Primaries are today.  If you’re a Republican, find your polling station here.  If you’re a DFLer, Mark Dayton will tell you where to go.

It’s important to go if you’re a Republican today.  Emmer should be safe from the Leslie Davis juggernaut, but our Attorney General candidate Chris Barden faces a familiar challenge – Sharon Anderson.  Back in 1994, she beat the endorsed GOP candidate Tom Neuville.  Part of it was the “Anderson” name; part of it was that there was at the time a TV talk show host in the Cities by the same name.

This year, the worry is Sharon Anderson will get votes intended for endorsed State Auditor candidate Pat Anderson.

So  while this blog never ever endorses anyone – it’s Barden for AG.  Not Anderson.

I’ll be voting after work.

Contrast this ad with the scabrous, fact-free, ad-hominem tripe Alliance for a Better Minnesota was foisting on us over the past few weeks:

Who’s the actual governor, here?

OK, so it was a rough week.

It’s July.  Four months ’til the election.  The DFL doesn’t have a candidate yet – and when they do, it’ll be Time magazine’s “The Worst Senator In America“, 2005 edition.  Half of Minnesota doesn’t even know who Tom Emmer is – yet.   And the DFL’s “third party” gambit, Tom Horner, has backfired, drawing three DFLers for every two Republicans – and that’ll get worse as the realization sinks in that Mark Freaking Dayton might be governor.

Issues, you say?  We’ve got immigration; we’ve got job creation; we’ve got economic growth and resposible government; we’ve got education reform and school choice and Local Government Aid reform and the DFL’s deep, enthusiastic links to everything that sucks about Barack Obama’s administration.  They’ve got lies and contrived controversies that’ll be forgotten on August 11.

So if you’re one of those lily-livered GOPers who’ve spent the last week wringing their hands over the denouement of “TipCreditGate”, stop.  Sack up, people; the real race doesn’t even start for a month, and media stunts like the faux outrage over the tip credit is the best they’ve got.

Bag the panic, folks.  This is when the fun part begins.

Tom Emmer is having a town hall meeting with restaurant and bar workers today.  It’s at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville, and the doors open at 2:30.  If you’re a restauranteur or publican, it’d be a great idea to be there early with bells on.  I’m trying to find if anyone is live-streaming the event.

Here’s what’s cool about the event; despite the fact that the whole “Tip Credit” kerfuffle is a manufactured controversy as the media tries to help the DFL run out the clock until Mark Dayton wins the primary, and that the whole fracas is a red herring (focusing on a virtual non-issue at a low level to ignore the larger point – that the Mininum Wage is a job killer, especially in hospitality, one of Minnesota’s most important industries), Tom Emmer isn’t shuffling away from the issue; he’s not trying to sweep it under the rug. 

He’s attacking it head on, like a defenseman checking the snot out of a winger. 

And if I know Tom Emmer, 100 people may walk into Ol’ Mexico unconvinced – and 75 will walk out converted, or at least saying “hmm – the guy’s got a point and, by the way, all that stuff Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota has been saying is crap“.

Because that’s Tom Emmer’s big strength; while he speaks in terms of principles – big-picture ideas that are easy for the DFL’s professional deceivers to pervert – he’s also the best politician in the state explaining to people, regular schmucks in the street, why those principles matter to them.  Why they keep jobs in their towns and money in their wallets.

I’m looking for Emmer to stomp the tip credit issue into history today (not that the DFL, media and leftyblogs won’t try to keep flogging it); more important, I’m looking for him to start showing people the truth behind the kerfuffle; cutting taxes, regulations and other bureaucratic overburden creates jobs, makes entrepreneurship viable, and brings more wealth to individual Minnesotans.

The sort of thing Chris Christie is doing in Jersey today.  The kind of thing Norm Coleman did in Paul and Brett Schundler did in Jersey City in the 1990s.  The kind of thing Ronald Reagan did for the whole nation thirty years ago.  The kind of thing that leaders do to make their cities, states and nations great.

Look for the DFL and media to bend over backwards to try to keep the word from getting out.

While I live in District 66B, a district with little more hope for change than Kinshasa or Pyongyang have, there is hope elsewhere.

I spoke at a fund raiser for Diane Anderson last night in Eagan.  That was fun; she’s got some momentum, and with a little help from her friends she might just eject the far-left but otherwise-ineffective Debra Masin from the House this November.

Also – my friend and radio colleague, King Banaian, has his campaign website up and going.

He also has a campaign blog (above and beyond his day blog).  He wrote this bit which needs to be on everyone’s mind these days:

Also met a younger man tonight, perhaps 30, who has been told his job running a kitchen is in jeopardy because the restaurant needs to balance its books. I told him that I wanted to balance the state’s books with without* increasing the costs at his restaurant. It turns out his family has other restaurants, one of whom my son cooks at! I asked him to thank his family for me, because I know they treat my son well there.

But it is hard for restaurants to keep treating their workers well when government decides to disallow a young person from working for a restaurant for less than the minimum wage. It is hard for a restaurant to keep treating its workers well when we raise taxes on liquor (already the highest-taxed good in Minnesota and taxed 20-80% higher than in surrounding states.) It is hard to treat your workers well when the government decides your sole proprietorship making $300,000 in net revenue should pay higher taxes out of ‘fairness’.

All that out of a 3-minute meeting with a voter in north St. Cloud. And I get to do that every day between now and November.

If you live in Eagan or Saint Cloud, your mission is clear…

…then please stop by Granite City in Eagan between 5:30 and 7-ish.  I’ll be speaking at a fundraiser for Diane Anderson, the GOP-endorsed candidate running against incumbent Sandra Masin.

I think Ed – who lives in the district – will be there.  Certainly if you live in or near Eagan, you should stop down and help Diane win this very winnable district.

Hope to see you there!

 The lastest KSTP-Survey USA poll shows Michele Bachmann up over Tarryl Clark by nine points with four months ’til the election.

Someone named “Alec”, a “diarist” at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, has a Matthews-y tingle running down his leg:

Someone else can write a nice front page post, but I am very excited by this. Bachmann 48, Clark 39. MOE 4%. Hard to believe the IP candidate only got 6%. With no name recognition, Clark is only down by 9. Bachmann is below 50% and her name rec is universal.

Four months ’til the election, with Clark benefitting from a blitz of advertising and friendly-to-fawning coverage in the Twin Cities media, before Bachmann has even really started seriously campaigning.  Seriously – Bachmann has yet to spend figurative dime one on her campaign.  There is no need to, not yet.

The “name recognition” is a red herring, too; all Bachmann’s negatives are in play, but Clark – a tax-and-spendaholic in a year and a district where that should be poisonous this fall – has only started to turn people off.  As “Alec” notes, she has no name recognition; that may be the best thing going for her so far.

And given the polarization of the numbers in the KSTP poll, I’m going to suspect that independents – who are breaking GOP nationwide – are not really sounding off yet.

