timers voting “No” included indefatigable conservatives like Gerlach, Hann, six-termer Warren Limmer, Nienow, Ortman, Parry and Vandeveer, people who survived the debacles of 2006 and 2008 for good reason).

———-

So what’s the conclusion?

Conservatives can console themselves ever so slightly in the wake the stadium debacle in the fact that legislators elected after conservatives took real control of the GOP did, in fact, vote overwhelmingly conservative during the stadium debacle.

And fortify themselves with the absolute knowledge that we have to get more of the same in Saint Paul.

So what do we do about it?

More tomorrow.

I’ve said it over and over – and every day of new evidence confirms it more; the DFL’s strategy seems to be “say whatever we want to (knowing that the media will never, ever contradict us in public, at least not in a way that the majority of voters will ever see or hear),  regardless of accuracy or truth, to sway the ill-informed, the ignorant, and the not-so-bright.  Because their votes (and whatever else we can jam through the polls) count just as much as the votes of the smart and informed people”.

Case in point:  Education Minnesota president t Tom Dooher’s statement to the media yesterday as the session drew to a close; I’ve added emphasis:

“The 2012 Legislature showed that Minnesotans will have a clear choice in November between leaders who truly value public education and those who view our classrooms as places for political games.

“The Republican majority introduced more than 20 bills targeting public education and educators this year. None of them responsibly addressed the most pressing needs of our students, including repaying the state’s $2 billion IOU to its schools, closing the achievement gap and developing a sustainable funding system for the future.

It’s a lie, of course.

The GOP did, in fact, propose and pass a bill that would have accelerated the repayment of the shift.   Governor Fauntelroy vetoed it.

This, really, shows several things:

The DFL’s campaign – say whatever it takes to win in November, truth be damned, is well underway.  The unions and Alliance for a Better Minnesota will soon be buying up millions in airtime to saturate this state with ads saying “The GOP hates kids”.  Mark my words.

Your children are the DFL’s pawns.  To the extent that the shift actually harms children (it really doesn’t; it inconveniences administrations), the DFL showed this session that they’d rather exploit them in November than pay for their education today.

This is what happens when you let “Right To Work” die in committee.  How wonderful would it have been to have every conservative, Republican member of EdMinn walk of the union out en masse at this hypocritical slander?   Or if the 42% of union members who do vote Republican tell their leadership “uh, not so fast” when the unions spend 95% of their dues on Democrats?

Apparently some genius in the majority caucus figured if they backed off on Right to Work, the unions would play fair this election.

This is politics in Minnesota today; one party does the best it can for a better Minnesota; the other does whatever it can to retain power, truth and ethics be damned.

Two bits of news from yesterday.

While I’m not especially knotted up about gay marriage – I support civil unions, yadda yadda – it lost big in North Carolina yesterday.  Bible-belt bigotry?  Or a sign that social issues are winners in swing states?  We’ll see.

And as you’ve no doubt heard, Scott Walker drew almost as many Republican voters to his meaningless primary than all the Democrat contenders put together in Wisconsin yesterday – an effort that cost millions in union money and led to the Dems getting…

…Tom Barrett, the Sharon Sayles-Belton of Milwaukee, a man who’s presided over the decline of a city that…well, was where Happy Days was set, anyway.

If you’re a union member?  Get ready to have your paycheck tapped harder than ever.

I’m going to slip a few bucks in the figurative online mail for the Walker campaign.  Now’s when it get serious.

Remember when liberals opposed indefinite military detention of terror suspects captured on American soil?

Either do the libs or the President:

President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.

But wait – isn’t this exactly what liberals were comdemning George W. Bush for?

The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.

Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again.

Forget about Jimmy Carter; it seems that Barack Obama has borrowed the most noxious and troublesome aspects of almost every previous Administration:

• From George W. Bush, the most troubling ingressions into civil liberty in the same of national security.
• From Bill Clinton, the most obnosxious two-faced hypocrisy and star-snuggling.
• From George HW Bush, the most obnoxious aspects of ofay patricianism.
• From Carter?  Obama may well turn out to be a less competent president.  But there’s a competition, there.
• From Ford?  Obama is to choosing Vice Presidents as Gerald Ford was to controlling his golf swing.
• From Nixon?  The same blithe assurance that massive intervention was just plain the right thing to do.
• From LBJ, Obama gets the ideal that for every issue, there is an exquisitely expensive government program or regulation, and a propensity to think “dirty tricks” are a normal political tactic.
• And from JFK, Obama takes the lesson that public relations is as good as competence.

