Open Letter To GOP State Central Delegates

To: MNGOP SCC Delegates
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: On Your Predilection For Running Headfirst Into Walls And Kicking Yourself Repeatedly In The Groin

Esteemed Colleagues,

I got your letter the other day, about the intent to try to toss state party chairman Hann at the next State Central meeting.

I know who’s driving this, and I suspect I know why.

I’ve also seen no evidence that there’s any more of a “plan” to this than there was to Matt Gaetz’s defenestration of Kevin McCarthy.

Seriously – show me the alternative you provide. And I don’t mean vague blandishments or the usual impotent tough talk.

You want to take a run at Hann? Come on my show on Saturday. Let’s talk.

There will be questions. Serious ones.

I’d like to the delegates to know if there’s a “there”, there, or if this is just another round of ritualized head-into-sidewalk smashing.

Politics In Minneapolis

On Saturday, I had a chat with Shawn Holster about the new, vastly streamlined Minneapolis GOP. It’s a reform that makes sense – going from four Senate district and 13 ward committees to a single city organization. No more wondering what side of what arbitrary dividing line you live on, no more wondering if you went to the right meeting, no more wasted effort among a dozen sub-units, more focus on what matters- it’s freaking brilliant, and Saint Paul should do the same.

It starts at the :33 mark:

In the meantime, as I was talking with Shawn, this was the MInneapolis Ward 10 convention:

Ken Martin – who runs the party of Bill “Guillotine Republicans!” Davis, of Matt “He Who Flexes on Reporters who are 30 years older than him” Roznowski, of Leigh “Thrilla On the House Floor” Finke, whose party has presided over probably half a dozen cycles of Minneapolis district conventions breaking down into riots…

…is making vigorous noises about violbla beingbla bla unacceptibiblablabla.

Place Yer Bets

It’s finally Election Day and we can all breathe easier now that we won’t have to see Angie Craig’s alternating rictus grin/contorted face of rage multiple times a day on television, social media and other media. But will we see Craig going forward? While I sincerely hope not, it’s difficult to know. So let’s hazard a few guesses on how it will play out today and in the coming days.

Governor: Tim Walz deserves to be tossed out on his well-padded posterior, but I suspect he and Peggy Flanagan will survive. Scott Jensen ran a decent campaign but it’s difficult to overcome all paid advertising from Alida Messinger and the free advertising from the Esme Murphys of the local media.

Secretary of State: Steve Simon is a smooth operator and Kim Crockett is not. Should those traits matter? No, but they do. Simon wins.

Attorney General: We have had the DFL Lucys pull this football away before. Recent polling suggests Keith Ellison is in trouble and that Jim Schultz is leading. Do you believe it? I don’t, but I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Auditor: If the Republicans are allowed to win a statewide office, it will likely be this one. Republican Ryan Wilson has run a fine campaign and you can’t spell blah without DFLer Julie Blaha. The auditor has limited power but a committed auditor can at least turn over a few rocks the DFL would prefer to keep stationary. Wilson wins.

CD-2: While there are 8 congressional districts in Minnesota, apparently only the 2nd is being contested this year. We’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds of ads featuring the odious incumbent, Angie Craig, and her rival Tyler Kistner. It’s been a nasty race and Craig has serious money behind her. She’s vulnerable because of redistricting, but it’s not clear to me that Kistner has made the sale. A left wing veteran’s group has also run some stolen valor ads in the final weekend that may affect the outcome; I have not been able to determine if their claims are accurate, but if Kistner loses, that last-minute attack might make the difference. As an aside, I really wish we’d seen Republicans make more of an effort in CD-3, where it’s been entirely too easy for Dean Phillips.

Elsewhere: Control of the House and Senate are at stake and the deep unpopularity of the Democrats will almost certainly mean Congress will be in Republican hands in 2023. A few guesses on races in other states:

Wisconsin: while the population and demographics of Wisconsin are similar to Minnesota, Wisconsin is not a blue state. Milwaukee and Madison are lefty enclaves, but their overall population is less than 40% of the total population, while the Twin Cities are about 60% of the total population here. As a result, it is easier for Republicans to win. Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican senator, is a bit on the crusty side, but he’s a smart, effective campaigner and looks to be a good bet to win against his opponent, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, a gladhander in the Hakeem Jeffries/Barack Obama style, but less effective. In the governor’s race, Republican challenger Tim Michels is also a bit crusty, but the fluke incumbent governor, Democrat Tony Evers, is an ineffective milquetoast. Look for the Republicans to win both. Continue reading

Why I’m Voting GOP Tomorrow – Part I

I think I voted for some Democrats in the 1982 midterms, when I was 20 and still fighting with my Democrat upbringing. The last Democrat I know I voted for was 26 years ago – because she was unopposed, and her constituent services person worked wonders (she actually went on to be one of the few sane members of the Saint Paul City Council). Not sure I’d do it again, but there you have it.