Joe “Chloe” Bodell comments:

We’ll dig into the numbers later — but thanks to Alec for getting the news out to the ‘sphere.

This is good-to-great news, folks. – promoted by Joe Bodell)

Well, run this good-to-great news; at this point in 2006 and 2006, if memory serves (and I believe it does, but stop me if I’m wrong) Patty Wetterling was around nine points back in a bad GOP year, and Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenburg was closer than that two years ago in a much, much worse year.

I’ve been predicting an eight-point Bachmann win by November.  I’m seeing no reason not to be optimistic.

 A lot can happen in four months, of course.

Gary Gross also covers the topic.

Principles can be painful.

I, as an occasional independent consultant, would just love to land a gig leading the User Experience design effort for a big world-facing institutional application.  I’d love the opportunity to pitch my skills to one of these institutions, convince them that I’m the right guy for the job, and bask in the eventual glory of a job well designed.  To say nothing of the payoff of 12-24 months’ lucrative work.

But if the big instutional customer were a front for AFSCME, the SEIU and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, and the job was a website to help “community organizers” track union members who violated “Card Check” rules for future retribution, and to link these objectors to other union “assets” (goons) to service the transaction (throw bricks through their windows and kill their dogs), principle would tell me I would need to bow out of the gig.  No matter how much it paid.

Principle has its price.

Would bowing out of the project be a huge mistake?  Business hari-kiri?  From a bottom-line sense, it might very well be.   If “Mitch Berg Design” were publicly-held, it might even violate my fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders.  But if it’s my call, given that I oppose Card Check to say nothing of union thuggery, it wouldn’t even be a serious question.

One of the better, more thought-provoking conservative blogs I’ve encountered lately is “Minnesota Conservatives”, a duoblog featuring Minneapolis conservative Barbara Malzacher and 4th CD blogger “Shabbosgoy” – who’s a fairly well-known goy/guy in Saint Paul GOP circles, but I don’t know if his real identity is something he’s put on the blog yet, so I’ll hold off on that for now (note to self; find out why they’re not in the MOB).

Last week, Shabbosgoy wrote a post,  “On Saving The Emmer Campaign From Itself”, that caused a bit of a stir among Emmer’s followers.

Shabbosgoy’s (I’m going to save my fingers and call him SG from here on) premise is that Emmer’s “Waiter’s Wage” kerfuffle was a huge hit to the campaign.

Not fatal, of course…:

Not being glass-half-empty liberals, however, MC believes the campaign can right itself and move forward to victory in November. But the change has to be immediate, if not sooner. And the person who came up with the town hall seppuku should be tasered.

Let’s walk through them one by one:

1. Cancel the seppuku. Sure Emmer will be mocked but such pales in comparison to being tagged as the guy who wants servers to make $2.13 an hour. Such tagging has been ongoing all this week.

Let’s define our terms.

“Seppuku” (the political version, not the Japanese ritual self-disembowelment) is saying “I have no idea what E85 is” while in the middle of Minnesota’s Corn belt; it’s betraying a crucial tone-deaf ignorance.

Favoring a return to the tip credit – the exact system Minnesota used for tipped workers until 1990, and that is used in 43 other states to allow for the fact that tipped waistaff don’t rely on hourly wages for the bulk of their income – is a stance for principle; in this case, the principle that mandated minimum wages kill jobs.

Is it going to cost Emmer votes – especially given the way the agenda-driven media has reproted the story?  Perhaps among food servers; I’m sure waitrons at places in outstate Minnesota where the locals still consider a buck a lavish tip for a $30 tab will be un-thrilled by the prospect.  And understanding how tip credits work is important (and most people don’t); it only counts for time when the worker can get tips; not for time spent folding napkins or cleaning out the ice machine in back (which is paid at at least the regular minimum wage, and which is time that most decent food service workers like to avoid, the better to be out working tables and raking in tips).

Among people who run businesses?  Especially among bars and restaurants, whose profit margins have always been razor-thin?  Who’ve seen their bottom lines squeezed by $5/hour for every single waitress or bartender they have out in the house for the past couple of decades?  Or among parents of teenagers (ahem) who have a harder time than ever finding entry-level minimum wage jobs as the minimum wage has risen?

I’m not so sure.

2. If the death wish can’t be scrubbed, then Emmer should come out for making tips and gratuities tax-free. Who cares what it does to revenue? Just get on the right side of this issue politically.

That in particular is a good, princpled, conservative approach to the issue.  It’s also a federal issue controlled by the IRS, and most likely not something a governor can carry off.

3. Stop running for the endorsement. Emmer won. He can’t win with the narrow base that propelled him to victory. He’s in a general election race now and any campaign staff that can’t grasp the obvious ought to be waiting tables. We jest! Don’t shoot!

But as I’ve seen it all along, Emmer’s campaign has been about running on conservative principles all along – and selling those principles to the middle to convince them to move to meet him on the right, rather than scuttling toward the center.

The principle in this case is “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” – or, more directly, “Get government out of the way of business creating more jobs”.  The loss of the tip credit has effectively tripled the cost of every waiter on a restauranteur’s or barkeep’s floor, giving them the option of slashing either profits or the number of waitstaff.  Emmer is proposing rectifying this.  The DFL and Media’s predictable response is “look at the money waiters might lose!” (when it’s not “where are the $100,000 waitstaff jobs?”); Emmer’s response, and that of his supporters, should be “but look at the jobs, averaging $8-15 an hour with tips, we’ll be creating!”.

4. Run on winning themes and speak of nothing else: lower taxes for all, less nanny-state interference in our lives, reduced state spending and the legitimate fear of the intellectually lazy DFL in control of the executive and legislative branches.

But I think that was Emmer’s point, if phrased inartfully and exploited deceptively.

5. Don’t take the post August 10th bait from Mark “Renoir-Toulouse Lautrec” Dayton. He’ll run a class warfare campaign and the tip-credit snafu only plays directly into that. Like most Democrats, he hasn’t had a new idea in decades. Point out he’s to the left of our wholly incompetent affirmative action President.

And here, SG is absolutely correct.

Finally, one friend of MC suggested something brilliant: bring in New Jersery Governor Chris Christie and campaign for real reform and not just tinkering around the edges. New ideas scare Democrats; so scare them!

I agree; Governor Christie is like the long-lost child of my own political idol, former Jersey City mayor Brett Schundler, who did for his city half a generation ago what Governor Christie is trying to do for the whole state today.

But here’s a question;  when it comes to tip credits, and the media and DFL’s (ptr) class-baiting response to the “story”, What Would Christie Do?

(Besides say “tip credits work in New Jersey”; the state is one of the 43 that allows ’em).

Voters will reward you. Look at what he’s doing in his state and think about what could be applied here to good effect. If Christie can have such success in New Jersey, MC holds out hope for this state of government workers.

Hope is good.

And to achieve hope, you need to start with a princple, and then move to achieve it.

And DFL/media caterwauling aside, I don’t think this past week has been a bad step on the way.