Bring on November.

Let’s imagine, if you will, a big knob or dial with a scale from 0 to 11.

This dial measures…

…well, anything, really.  For purposes of this article, let’s measure “Liberty” – the prevalence of and respect for the rights to think, speak, act, work and prosper freely.

Let’s say the numbers on the dial mean something like this:

0 – You’re in a North Korean concentration camp.

1 – You are in North Korea, but not in a concentration camp.

2 – You are in Cuba – unfree, and most likely dirt poor.   Your only “opportunity” is found in a bottle of some kind.  You are fed, more or less, and cared for, sorta.  Like a farm animal, really.

3 – You are in Red China – unfree, and a little less likely to be dirt poor.  Like an animal on a farm where the back forty is “free range”, if Farmer Brown Hu lets you live back there.

4 –  You are in Greece – Rioting and living on the dole? You’re “Free”.  Starting a business or excelling on your merits, absent lots of graft and what the Mexicans call mordida (maybe the Greeks call it “Mordidos?”  I dunno), and faced with paying taxes to pay for the problems caused by the earlier excessive taxes?  Not so free.  You are fed well enough, and cared for (or should be, if the government can figure out how to balance its budget) – like a house pet with a badly-organized owner who’s going to have to file for bankruptcy if he doesn’t square his act away, and who seems unlikely to do anything of the sort after the weekend’s household elections.

5 – You’re in the Netherlands or France.  You are “Free” from most wants, and have lots of “Free” time – but taxes and regulations make entrepreneurship exceptionally difficult, although it’s a more orderly form of difficulty than in Greece.    Food and care from the government are plentiful (provided that taxes and borrowing are in turn also plentiful, which is a big “provided” these days); you are like a pet in a well-organized and happy home, albeit one that has to keep renegotiating its credit cards.

6 – You are in a highly regulated United States or the UK – think “the worst of the seventies, on turbo”, run amok.  Entrepreneurship is marginally more free than in socialist Europe, and the social “safety net” is almost as smothering and the taxes almost as debilitating.

7 – You are in what Newt Gingrich might call Mitt Romney’s America – with lower taxes, but still more regulation that the United Freaking States of America, the land of people who risked all to come to the new world to risk all, could do without, and still too many taxes.  A place that is essentially a welfare state with some doors of opportunity left open for the lucky and incredibly motivated (or connected) few.

8 – You are in an America that Ronald Reagan worked toward – where we have the government we actually need, but not too much, and where feeding government comes in second to feeding and educating your family and financing your dream of success – a place where the rising tide lifts all boats, and where we don’t level out the peaks to fill in the valleys, but where we (as Churchill said) spread a net over the abyss.

9 – You’re in the America that Ron Paul’s party line says he works toward; where government is stripped down to the bare minimum, and people have the responsibility – and opportunity – to fend for themselves.

10 – The pure Big-L Libertarian Ideal.   Government guards the borders, enforces laws regarding order and property rights, and adjudicates contracts.  That’s it.  You are free to succeeed or fail precisely according to your merits and work.  And if you fail?  Social policy, especially the whole “Safety Net” thing, is in the realm of society – the individual and their own organic institutions (the church, Packers Nation, trade unions, the Elks, the NRA, the Oprah Book Club or whatever).

11 – One more than ten.

Where do you want to live?

That’s one way of looking at life, anyway.

———-

I was listening to Jason Lewis the other night – something I don’t get to do nearly enough.  And he looks at political life a little differently; “You’re either for freedom, or against it”.  Instead of a dial from 0 to 11, you have a light switch, or an LED; it’s on, or it’s off.

How accurate in measuring anything in life is a lightswitch?

Is your marriage either wonderful, fulfilling and perfect or utterly miserable, abusive and dysfunctional?

Is your job either your dream come to fruition or something that makes you want to stick a gun in your mouth every morning?

Are your children either endless joys that make you thankful to wake up every day or little deviants on whom you can’t find enough dimes to drop?

If your marriage, job and kids aren’t perfect, do you instantly file for divorce, quit, and look up a pack of travelling gypsies?

Of course not.  So – is all of American political life really a choice between either “North Korean Concentration Camp Inmate” or “One More Than Ten?”

Of course not.

You put up with your spouse’s imperfections and insanities (or, in about half of marriages, you don’t).  You tough out a job you may not like until something better comes up (or doesn’t).  You try to focus on and bring out the best in your children, and get them to the point where you can say “I did the best I could”, and others answer “We can tell”, and you both keep a straight face.