That, and a few elections during my Libertarian years, 1994 through 1998, were about as far as it went for me not voting Republican.

But notwithstanding that, it’s still not a “gimme” of a vote. The GOP has to earn my vote, or at least (some years) be the lesser of two evils – because if the lesser evil loses, you get a greater evil.

But I’ll be voting GOP this year, straight ticket, every race. No exceptions.

And I’ll be doing it for a lot of reasons.

I’ll be doing it for the guy who ran the little shop over on Snelling that tried to stay open during Walz’s arbitrary, scientifically-vacuous lockdowns – and failed, while the big-box store he competed successfully with for two decades trundled along with government’s blessing. And for every other business that got shut down.

I’ll be voting especially to repudiate Keith Ellison, who spent most of two years siccing his legal goons on businesses that were trying to stay alive, owned by people who’d done something Keith Ellison has never done; invested their life’s savings into trying to run a business in this state. I’m voting Republican to help bring the day when that might not be a stupid idea, maybe, someday, again.

I’m voting GOP for every cop who shows up and tries to do a good job, and is tired of having the political class spitting on her. For every officer that’s brought in a perp, and seen them sprung before the paperwork was done.

I’m voting GOP for every father that had to watch their kids being born via video. For everyone who had to watch their loved ones die via video, or hear about it after the fact from some overworked nurse on the phone.

I’m especially voting GOP for everyone that went through that, and then watched Governor Klink, mask stretched over his maw, jammed into a seat at George Floyd’s very public, very crowded funeral, for which “science” somehow made an exception. I’m voting to throw a huge, red finger at anyone who excused that.

I’m voting a straight Republican ticket for all the nurses, techs and doctors who got laid off about twenty minutes after being hailed as “front line heroes”, because their clinics were shuttered, or their hospitals and networks were realigning due to the market distortions caused by the lockdowns.

I’m voting GOP for everyone wondering how the hell they’re going to heat their house AND buy food this winter.

I’m doing it because of all your “SAVE DEMOCRACY – VOTE BLUE!” buncombe. The left is, year in, year out, the actual threat to our constitutional order, to “democracy”, to freedom.

I’m voting Republican to stick it to the Electoral College denialists and the Supreme Court Conspiracy Theorists. And because Democrats are inflation deniers, crime deniers, American History deniers and, here in Minnesota, fraud deniers.

I’m voting Republican for everyone that lost their job due to the Vaccine mandate.

I’m voting Republican for every National Guardsman – every “19 year cook” – who had to face off against their fellow citizen in the street because their political leaders in Mpls and Saint Paul were too PC and cowardly to enforce the law, reform the police and deliver the “privilege” of public safety for we pay all those f**k**g taxes before Minneapolis became a powder keg.

I’m voting GOP for every beleaguered homeowner in North Minneapolis and the lower East Side of Saint Paul who wonders if this is the night all that gunfire in the distance stitches the walls and windows of their house.

I’m voting GOP to tell every Latino and Black voter who is pondering voting GOP for the first time, and feels as I did when left the Left in 1984 – like they’re stepping off a cliff into the great unknown – “Welcome. Let’s kick some ass”.

I’m voting GOP with the “Rocks and Cows” – all the people in Greater Minnesota who are sick to death of being condescended to by chirpy little 20-somethings from Macalester with poli sci degrees and “mushroom head” haircuts and resumes of short careers spent chasing DFL non-profit bucks.

For every Iron Ranger who’s tired of being told “stocking shelves at Shopko is just as good a career as mining, and all that money’s probably pretty bad for you, really” by Metro-area “environmentalists” in 2 million dollar houses in Kenwood.

I’m voting Republican because they are coming for your guns. Over the past couple years, they’ve felt emboldened enough to admit it. They’ll get ’em, not over my cold dead body, but over theirs.