As much as I’ve bagged on the press for their hatchet-jobbery as re the Emmer campaign, I’ll give well-deserved kudos to the PiPress’ Bill Salisbury for doing a fair, balanced piece that shows the reasons that a lot of us gravitated to Emmer in the first place.

Anecdote alert:

Tom Emmer’s father was struggling to keep his Edina lumberyard afloat during a deep recession in the early ’80s.

One day, his dad ordered his sons to put on their suits and ties and his wife and daughter to don dresses and climb into the family’s backyard swimming pool.

“We sat in the pool, water up to here,” Emmer recently recalled, holding his hand to his chest, “and he took a picture.”

At Christmastime, his father mailed the photo to friends and family with this message scrawled across the bottom: “The Emmers almost went under last year, but we’re coming out with a splash this year.”

Emmer, the Republican-endorsed candidate for Minnesota governor, said his father’s declaration symbolized how he learned to face adversity and obstacles.

“You need to take responsibility for those situations, stand up tall and make the best of it,” the three-term state representative said during a late-June campaign bus ride across southern Minnesota.

The whole thing is worth a read.

And so we get to the peak of the peak; the top ten Minnesota Conservatives that Minnesota liberals and Democrats hate!  These, for the most part, are the people who drive Minnesota liberals into paroxysms of rage because…they disagree with them.

Drum roll please!

10. Ed Morrissey: Yeah, I’m surprised the mild-mannered Morrisey made the top ten, too.  Maybe it’s the effortlessness of it all that they hate so much; Ed, my radio colleague, mows through national lefties like a riding mower through a cabbage patch, and doesn’t break a sweat, and makes it back to the Morrissey Mansion in time for reruns of The Wire with the First Mate; he may have more influence on national opinion than Media Matters, and until recently he did it for the love of the game.  If you were George Soros, you’d hate that.

9. Norm Coleman: There is nothing the left hates worst than apostates; we’ve seen how they detest female conservatives throughout this poll; Democrats who flip parties are one circle of Lib Hell removed from them.  Norm flipped when he was mayor of Saint Paul, and went on to be the best Senator this state has had in years, and the best we’re likely to have until at least 2014.

8. Mitch Berg:  Huh?  Me?  A guy with a blog that gets a respectable but strictly-C-list 2,000 visits a day?  OK, I claim home field advantage; I got a lot of votes, but my passion index was the lowest on the Top Ten.  Still, it’s fun to see!  Thanks!

7. Jason Lewis:  Let’s not mince words; Lewis is to Minnesota conservatism what the Wright Brothers were to aviation; before them, conservatism and heavier-than-air flight were both theories; it took them to make it all happen.  Jason Lewis brought the Reagan Revolution at long last to Minnesota.  His impact on politics in this state is easy, and wrong, to understate. Before Jason Lewis, Arne Carlson was the face of the GOP in Minnesota.  Without Lewis, he still very well might be.  And that makes the DFL and media’s (pardon the redundancy) jobs harder.  And we know how liberals hate to work.

6. David Strom: If Jason Lewis brought the Reagan Revolution to Minnesota, David Strom taught that revolution how to invoke Hayek and spell Friedman and, by the way, how to make their representatives do it, too.  If the DFL sold dartboards, his picture would be on them.

5. Michael Brodkorb:  Michael – my former NARN co-host – cut his public-image teeth as the owner of Minnesota Democrats Exposed, and became the Matt Drudge of the Minnesota alt-media almost overnight.  He didn’t just eat the Dems’ lunches every day; he ran laps around them, and never broke a sweat, ever.  If anyone has ever let the air out of the Minnesota political media establishment’s tires, it was Brodkorb.  He’s earned the hate!

4. Katherine Kersten:  The Twin Cities’ leftymedia hated Kersten partly because she didn’t know the secret handshake; she didn’t get her late, lamented column after years of covering city council meetings and dog shows and one-car crashes; she actually had a productive career – but there are few things journos hate worse than people who get printed in newspapers without bothering to join the Order of Most High Priests of Information. And if journos hate her, then the DFL will hate her too (even without considering that she’s a female and a conservative, which puts her beyond the pale); and Democrats hate whomever their superiors tell them to hate.  So Kersten became a reviled figure, even though most of those doing the reviling, the Twin Cities leftyblogs and their followers, had put no more thought into it than dog puts into fetching a stick.   Although she’s #4, she had the second-highest “Passion Index” – average ranking – of anyone in the poll.

3. Rep. Tom Emmer: Of course, there’s almost nobody the Democratics hate more than any conservative who can beat them.  Emmer finished third; I suspect it’ll move up after the Dems have to figure out how to make Mark Dayton beat him this fall.   I suspect Tom’ll make a run for #2.  But not #1.  You’ll see why.

2. Governor Tim Pawlenty:  The DFL hates him for the same reason the Persians hated King Leonidas of Sparta; because he almost singlehandedly stymied them on pure personal and conservative principal for four years, fighting against two DFL-controlled chambers and a media that would have to develop a whole lot of integrity to be called merely “in the bag for the DFL”.   TPaw is only reason all income above the “living wage” hasn’t been confiscated from  you by the State of Minnesota and given to AFSCME.  In a just world, he’d be in the top three contenders for the White House.  He knows how to beat back the DFL like perhaps nobody in history; he’s more than earned the hatred.

And finally, the most-hated conservative in Minnsota…

[trumpet fanfare]

1.  Rep. Michele Bachmann:  It wasn’t even close.  She not only got more votes overall, but never finished lower than #2 in anyone’s rankings, and even then only two or three times.  Her “Passion Index” is just south of a perfect “10”, over two points higher than the next highest contender, Kersten.  Bachmann is everything the left hates rolled up into five feet three inches of explosive charisma; she’s a pro-lifer who’s spent a life putting her money where her mouth is (five biokids and a couple dozen foster kids), she’s been sounding the most articulate jeremiads about the federal spending orgy of anyone on Capitol Hill; she is one of the faces of the Tea Party (which, to the horror of the left, is led and largely peopled by women);  she endures the most scabrous assaults of anyone in Washington, slips them all and bobs back up smiling and shooting from the hip (with an AR15 – oh, yeah, she’s a perfect 100 on Second Amendment issues, too).  Bachmann is unabashedly Christian and Reaganite and Pro-shining-city-on-the-hill – all things that give Minnesota liberals seizures.  And not only is she a woman, but she’s among the leaders of this year’s conservative female revolution, which threatens to undercut the Democratics’ traditional monopoly on the female vote.

You can see steam shoot out of lefties’ ears when her name is mentioned – partly for what she stands for, and partly for how she does it; with the pure glee that comes from always kicking your opponents’ asses in every way.

Congrats, Rep. Bachmann!

So there we go for this year!  Maybe this will be an annual, or at least biennial, tradition…

GREETINGS, HOT AIR HEADLINES READERS:  Thanks for stopping by!  I’ll also direct you to the first two installments – for places 21-30, and 11-20.