Everything in life has a “dial” that goes from zero to 11 – your marriage, your job, your kids…

…and political life isn’t any different.

There are two political battles going on today, if you are a conservative and a Republican.

The big one is against Barack Obama.  Obama’s America is at or below a “Six” right now, and – measured by executive branch action – heading south.  He’s putatively targeting a “five” – but his deficit spending, as any sane conservative knows, pretty much inevitably leads to “four”.  Which, then, can just as easily lead to overreaction on the part of government and those who’ve come to depend on it – the Democrat constituency – that leads to points south of four; see “The Weimar Republic”.

So if you’re sitting at a 5.5, and your options are “Five and dropping” or “Seven (at worst) with the potential to move up, if you keep engaged and don’t let up the pressure?”, what would you take?

Which leads us to the other – and first – battle we face; between those who answer that question “If I can’t get at least a nine, then I don’t care and I’m going to stay home”.

Now, during the caucus and endorsement process, I’m all for accepting no substitutes – for pulling like hell for whomever your ideal candidate is, and eschewing compromise like the plague.

But once the endorsement process is over, there’s another time for choosing.  And if you’re a conservative Republican, at any level, your choice is, ineluctibly, this:

You held out for your ideal.  Now it’s time to choose; the US is at a 6, maybe a 5.5, today. Another term of Obama and we’ll be a weak 5, maybe headed south.  The only realistic choice right now is – at worst – to increment the counter to a 6+.  Maybe a 7, maybe shooting for an 8 if we get a good Congress.  You will not get your 9 or 10 in this election – and if the needle slips further, and more Americans slide into dependence and choose that comfortable, entitled “Five” on the big dial of political life, it’ll become much, much harder to budge things upward again.

Do you let the dial slide?  Or do you push the dial up?

There is no other option.

What do you say?

Obama launches re-election bid in a half-empty arena:

During the speech, Obama ripped into the presumptive GOP nominee and discussed nation building at home, but the most newsworthy item of the day was not the talking points Obama delivered: it was the crowd… or lack thereof.  According to ABC News, the Obama campaign had expected an “overflow” of people.  Instead, the arena looked half-empty.

I listened to a little of the speech itself.  I’m biased, of course – I never really bought into the supposed brilliance of Obama as an orator, although he has certainly been a capable-enough speaker – but he sounded strained and shrill, like Paul Wellstone with a rounder tone.

 The Columbus Dispatch reports that Obama organizers even had people move from the seats to the floor of the gym in order to project a larger crowd on television.

Oh, my.  Not so good, for a “light worker”.

Might be even worse than that, though:

The official Barack Obama Tumblr boasts a figure from ThinkProgress that 14,000 attended the event–70% of the stadium’s seating capacity.

And we all know how lefties count crowds.  If they claim 14,000, it may well have been somewhere between 140 and 1,400.

It’s a campaign faux pas to hold an event in a room that isn’t full; to promise the media a more-than-capacity crowd then fall this far short of that promise is utter incompetence.  In 2008, Obama ran a near-flawless campaign, buoyed by enthusiasm and effective organizing.  But it’s not 2008 any more, and on day one of the 2012 campaign, Team Obama has already made an embarrassing blunder.

I’m hoping for change.

To: The Entire American Left
From: Mitch Berg, non-spokesman for The Entire American Right
Re: Kudos

Dear Entire American Left,

No, no, I absolutely beg of you all – please, please please…:

• Don’t ramp up your recent re-declaration of the war on the law-abiding gun owner!  Please don’t parade an endless, well, parade of long-discredited chanting heads in front of your compliant media to throw rocks at guns and gun laws.  Don’t keep attacking “Stand Your Ground” so long that we have to wheel out the stats that show that “Stand Your Ground” has been, lefty narrative aside, a national success.  Please don’t keep doing this.  Please.
• Indeed, whatever you do, don’t double and triple down on your push to roll back advances in civil liberties in re the law-abiding citizen’s right to bear arms.  If there’s anything that will destroy the conservative movement in this election, it’s having the Ira Glasses and Bob Garfields and Keri Millers of the world mobilized against the Second Amendment.
• Whatever you do, I beg you, please don’t keep alienating males of all ethnic backgrounds!  That “war on women” that all men are supposedly fighting?  That’ll be electoral gold for ya!
• And please, please, don’t keep making your “vision for America” something that makes more sense as a “Vision for France”.  Americans love that kind of thing.

Please, lefties.  Don’t keep doing any of that.  It’ll just destroy us this November.

That is all.