I’m voting GOP because the DFL turned a blind eye to their contributors taking anvil cases of money out of the US, with (I believe the record will show) a nudge and a wink. The $250 million for “Feeding our Future” is just the beginning.

I’m voting Republican to tell Lisa Bender and every DFLer who believes as she does, “You’re right. Law and order is a privilege. And delivering on that “privilege” is one of government’s few unambiguously legitimate jobs, for which we pay the taxes and lend out the liberties we do.

I’m voting for every cancer patient who wishes they could have had a biopsy six months sooner, or isn’t alive to wish it. For the people whose health – physical and mental – was directly impacted by a state that treated bureaucratic prerogatives better than they treated science.

I’m voting for everyone with chronic pain – the cancer patients and accident victims and repeat-surgery patients with horrible chronic pain who can’t get the pain meds they need, since the same ham-fisted system that locked down the state also investigates and destroys the careers of doctors who give “too many” opioid prescriptions (in the view of some soulless bureaucrat) – while the DFL basks in the sickly glow of having “stuck it to Big Pharma” (while in many cases raking in big contributions from “Big Pharma”).

I’m voting Republican for everyone who’s sick of the DFL-dominated “Laptop class” getting rich on your backs.

I’m voting Republican for everyone who’s more than a little irked at the crude irony of people who vote for Keith Ellison calling Scott Jensen “too extreme for Minnesota”.

I’m voting Republican because I don’t want my granddaughter to have to pay for Joe Biden’s re-election spending spree, although I fear it’s too late.

I’m voting GOP for every kid that slowly lost interest in school, in learning – and in all too many cases, eventually in life itself.

I’m voting GOP for the owners of the my drugstore, my luthier, and every other store that got burned, looted or vandalized; every shopkeeper that had to spent their nights patrolling their stores – or figuring out how to clean up the wreckage.

I’m voting GOP for every parent that is sick of politicized school administrators and school-board politicians undercutting them, and for every parent who’s wondering why their schools just keep getting worse even as the price just keeps rising.

I’ll be doing it for everyone whose car got jacked, for every victim of everyone sprung onto the street by the Minnesota Freedom Fund or whiffleball DFL judges and prosecutors.

I’ll be doing it for every poor family scraping by wondering how they’re going to replace a catalytic converter on top of all the other bills and crap piling up these days.

I’m voting Republican because the shrapnel from Governor Walz’s hamfisted “state of emergency” was utterly. bitterly personal. I had to delay moving my mother – whose husband had just died, and was in a long-term care in North Dakota, pretty much alone – for months while the state worked out all its many mistakes in nursing homes. She was in a competently run state, so she didn’t catch Covid – but the months alone didn’t help one bit. And for that, I have a grudge. Oh, yes I do.

I’m voting GOP for everyone who’s sick to death of being gaslit by Hollywood, by Academia, the media and our own government, and isn’t going to take it anymore.

I’m voting Republican for the 13 soldiers and Marines who died in Afghanistan. Joe Biden wants them forgotten – but I will not.

I’m voting Republican because I read and have critical thinking skills.

I’m voting Republican because I can, and I’m going to keep it that way. Don’t tread on me.

Coattails

As polling results (and, I suspect, internal polling) show the GOP statewide slate is showing promise, two things are happening:

First: The DFL is throwing everything they can find against the wall. Look for a raft of abstruse “Campaign Finance Board” accusations – the political equivalent of “Karen” demanding you wear a mask while out walking. It’s impossible to run a campaign without violating some rule or another, and everyone involved knows it; the charges are there purely to logroll the gullible.

Second and less predictable? Donald Trump, looking to burnish his record as a kingmaker, has bungee-corded into the state with a raft of endorsements. Earlier this week he endorsed Kim Crockett and Scott Jensen.

The bad news? It gives the DFL another framing point to use to try to seize control of the message.

Jensen’s campaign is reacting, I think, appropriately:

“…ultimately, we only care about one endorsement: the support of Minnesota voters. We are continuing to barnstorm this state, engage in meaningful conversations, and work every day to earn the votes of Minnesotans by fighting Walz-Biden inflation, ending our crime epidemic, protecting parental rights, and funding students, not broken institutions,” Jensen said.

A source close to a statewide candidate told me yesterday that it was not the news they were hoping for: they were just starting to get the conversation in their statewide race focused on issues rather than personalitymongering; Trump’s endorsement may have complicated that.