Earlier this week, I took a poll – what Minnesota conservatives do Minnesota liberals hate the most? 

I collected responses via the comment section, my facebook page, and email – and got a pretty fair bunch of responses.  There were some surprises and at least a couple of foregone conclusions.

I’m going to publish 11-20 over the noon hour today, and 1 through 10 over noon tomorrow. 

But first, I’m going to give some recognitionto that mass of Minnesota conservatives that give Minnesota’s liberal establishment just a little to hate.  These are the people and institutions that got one vote each:

• The DFL – One wag apparently believes the left believes Minnesota’s dominant party is liberalism’s worst enemy.
• The Cans – No idea.
• All Minnesota Conservatives
• Mitch Pearlstein – Longtime head of the Center of the American Experiment
• Bill Cooper – Former MNGOP chair, CEO of TCF Bank, and pwner of Nick Coleman.
• Cosmo Insolocco – No idea.
• Mary Kiffmeyer – the former MN Secretary of State was a lightning rod for…ACORN.
• Freedom
• Pat Anderson – The former and future State Auditor
• Mac Hammond – The megaminister from Maple Grove
• Brian Sullivan – Tim Pawlenty’s convention opponent in 2002, and arguably the person we can thank for the conservatism of Pawlenty’s administration.
• Denny Hecker
• Conservative Bloggers – should be self-explanatory.
• Tony Sutton – The current chair of the Minnesota GOP
• Randy Kelly – Former Saint Paul DFL mayor who doomed his shot at a second term by endorsing George W. Bush in 2004.
• Regular Coffee
• Alan Quist – the first hardcore social conservative I can remember in Minnesota politics; endorsed for governor in 1990, he lost to Arne Carlson in the primary.
• Learned Foot – former Kool Aid Report blogger.
• Marty Seifert – Tom Emmer’s convention opponent and, now that he’s suddenly not running for office, a “reasonable, common-sense Republican” to all the DFLers that were calling him an extremist two months ago.
• Henry Ford
• Tom Pritchard – longtime chair of the Minnesota Family Council
• Kermit – blogger from Anti-Strib
• Rod Grams – former one-term Senator
• The Suburbs
• Captain America

Congratulations to everyone on the list that’s, er, human.

Now, the people with more than one vote, with their standings in the final poll:

30.  Katie Kieffer: The blogger, former college-press gadfly and up-and-coming pundit got two votes, including from one voter who added every conservative woman she could think of; “that’s who they really hate…”

29. Swiftee:  The of Bruce Springsteen of button-pushing, the Charlie Parker of chain-yanking, perhaps the most banned person among Twin Cities leftyblogs, the only surprise is that he didn’t come in in the top twenty.

28. Twila Brase:  Tireless healthcare crusader and my neighbor.

27. Entrepreneurs: Except when they can serve as ATMs for social spending, of course.

26. Joe Soucheray: Souch’s social curmudgeonism is often called “conservative”, and it was certainly something Minnesota liberals detested.

25. Tracy Eberly: Three years past the “Dirt-Worshipping Heathens” flap, Tracy still gets ’em frothing.

24. The Tea Partier: The “boogeyman” of the Minnesota left.

23. Paul Mirengoff: Not a Minnesotan, but when groupblogs got votes, I spread the votes among their contributors, and Powerline got two group votes.  Which is also why…

22.  Brian “Saint Paul” Ward got on the list as well.  My long-time NARN co-host scored two votes as  a member of the NARN.

21.  Rep. Erik Paulsen: With three votes, Paulsen is the only Republican in Minnestoa’s congressional delegation not to make the top twenty with a bullet.  As it were.

Top Twenty coming up at noon!

Ssshhhhhh.

Dave Mindemen at mnpACT is about to blow the lid off something – the “facade” of Minnesota Republican unity:

A short time ago, Republicans filled a room at the Secretary of State’s office and Tony Sutton announced this as proof that the Republican party was unified and ready to take back the legislature. It was a nicely staged event to coincide with Tom Emmer’s filing for governor. All together – united in purpose.

Makes a great picture….but like most Republican declarations it’s just not true.

But…why?

Arne Carlson was on MPR this morning…you remember him. Former Governor of Minnesota, Republican? Except when you ask Pawlenty or Tony Sutton or Michael Brodkorb about Arne Carlson, they refuse to identify him as part of the GOP. Pawlenty has dismissed Carlson’s critiques as proof that Carlson has defected to the other side.

Disagreement’s not allowed?

Ask Joe Lieberman and former DFLer Norm Coleman…

….hey, wait!  Arne Carlson is running for office?

(Even after doubling spending, endorsing Obama and bashing the conservative mainstream that, let me emphasize this, controls the party?)

Question #1 for Dave Mindeman:  Does the fact that conservatives won the control of the party, to the point where no “moderates” made it to the convention, mean anything to you (outside the mistaken notion that it’s a weakness)?

Question #2 for Dave Mindeman: Please introduce me to all those endorsed pro-gun, pro-life, limited-government Tenth Amendment supporting Democrats in the Metro area DFL!

You’ve no doubt heard; Larry Haws is retiring from the Minnesota House:

Because you’re a friend and supporter, I wanted you to know first about my decision to not seek re-election. Five years ago I offered myself as a candidate for public office in Minnesota out of a deep sense of appreciation of the issues important to the people of District 15B.

Our friend and my radio colleague King Banaian is the GOP endorsed candidate for the House in 15B.  Running for an open seat is easier under any circumstances; with the current anti-incumbent, anti-tax-and-spending tailwind, King’s gotta be feeling pretty good about his chances today.

Which doesn’t mean all you Saint Cloud Republicans shouldn’t be turning out in huge numbers to help; it’d be great to be able to not just win, but obliterate the DFL.

Thank you so very much for wasteing an hour of taxpayer time by convening the House a solid hour late this afternoon.

The taxpayers’ loss was the NARN’s gain.

The DFL on Monday voted for an epic tax hike (disguised, per usual, as negotiation) in the middle of an epic recession/depression.

The answer – the real answer, anyway – is to toss every single DFLer responsible for this vote out this November.

My friend and longtime radio colleague King Banaian is trying to do just that up in House District 15B in Saint Cloud, against Larry “Haw” Haws.   King responds to his opponent’s vote for the tax hike (emphasis added):

“Last night my opponent voted to increase taxes on small businesses and what he considers wealthy Minnesotans,” Banaian said. “The last Economic Update from the Finance Department cited consumer confidence and sentiment being ‘mired’ at low levels and ‘lingering employment concerns, slow wage growth, and tight credit are likely to inhibit household spending until 2011.’ Even if you believe Minnesotans don’t pay enough, this is a terrible time to raise taxes.”

“But we do pay enough. The DFL bill that Rep. Haws voted for would give Minnesota the 4th highest marginal tax rate in the country on incomes of $200,000. Higher rates in California have done nothing to cure their budget problems. Why does Larry Haws think this is a good example to emulate?”