The good news, maybe, possibly, if you’re a GOPer who’s forgotten what contending in an opinion poll, much less winning an election feels like? Trump, burned by a couple of bad calls in primaries, is likely saving his last-minute bungee endorsements for candidates who’re going to burnish his record. Which means – I’m guessing here, but not without some reason – that the GOP’s internal polling is looking more like Trafalgar and less like Survey USA.

Campaigning 102

Ryan Wilson – who’s running for State Auditor, and is leading incumbent DFLer Julie Blaha in the latest Trafalgar poll on Minnesota statewide races – did a whirlwind tour of Minnesota yesterday, as recounted in this twitter thread.

Read the thread, and notice what’s missing:

At no point in the tour did he drive of the road in a cloud of White Cloud cans, like incumbent DFLer Julie Blaha and her sidekick, Melisa Franzen-Lopez. There was no need for MNGOP chair Dave Hann need to pull up to the scene in a converted Scooby Doo “Mystery Machine” and rescue Wilson from the cops.

At no point did Wilson crash and roll his vehicle leaving a trail of beer cans and ammo, like Dave Hutchinson, the retiring DFL sheriff of Hennepin County and, possibly, the only sheriff in the state that would endorse Keith Ellison.

“No driving off the road in a cloud of empties” would seem to be a low bar…

…oops.. Wrong term. Sorry.

I should say – I assume that Wilson didn’t drive off the road leaving a trail of empty beer cans. If a Republican had done any such thing, we’d have heard about it in the media. endlessly, between now and November. Sort of like when Tom Emmer’s DUI at 20 got wall to wall media coverage, Tim Walz’s at age 31 was completely ignored – that’s how I know .

Anyway – the GOP: the candidates who don’t drive off the road.

Results

The Pioneer Press, apparently knowing (what little is left of) its audience, says:

Now, I don’t pry into other peoples personal healthcare decisions, and I’m pretty merciless to any idiot who tries to yap about mine.

But it’s worth noting that Dr. Jensen, though not vaccinated, appears to have missed zero days of work or campaigning due to Covid.

In the meantime, the people who run this state – Lt. Governor Flanagan and her figurehead, the…uh, somewhat comorbid Tim Walz – have both had Covid and been off the job in the past couple years.

Correlation – especially with three data points – isn’t causation.

But it’s a better correlation than the one data point the PiPress ran with.

The Battle/s For The GOP

Every election, and GOP primary, is a “referendum on Donald Trump”.

Just ask the Democrats and media (ptr), who want and need every election to be a referendum on Orange Literal Hitler.

Of course, as a conservative who wants to see DeSantis mop the floor with whomever the order of succession puts up against him – Harris? Pelosi? Buttigieg? Beto O’Rourke? – in 2024, I’d very much like the whole “referendum on Trump” thing to shut up and go away.

The Youngkin victory in Virginia last fall should have put that to bed – he was elected while the Democrats tried to make the vote about Trump, and still try to retroactively apply him to the race – but then, our media being dishonest about this sort of thing is hardly Man Bites Dog, now, is it?

This past week has given both sides evidence.

The primary in Pennsylvania earlier this week had Dr. Mehment “Doctor Oz” Oz winning the Senate primary – but by a narrow enough margin that Trump reportedly may start swearing off endorsing people.

On the other hand, in Georgia, Trump’s bete noir Governor Kemp cruised to a comically easy victory over Trump-endorsed Perdue in the race against Stacey Abrams, the unelected real president of the US and EU.

In the meantime, a week that saw Madison Cawthorne exit his race, saw Marjorie Taylor Greene winning her contest handily.

My two cents: The battle will center on the GOP fight against the depredations of Obama’s third term, versus the Democrats trying to stretch Donald Trump’s relevance two years beyond his exit from office.


Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the CD1 primary ended in a recount-worthy race between Brad Finstad and Jeremy Munson…

…and a blowout of Jim Hagedorn’s widow and, uh, controversial former MNGOP chair Jennifer Carnahan.

Who may still seek a recount, for all we know.

Game Day

In addition to a number of primaries that may or may not be referenda on Donald Trump, depending on who you ask (more tomorrow, hopefully), today is the first of four drama-clogged elections in Minnesota’s First Congressional District.

As the Strib notes, there are twenty candidates in the running. The DFL (8 candidates) and GOP (10) ones are vying for a significant shot on the ballot in a special election coming up on August 9.

You can fairly feel the media, practically begging for a strong performance by Jennifer Carnahan, widow of the late Rep. Hagedorn and controversial former state GOP chair. It’d guarantee a couple months of soap-opera drama before a DFL victory – a win-win for the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy). Matt Benda has the money; State reps Jeremy Munson and (to a lesser extent) Nils Pierson have the political name recognition.

Tomorrow’s going to be a fun one.

How Can You Tell The Strib Is Lying About Republicans?

The Star Tribune continues to earn its keep as the DFL‘s “unpaid “ PR machine:

For those of you who weren’t paying attention to the GOP convention last weekend – it hardly needs to be said, but nothing of the sort of happened.

A move to disaffiliate with the “Log Cabin Republicans” (to be fair, led by someone who has never been a fan of the notion of LGBTQ Republicans) wrapped up in a procedural motion to vote on the affiliation of each and every affiliate with the party (there are quite a few) led to the clock literally running out on the State Central Committee meeting on Thursday. For the evening, it left the affiliates unattached, and their delegates not credentialed to be seated in the convention.

The body of the convention itself reversed that action on Friday.

This squabble – largely led by a representative from the first congressional district – mirrors in large part a similar fracas a few years ago, when a group of Central committee representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.

It’s the position of this blog that, whatever your personal beliefs about homosexuality and/or Islam, that there is very little that is more aggressively American than “coming out“ as a Republican. Not even buying a house in Burnsville, with a literal freaking picket fence surrounding your front yard.

Indeed, in many of the communities served by these affiliates – Somali, Latino‘s, African-Americans, mong and LGBTQ Dash “coming out“ as a Republican carries an affirmative social risk these are not people to be pushed away; they are frequently the toughest, most resilient Republicans there are.

People may disagree. Let’s disagree.

But let’s also focus on the things we do agree on; for example, the Star Tribune are a bunch of partisan hacks..

From Deep Moldy Blue

Voters in Kenosha County – which has been voting Democrat for literally decades – threw out Democrats for county executive and school board in county elections this week..

Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, a Republican candidate for governor, endorsed 48 school board candidates. Of those, 34 won including eight incumbents, based on preliminary results. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a former teacher, school administrator and state superintendent, did not endorse in any race…

Conservative candidates picked up school board seats in Waukesha, Wausau and Kenosha, but lost races in Beloit and the western Wisconsin cities of La Crosse and Eau Claire.

The Republican-backed candidate for a state appeals court seat in southeastern Wisconsin, Maria Lazar, also defeated a sitting judge who was appointed by Evers.

Kenosha?

Huh. Where have I heard of Kenosha.

I wonder why a habitually Democrat county seems to be swinging red?

Why could that be?

am a small-town Scandinavian at heart, and have spent decades involved in Minnesota and Metro Republican politics, so optimism doesn’t come easily. I’m waiting to see how the MNGOP screws this potential wave up.

Let’s not screw this potential wave up.

Not Our Kind, Dear

Victor Davis Hanson, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, explains why he longer works for the magazine of William F. Buckley:

I think there were certain people in the Republican movement, or establishment, who felt it is their duty to internally police their own, and that’s kind of a virtue signal to the left.

We are just part of your class, we share the same values as you do, and we keep our crazies. And they are not empirical.

Empiricism is hardly a growth industry, but clinging to tradition has its charms, especially if doing so allows you to strike down your rivals. There’s a long history of keeping crazies at National Review. During his long reign at NR, Buckley famously put paid to the Birchers and anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard, casting them to the outer darkness. Later on, Buckley cast out writers he had championed, including Joseph Sobran and Pat Buchanan, both for anti-Semitism. My father subscribed to NR and I would read it cover to cover in my youth. Once I set up my own household, I subscribed for over a decade, but after a while the value proposition wasn’t there.  

Buckley has been gone for over a decade now, and while his beloved NR is still in operation, it hasn’t been a serious enterprise for a long time. Back in 2016, NR tried to cast the Bad Orange Man to the outer darkness, marshaling dozens of arguments against the Dread Pirate Drumpf, but all their sound and fury signified, well, nothing. Why was that? No one really took NR seriously any more.

While Victor Davis Hanson doesn’t need a particular platform to be heard, his departure from NR means the cupboard is bare. It’s not surprising, truth be told — Republicanism generally signifies nothing. Hanson knows why:

I think there’s an image that a lot of Republicans have, both in politics and they sort of represent a sober and judicious way of looking at the world, and we are the adults in the room.