“The answer to every DFL problem is to look at small businesses as an ATM from which they can cover their need for more money. They have enough; the real need in Minnesota is to reduce spending, not raise taxes. Rep. Haws had the opportunity to balance the budget by ratifying Governor Pawlenty’s spending reductions but voted against that. When I get to St. Paul, we will set priorities that do not ask already-generous Minnesotans for more,” Banaian concluded.

Or as another conservative candidate might say, we need to stick the budget in a vise and “drill baby, drill”‘.

I’ll await word from the Strib on exactly how King’s position is “extreme”.

(Via Gary @ LFR)

Eric “Big E” Pusey of the Minnesota “Progressive” Project has the wonks disease, and he’s got it bad.

He’s all atwitter about the current bit of conventional wisdom – that Tom Horner of the Ventura “Independence” Party is going to soak enough votes away from Emmer to tip the election.

Yesterday, the Independence Party nominated former Republican Tom Horner as their MN-GOV candidate. Horner’s entrance into this race makes it far more likely that a DFLer will win in November.

But for Jesse Ventura, the “Indpendence” party – which has its roots in Ross Perot’s “Reform” Party, although Ventura pretty well roto-rooted any Perot connection when he took over the Minnesota chapter – has been nothing but a spoiler, with varying success.  It’s likely Tim Penny soaked away the votes that might have put Roger Moe in office eight years ago; for that, we owe Penny our thanks.  The brittle, petulant Dean Barkley likely made the Franken/Coleman race as close as it was. 

And…:

In 2006, Peter Hutchinson won the IP endorsement and split the moderates with liberal tendencies away from DFLer Mike Hatch, but Horner will have little appeal to these voters. No, Horner will be peeling away moderate conservatives who cannot stomach Tom Emmer’s far right agenda.

That depends on a couple of big “ifs”.

First, Horner (and the DFL wonks that will be providing most of his PR “oomph”, to the extent that he has any) will have to convince “moderate Republicans” that Emmer is “far right”.  He’s not.  He states a pretty solid meat and potatoes pro-growth case;  he’s not even campaigning on social issues at all, except by example.

Horner will have to convince people in a very Reagan-y year to vote for another Arne Carlson. 

And he’ll have to do it with very little money. Although the IP has managed to maintain its grip on major-party status by the barest of margins (with attendant waste of state campaign funds going to their little vanity exercise), that’s about it.  There’s no big push for Horner anywhere (but the DFL); there’s no “Hornmentum”.

This also makes the road for Margaret Anderson-Kelliher easier if she ends up winning the August DFL primary.  Instead of needing to make sure a moderate candidate with liberal tendencies (like Hutchinson) doesn’t peel away her voters, she needs to focus on higher turnout in key DFL areas.

While in the meantime Emmer builds up votes on his home turf – the “Key MNGOP areas of everywhere but Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth” – and Horner builds up his home turf…

…oh, wait.  He has none. 

Let’s get serious here.  Any “moderate” “Republican” who is wobbly on Emmer (and we’re not talking Seifert people, here; we’re talking the party’s less-and-less consequential Arne Carlson/Dave Durenberger wing) is probably every big as fair game for a DFLer to pick off as the underfunded, under-charisma’d, under-interesting Horner.

But we’ll see, soon enough.

Suffice to say that if Emmer wins, I’m going to have a huge “conventional wisdom” bonfire this November.

UPDATE:  The more I think about this, the more wrong Pusey’s “conventional wisdom” seems. 

Kelliher, Dayton and Entenza are all farther to the left than Emmer is, especially when you consider that the “Center” has displaced to the right since 2008.  I think it’s distinctly possible that Horner could leach more votes from the DFL. 

That is, of course, based on a couple of assumptions:

1. Emmer continues to run his current cool, calm, collected campaign.  I believe that the wave of provocations – the ugly racist heckling at the May Day and Cinco De Mayo parades, Kelliher’s alleged chanting “KKK Go Away”, and so on – are attempts to try to break Emmer’s cool, to try get him to lose his purported short temper.   It’s not going to work; Seifert’s people tried and failed to get him off the high road, it’s for damn sure the DFL can’t. 
2. The DFL nominates a DFLer.

I am not a betting man – but if I were, I’d say we have another log of conventional wisdom for the bonfire.

I really dislike political black-bag tricks.  I have little patience for oppo research, and don’t care much for the kind of political pranks that keep politics geeks giggling into the hours.

If there’s one thing I like less, it’s ofay, lie-clogged false-flag sites.  Like “Tom Emmer’s Minnesota”. 

I’m not going to link it here; I’m going to ask you to Google “Emmer For Governor” (I’ve helpfully done it for you here).

If you see, as I do, a “sponsored link” to “Tom Emmer’s Minnesota” at the top of the page, do us a favor and click it.

Don’t read it or anything – or read it knowing that every word on the site is bullshirt (as I’m showing, point by point, in my “Chanting Points Memo” project). 

But whomever put the site out is paying for every person who clicks on the site. 

And every dollar they spend getting people to click in is a dollar they can’t spend on anything useful.

According to a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Republicans have passed Democrats among likely voters in Minnesota:

The SurveyUSA poll, commissioned by KSTP-TV, found that 36 percent of likely voters identify themselves as Republicans, while 35 percent say they’re Democrats. Twenty-four percent call themselves independents.

Of course, it’s really a tosser; there’s a four point margin of error.  But I strongly suspect those 24 points worth of indies will erode, and move right, when they get the tax bill that the Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) has dumped back in their lap.  

By means of comparison, a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll conducted a year ago found that 37 percent of Minnesotans called themselves independents, 36 percent said they were Democrats and 20 percent identified themselves as Republicans.

While that sounds like a huge surge, it needs to be tempered by the fact that the Minnesota Poll isn’t so much a “poll” as  “morale-building tool for the DFL”.

But the surge in enthusiasm – especially compared to the dead rooms the GOP faced in 2006 and 2008 – is notable:

The SurveyUSA poll also found that Republican gubernatorial endorsee Tom Emmer is ahead of his three DFL rivals, although the significance of the results is hard to gauge this early in the campaign.

The poll  – which, let’s be honest, is fairly meaningless at six months out – shows Emmer with an eight point lead over Dayton, 11 over Entenza.

In matchup against Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza, Emmer was supported by 41 percent of likely voters. The DFLers were each backed by about one-third, while Independence Party candidate Tom Horner was supported by about 10 percent.

Early polling almost always shows the “Independence” Party – the former party of Jesse Ventura, and which has had absolutely zero impact as anything but a spoiler since Ventura left office – with a disproportionate impact; a “Minnesota Poll” conducted the week before the 2002 election, at the twilight of Ventura’s era, showed Palwenty and his opponents, DFLer Roger Moe and Indy Tim Penny, in a statistical tie;  Penny shed close to 40% of his numbers by election day (if you assume, again, that the MinnPoll is anything but a DFL morale booster, and I do not). 