And it’s more about a culture than it is an ideology.

I’m not convinced it’s even a culture. From our perch in flyoverland, the conservative movement NR embodies is a pose rather than an attempt at understanding, let alone defending, a culture. Back to Hanson:

The original Republican conservative movement, I thought, was going to go back and look at the Constitution, when Jefferson said it won’t work if you pile up everybody in the cities because they will be subject to mass hysteria. Or de Tocqueville, and you look at certain ideas, I thought that’s what we were.

I thought they would be champions of the middle class, but I don’t think they were. I don’t think they wanted to be.

Hanson is clearly disillusioned, but he had to know the truth — any classicist of his erudition understands that grandeur and the trappings of the elite are powerful intoxicants. And currying favor with our betters is lucrative. 

Downfall

I went to the GOP headquarters last night, with a small group of activists and with what seemed for a while to be an even bigger group of media

And there, we waited for the puffs of smoke for the chimney (that none of us could find):

Do buildings even have chimneys, anymore?

Gradually, some of the members of the executive committee started showing up:

Bobby Benson Dash executive committee man from CD6, and one of the first to publicly break with Carnahan.

And then, things settled into negotiation. Which was when I left. It was hot out there.

And, apparently, it got a little hot in there, too:

Carnahan started the evening demanding ten months of severance – likely over $100K, which is probably triple what the MNGOP has in the bank at the moment.

After a 2-3 hours of hammer and tongs, it came down to a 7-7 vote for a $38,000 severance deal. Aaaand, under the rules, Carnahan got to break the tie. Which she did. Basically skipping out with the MNGOP’s bank account.

Not, naturally, without leaving the DFL and media (ptr) a natural punch line:

I mean, on the one hand, it’s so obvious, even Jennifer Brooks got it.

And it’s not wrong.

Anyway – between the upcoming audit, the election for party chair in the next 45 days, the gut-shot this likely provides the Hagedorn race in CD1 (presuming his health permits a re-election bid), and Carnahan’s stated intent to run for that congressional seat (which has to be described as “dead on conception”, at this remove), not to mention the inevitable drama of the Lazzaro trial (or, more likely I suspect, guilty plea and showing where the financial bodies are buried, likely followed by the inevitable and justifiable clawback lawsuits on behalf of the victims, which will lead back to the party’s currently nonexistant coffers), the drama’s not over.

To say nothing of the that will attend the next year in MNGOP internal politics. Of the 14 non-Carnahan members of the Executive Committee, seven voted against the severance:

The rest of ’em need to have a short, sharp conversation with their voters. Hopefully leading to some down time, in many cases (although I can be convinced).

It’s not the end of the drama. It’s not even, as Churchill said, the beginning of the end. It’s onlyh yet another end of another frustrating beginning for the MNGOP.

Reckoning

During her first campaign for #MNGOP state chair, I supported Jennifer Carnahan. It wasn’t a slam-dunk – Keith Downey was very capable. I thought she told a good story, and had a good plan.

The vote made sense at the time.

But a lot has changed during Carnahan’s administration.

I left activism in 2018 – but heard the stories about the goings on at the GOP HQ. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt – and politics tends to draw big egos and hair-trigger tempers (much like radio) – so like a lot of grassroots voters, I paid them little mind.

But the tsunami of stories this past two weeks hasn’t left a lot of room for rational doubt. It’s time for Carnahan to go.

It’s not even really about the allegations about Tony Lazzaro, awful as they are. I think it’s entirely plausible Carnahan didn’t know that her close friend, guest at her small wedding, and primary campaign donor was involved in the activities for which he now faces Federal criminal charges; it’s not like sex traffickers advertise it in polite company.

I said plausible. But while rumors abound that Lazzaro’s side hustle was an open secret in inner party circles about (including from Andy Aplikowski’s letter this morning), let’s just leave that, noxious as it is, to the FBI and the DOJ.

The allegations against Carnahan and her staff, though? It’s impossible to read the credible, against-interest allegations of sexual harassment on the parts of various staffers and not get outraged at the “bro” culture that seems to have erupted in *our* party’s HQ.

As a conservative, a Republican and a father and grandfather of young women, I see these stories (none of them *completely* news to me, even outside the party) and wonder, not just why any woman would *work* there, but why they’d vote for the GOP?

Are they merely allegations, not court verdicts? Sure.

So what about when the “allegation” go to court? With discovery, testimony under oath? Imagine the anger every parent will feel at a party that’d foster that kind of depravity, when allegation turns to judgment? When that revulsion goes to vote?

Do you, loyal GOPer, feel lucky?

As to the allegations about Carnahan’s HR style, and her staff’s dubious HR practices, and the allegations four former Executive Directors made? Those just bounced the rubble.

It’s time for Carnahan to go.

And maybe others are reaching that conclusion:

And if Carnahan doesn’t? The Executive Committee must relieve her of her duties.

And if for whatever reason they don’t? The State Central needs to do it. Not just because the alternative is electoral disaster – although it is. No – because either way it’s the right thing to do.

It should go without saying – the GOP needs an independent investigation of the HR and financial allegations, including the out of control spending and tens of thousands in hush money purportedly paid to departing staffers.

Minnesota Republicans – the heart and brains of this state – may nor may not “deserve better”, but we had best demand better.

As Expected

I’d like to say the MN GOP Executive Committee took at least a half-measure at its emergency meeting last night.

To be honest? It was maybe more of a quarter-measure, voting for a financial audit.

The party really needs an independent legal review over the sex harassment charges, on top of the financial audit…

…and of course, Carnahan, whose financial and personal relationship with Lazzaro remains the elephant in the room.

Rebecca Brannon was able to watch the Zoom meeting – which, apparently, was itself a subject of a fair part of the meeting, by her account (read the whole thread):

So the party apparently plans to go into the State Fair with this as its status quo.

I may just have to go to the fair, if only to see how that works out.

More constructively? Anyone leading a petition effort to get signatures to force a Central Committee emergency meeting can have time on my show. Have your people call my people.

Prescription

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There are three weeks [as this was written. Currently a little under two weeks, Ed.] until the legislature adjourns. Republicans continue working with Democrats to keep Dictator-for-Life Walz in power and to enact Democrat agendas in police reform, tax increases, and legalizing marijuana.

Why?

Shut everything down until Walz ends the Permanent Emergency and the law
is changed to say he can declare another only with consent of both houses.

Or else drop the masks, change parties and come clean with us. You’re
not staunch conservatives standing up for what’s right. You’re
Republicans in Name Only working hand-in-hand with Democrats to pass
their agenda.

Joe Doakes

It’s high time the MNGOP stood for what’s right, here.

Trimming The Fat

It’s reapportionment time. And Minnesota – which held onto its eighth US House seat just about the lowest possible margin ten years ago – finally stands to lose a Representative.

California and New York appear to be in line to lose 2 or 3 seats apiece, with Florida and Texas the big winners so far, by all appearances.

But what’ll happen in Minnesota?

You can wager money that “combining the 4th and 5th CDs” won’t be on the table. Don’t even bother.

To my mind, it looks a little like this:\

  • The 4th and 5th are sacrosanct. They’re not going anywhere.
  • The 1st, 7th and 8th are associated with large, socially and geographically distinct areas.

But the 2nd, 3rd and 6th are all mixed bags. Now, I don’t think there’s much case to be made to dissolve the 6th, much as the DFL would love to send Tom Emmer back to private practice.

But getting consolidating either the 2nd or 3rd, and expanding the neithboring districts to fill in the gap, makes a lot of sense.

Thoughts?

Future Alternative

Minnesota legislature passes bill to help victims of state government, unless someone else does.

That’s not how they worded it, of course. The state legislature adopted a bill to give aid to small businesses closed by Governor Walz and to extend unemployment benefits for workers laid off by Governor Walz, but the aid is conditional. If the federal government adopts an aid package, then we use the federal money and the state does nothing. So it’s conditional virtue signaling, based on gaslighting the public that the Covid pandemic is a force of nature, not a product of arbitrary and destructive rule-by-executive-order.

I award Republicans one point for at least voicing the objection that Walz is the problem, not Covid. But I penalize them 10 points for going along with business as usual. Acquiescence is approval. Let the Democrats try to pass laws without a single Republican vote, until Walz relinquishes power to the Legislature, where it belongs. Otherwise, what do we need Republicans for? Just let Walz run everything forever and save the per diems.

In a state as Great-Sorted as Minnesota is, voters who are swingable are going to need a reason to choose GOP in 2022.

The Senate GOP has given them some little reasons. They need big ones. Stat.