But it seems the time is right for a solid conservative – especially one who is tuned to take advantage of the sticker shock the DFL Legislature is about to dump on the electorate.

If we were to build a Minnesota political time capsule, and needed to capture for posterity the smug sense of entitlement the DFL has today, I’d put in a bunch of carefully-folded Lori Sturdevant columns. 

But to capture the distilled core of the “conventional wisdom”, whatever it is at any given moment, I’d go to Rachel Stassen-Berger, the Strib’s politics correspondent, who has a knack for capturing what Minnesota’s clubby, self-referential political “elite” are thinking at any moment better than anyone else in Twin Cities media today. 

And she shows it in today’s piece on the writeup the governor got in the Wall Street Journal; “WSJ: What’s bad for Minnesota is good for Pawlenty“.

In a piece that turns logic on its head, the Wall Street Journal opines that Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s political ambitions got a boost from the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision that his budget balancing was illegal.

It’s been a bad week for Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. Of course, it’s also been a good week for Republican Presidential Contender Tim Pawlenty.

Well, no.  It’s been a good week for both of them.

Pawlenty has held the line for eight years against a mostly-hostile legislature.  As the article notes, while Minnesota’s budgets rose 21% every biennium from 1960 (the year he was born) until he took office, he’s reduced it to 2% per biennium during his terms in office, and has actually cut spending in this last go-around.

Or did, until the Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) tossed his unallotments from the last session, putting billions in spending back on the table, to be hashed out between him and the Legislature.

So what does Pawlenty, who is a lame duck on the state level and has nothing to lose on the national level, actually lose with this?   A few weeks in a room “negotiating” with DFLers.

What does he gain?

• A cherry on the sundae of his conservative credentials.
• A big, hot potato – actually, several billion of them – tossed back into the lap of his would-be successor’s opponent’s lap.  Margaret Anderson-Kelliher is going to have to spend a few weeks dealing with the fallout of her spending orgy at a time when Minnesotans are starting to get fed up with spending, when Tom Emmer is well-placed to make hay with it.  It’s possible even the customary media blackout won’t be enough to whitewash Kelliher this time.
• Weeks and weeks of DFL puffery to shoot at.
• Finally – and perhaps best of all – the chance to outmaneuver the DFL like a middleweight boxer in his prime taking on a fat athsmatic drunk in an alley one last time. 

No, the only loser will be the Minnesota taxpayer – and only if Pawlenty loses, and then only ’til November.  If they’re smart.

As the SurveyUSA poll hints they just might be.

By the way, Blois Olson – a long-time acquaintance who will one day be the Larry Jacobs of the 2010s – is quoted:

Democrats will counter that there’s no defining Pawlenty achievement, and no significant animating idea behind this record. There’s no “one big thing” that he’s done, says Blois Olson, a prominent political commentator.

Which is a classically-liberal thing to say.  Democrats like to see lots of evidence that they moved the levers and pushed the buttons of government more than most; it’s why Democrats love light rail and big warehouse schools.

To a conservative, less is more.

In sum, this week’s events define what Mr. Pawlenty is: a classic, fiscally conservative Midwestern Republican governor. In a period of voter discontent, Republicans have two years to decide whether that’s the right stuff for the times.

It’s a great start.

HD25 Representative Laura Brod is retiring after eight years in the Legislature:

With your support and encouragement, I focused my efforts on the issues that impacted our daily lives. My efforts were directed to policies that I believed fostered an economic climate that was conducive to job creation and economic growth. I fought against excessive regulations that choke investment in our state and undermine the innovation and creativity of our private sector to generate the type of economic climate we need and demand.

Without your support, I could not have enjoyed the opportunity and the honor to serve that I have had for the past 8 years.

My belief has always been that we are a state that values a citizen legislature, and that there comes a time for other citizens to serve their community.

It is my belief that the time for others to serve in the Legislature for our district has come, and my time to find other challenges and ways to contribute is upon me.

It is in that spirit I announce that I will not be a candidate for re-election in 2010 for the State Legislature in District 25A.

There is a real change going on right now across the country. Finally, perhaps for the first time in thirty years, government is once again hearing from “We the People.”

Well, that’s a drag; Brod has been leadership material in the House’s conservative caucus, and that caucus is sure to be both growing and needing leaders in the next session.

But all the best, Laura!  And thanks for you service!

I sat about four rows behind Lori Sturdevant in the press pit on Friday.

Now, I’m a gregarious guy.  I took the liberty of introducing myself to MPR’s Tom Scheck (a lot younger than he sounds), the PiPress’ Bill Salisbury (memes about liberal press aside, he’s one of the greats) and WCCO-TV’s Pat Kessler (a charming guy).

But Lori’s body language was pretty emphatic.  She sat in the front row of the press pit, in her trademark scarf (Eric Eskola didn’t even have his with him) and Margaret Thatcher coif…

…and I don’t believe I saw her turn her head once.  The computer, the stage…and that was it.  That was her field of view, near as I could tell.

So between that, and the fact that there’s no figure in the Twin Cities media that I’ve spent more time criticizing than her in the past eight years save her papermate Nick Coleman, and I figured I’d stay in the back of the pit with the other bloggers.

In a sense, fisking her post-MNGOP Convention column was almost pointless;  the eight writers in the contest I’m running to parody the column pretty much caught it all; she renders the DFL’s chanting points so thoroughly that you can almost hear Darth Vader’s “Imperial March” in the background as she describes Emmer’s victory.

I’ll be adding bits and pieces of emphasis to the Strib column.

State Rep. Tom Emmer sold himself to Minnesota Republicans as a candidate who is “not a politician as usual.” At a convention infused with Tea Party revulsion about government spending, that evidently sounded gubernatorial.

I almost titled this column “Our Pauline Kael”.

Yes, he “evidently” sounded gubernatorial enough to convince the GOP to make a go of it.  Go figure.

Emmer, a trial lawyer/legislator from Delano, won an endorsement Friday that appears to assure him of the Republican spot on the Nov. 2 ballot to succeed Tim Pawlenty as governor. That’s so despite the fact that he may be the most conservative candidate endorsed for governor by a major Minnesota party since “Tightwad Ted” Christianson in the Roaring Twenties.

Ever tone-deaf to points of view outside the clubby confines of the media/DFL (pardon the redundancy), Sturdevant misses the point for the first of many, many times in this column.  Emmer won because he is conservative.  Emmer and Seifert got to the final round because they reflect how the MNGOP, and a good chunk of Minnesota, feels.

The piece’s comedic moneyshot is next:

No moderate Republican is girding up to take on Emmer in the Aug. 10 primary. The GOP of 2010 isn’t Star Tribune reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger’s Grandpa Harold’s party — far from it.

Right.

And, amazingly, enough, no “moderate” Democrat is getting lubed up to take on Kelliher, Dayton or Entenza; the DFL/media (ptr) have their choice of left, lefter and leftest.

Why, one might say the DFL “isn’t the party of Lori Studevant’s father/grandfather”, the one that supported the hawkish tax-cutter JFK, to say nothing of the one that cuddled up to Josef Stalin in the thirties and forties – or the Democratic Party of their parents, the party of Jim Crows.

One might say that – if one were not that bright.  Parties change. And all the DFL/media (ptr) clubbiness in the world doesn’t change that!

The GOP changed; Reagan changed the national GOP thirty years ago; that same change is finally happening here.  Like it or don’t, but quit pining for the intellectual fjords; the liberal Arne Carlson/Harold Stassen is one dead parrot.

What counted with those Tea-stained delegates, it seemed, was that Emmer appeared to be the stauncher conservative.

It takes decades of keen-eyed journalistic experience to note the bleeding obvious.

And it takes decades of careful towing of the DFL/media (ptr) line to look at the convention’s results through utterly DFL-colored glasses as Sturdevant does:

Seifert, a legislator since age 24, struck delegates as a career politician. In the vernacular of the 2010 GOP, that’s not a compliment.

Legislative skills aren’t much valued, either. Seifert got little credit among delegates for holding his caucus together on tough veto override votes in 2007 and 2009 — an achievement that greatly strengthened Pawlenty’s hand as governor.

He got credit for it.  Here’s the thing Sturdevant, with all her vaunted experience, missed; there was no evidence of a vote against Seifert among the Emmer crowd; his chops as a legislator are legendary; the MNGOP will do well to get him back into office, hopefully Congress, soon.

But Minnesota, and the MNGOP, want someone with an executive vision.  We’ve had eight years of leadership by a legislator – and Tim Pawlenty has done a great job (to Sturdevant’s eternal and obvious chagrin).   We’re in a time when a big, executive vision counts for a lot.

Sturdevant actually catches that, sort of – although she trivializes it:

The personal qualities euphemistically called “style” mattered more on Friday, and scored in Emmer’s favor. He came across as the affable hockey player he once was for the University of Alaska; Seifert seemed like the studious kid who was always in the library.

I excised a lot of the DFL chanting points from my fisk – but this was too rich to miss:

In coming weeks, Emmer will have to answer for a good deal more. He espouses the idea that government can abandon a big share of the public work it’s shouldered through the decades without damaging this state. That’s a notion that must be considered faith-based, since little evidence backs it up.

Because Minnesota has never tried.  Even after eight years of Pawlenty’s responsible leadership, the DFL/media (ptr) still think that everyone in the state should pay for everything in the state – the immense money-laundering scam that is Local Govermment Aid.

Emmer – and Seifert – want government to be accountable at all levels, rather than playing a fiscal shell game by laundering spending through the state.  It’s a huge winner among conservative circles; if the MNGOP can convince the people of Minnesota to wean themselves from the state’s bread and circuses, it could be a huge change in shining a light on the roaches that hide in the nooks and crannies of the system.

UPDATE AND BUMP:  I’m moving this to the top for today.  Get your votes in by noon!

———-

As noted last week, it’s time for the “Write Lori’s Next Column” contest – in which you, the Shot In The Dark audience (Audience In The Dark) write Lori Sturdevant’s post-MNGOP Convention column for her – to move into its final phase!

Judge each of the columns by the following criteria:

• Which one best captures Strib columnist and DFL flak Lori Sturdevant’s writing style
• Which one best reflects her relentless DFL upsucking?

I’m going to publish one post for each of the contestants; I’ll take a poll at the end, with the winner to be announced on Monday.

There are eight entries:

Dave from Mound’s “A Tale Of Two Cities”

Mr D’s “The Republican Hangover”

Ben’s “Teabags For 2,000”

Bubbasan’s “It Was A Snark And Smarmy Night”

JW Of Minnesota’s “We Are Women, Hear We Roar”

Speed Gibson, “It’s The GOP’s Turn To Unify”

Golfdoc50’s “The Wind Is Blowing Left”

Jed Berg’s “Anger Close”

Vote! Vote! Vote!

UPDATE! The column we’re parodying – or perhaps, joining in parodying – is already out!

Expect a full fisking Sunday or Monday.

But until then – vote vote vote!

Some thoughts about the 2010 MN GOP Convention.

Stoked: I made a pretty religious point about not “endorsing” anyone leading up to the convention, and I always will.  Part of it is that I’ve always felt it was the height of misplaced vanity for bloggers to “endorse” anyone – as if our individual votes are a matter of any public importance (I’m speaking only for myself here; all of you who did endorse, or just make your sympathies known, have your reasons, and I’m cool with it).  Even worse, since I do have some following out there, I’d be afraid someone would cast a vote because of something I wrote, rather than forming their own opinion.  I criticize news media for endorsing candidates; why would I be different?

But the members of my House District convention (66B) needed to know who they were sending to Minneapolis – so with them, I was open about supporting Emmer.  I stressed that I wasn’t voting against Seifert – indeed, choosing between Emmer, Seifert, Dave Hann (who dropped out of the race over the winter) and a potential candidacy by Laura Brod was among the toughest political choices I’ve ever made.  Emmer won my vote for two reasons; speaker points (he is, quite simply, the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today; at the gubernatorial debates, he will mow through whomever the DFL chooses, Kelliher or Dayton or Entenza, like a lawnmower through a cabbage patch) and his ability to show people in the middle why to move right, rather than moving himself to the middle to meet them.

Practically every commentator who’s written on the subject has complimented Seifert on his concession during the third ballot.  It’s hard to describe how important – indeed, stirring – it was.  He took the stage, introduced a motion to unanimously endorse Emmer, got 2,000 “seconds” and an acclamation voice vote that rattled the rafters.  The word “electrifying” is overused, but it fits.  This past weekend is among the very few times I can say the MN GOP feels not just unified, but mostly happy about it, in all my years of following the party.

The activists on the floor nearly shook with their desire to get on to November.  In the three State Conventions I’ve attended now, I’ve never seen the party this fired up.

Emmer Is King Cool:  If there’s a lesson for non-GOPers to learn from the convention, it is to put a lid on “conventional wisdom”.

“The CW” says that Tom Emmer is “angry”.  Not just in the “angry white male” sense, although that’s been slathered about promiscuously by a whole lot of media and “alt” media who have a vested interest in Emmer losing.

But in fact, the campaign showed that Emmer keeps his cool.  He was the target of an awful lot of low blows in the weeks before the convention; not only did he not overreact, he didn’t respond.  He didn’t take the bait.  An “angry” man would have at least gotten off a killer comeback; I’m not especially angry, and I love whacking down hecklers more than most things in life.  Emmer’s good at it.  And yet he kept his silence, his counsel, and his eyes on the prize.  “Never let them see you sweat”, says the famous showbiz bromide and deodorant ad.  “Never let them see you blow your top” is equally vital.  Emmer stayed his course.

Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Nothing!: The “Ron Paul Crowd” has established itself within the party; it’s not a “Kingmaker” faction, by any means, but the Liberty lobby in the MNGOP can not be ignored.  It’s hard to tell if it’s part of or distinct from the “Tea Party” faction – which was important enough that the party invited Toni Backdahl, the powerhouse who organized the past four Tea Parties in Minnesota, to speak, even though she and the Party emphatically do not endorse parties, much less candidates.

There was a curious diversion on Friday night, though; a group of “Liberty” candidates started bagging on Emmer’s “establishment” status, because Norm Coleman and Vin Weber were supporting him.

And I asked – in person, on the blog and via Twitter – what of Coleman’s “RINO” policies did Emmer adopt just because Coleman – who was an imperfect conservative, but voted correctly enough on the majority of issues – was supporting him?

I mean, we’re talking Tom Emmer, the guy who introduced the “Firearms Freedom Act” in the Legislature – which, title notwithstanding, is a bill to reinforce the Tenth Amendment more than the Second.  The guy who, when asked (in front of a live audience at the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the State Fair) what he believed about Gay Marriage replied “I don’t care” (he personally opposes it, but it’s not the governor’s job to decide) – he’s “anti-liberty?”

Because…Norm Coleman made phone calls for him?

I may be just a dumb unedumacated talk show host with a blog on a tiny station that nobody listens to (no, really – he says so!), but that just doesn’t make any sense.

Higher Callings: Sarah Palin’s endorsement seemed to make a bigger splash among Seifert’s people, and the thin-but-significant film of non-Palin-fans in the house, than among Emmer’s people.  I heard some chatter alluding to the rally that Rep. Bachmann had thrown sixteen days earlier in the same room, which was a huge morale boost for Bachmann’s campaign (not that she needs it; she’s going to crush Tarryl Clark this November).  They decried the obstreporously Christian nature of the rally.

Truth be told, I felt a little bit the same at the time.  The rally opened with a Christian “rap” group whose problem was less that their freshly-scrubbed boy-bandish style promiscuously mixed rap, country, arena rock and N-Sync-style R’nB than that they sang over recorded backing tracks, which is a huge pet peeve of mine.  It led off with an invocation from a very fundie minister that took, let’s just say, a less-than-inclusive tack.  Now, both Palin and Bachmann are fundamentalists; the minister may have reflected them adequately enough.

But there’s a good point there; while I am an unapologetic Christian (a militant Presbyterian), I’m in a city where I’m surrounded by people who should be Republicans; Asians who live and breathe free enterprise; Arab and Farsi businessmen who treasure capitalism and liberty (including my neighbor on the floor in my district); Latino Catholics who are disgusted with the education system and are every bit as socially-conservative as Mac Hammond’s flock, and have a work ethic that’d make an Edina realtor blanche nod with respect.   So should they feel for a moment excluded from the party because they are Buddhists, Taoists, Moslem or even just non-evangelical?

For that matter, do we want to turn gay conservtives away?  Because they’re out there, and their votes, checks and energy count just as much as yours do.

I no more want my candidates to preach to me (outside the context of an individual conversation on the subject) than I want the government to tell me what to believe – even if I am a Christian, and even if most of the people in my party are too.

In Living Colour: Some of my snarky lib pals have asked “what color were the attendees?”

Simple.  There were almost 2,000 Red, White and Blue people there.

But since we’re talking to a liberal audience, who obsess over (and prosper from) race and class divides – there were more non-white delegates than I’ve ever seen. Quite a few Asian delegates, a few Asian/Middle Eastern (including the guy in the seat next to me), and more African-Americans than I’ve ever seen.  Many were younger guys – they looked like college kids or or recent grads.  But there were plenty more – a fiftysomething gentleman in full VFW regalia who clearly wanted to be identified by more than his skin color, and a good contingent of guys who looked…a lot like me.  30-40something family guys with kids.  And I can’t imagine why anyone of any ethnic background with kids in the schools and half a brain would vote DFL – but it’s a matter of empirical record the schools fail black kids the worst.

Pardon an observation – and that’s all it is – but I think Barb Davis-White’s candidacy made it safer for black conservatives to come out, especially in places like North Minneapolis, which are testimonies to the failure of DFL policy.  More than that, I think she made it safe for Afro-Americans in Minneapolis to look past the party divides and take a fresh look at conservatism.

I wonder if the Central Corridor – which will target Asian businesses in Frogtown like a heat-seeking missile targets jet tailpipes – will do the same in Saint Paul?

Nothing To Stand On: One of those black conservatives, Walter Scott Hudson, writes Fightin’ Words, one of the better new blogs I’ve read lately (note to Walter; you should join the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers).  Hudson observed the battle over the platform that I’ve been writing about, the struggle to make it shorter and more accessible.

As I noted on Friday, while the CD3 GOP passed the “Statement of Guiding Principles” that Derek Brigham, John LaPlante, Rick Weibel, Jan Schneider and I wrote a few weeks back – a simple one-page, ten-item list.  It passed CD3, but got held up in the Platform Committee.  It got reintroduced from the floor.

Hudson picks up the story:

Having been adopted at the CD3 convention a few weeks prior, the Republican Guiding Principles and Values Statement came before the state convention on Saturday. There were vigorous arguments against the document which provoked reflection upon the entire platform building process.

One delegate rose to argue, “Principles are like posteriors. Everyone has them. None are good to look at other than your own. And God made it so we can never see ours.” The line got a hearty laugh and some applause from the crowd; but I’m not sure how to derive anything meaningful from it. In point of fact, the principles articulated in the statement are universal to the party membership. Consider points 7-9:

7)  The Pursuit of Happiness is essential to our existence; we support equal opportunities not equal results.

8)  Charity comes best from the heart of individuals and cannot be forced or coerced via taxation and regulation.

9)  The law must be applied to everyone equally; no one is above the law.

Are these really statements of biometric specificity which no two people can share? I think not. I think they are pretty dead on representations of beliefs commonly expressed and acted upon by Republican candidates and public servants.

Many delegates seemed territorially indignant, expressing concern the platform was being usurped, or that something was being taken away from them. One rose to extol the virtues of the specificity in the platform (i.e. aforementioned Eddie Eagle language) as both representative of the grassroots and necessary for holding the party’s elected officials accountable. These concerns seemed plainly unfounded. The document was clearly submitted as new and distinct from the platform. The grassroots, best represented in individual precinct caucuses, have their submitted resolutions thoroughly eviscerated by time the platform draft makes it to the convention floor. Finally, nothing binds any Republican elected official to abide by the party platform. In short, a platform is not legislation.

The process of going through resolutions seems to occupy the time of people who don’t understand the process all that well; the platofrm isn’t, as Hudson notes, legislation; indeed, something as long and occasionally contradictory as the Platform scarcely serves as a guide to the legislators we have.

The statement, however, apparently passed, so that’s all good.

It’s troubling, though, that so many Republicans are so unclear on the idea of what “princples” are.  We had some big laughs at some of the rules debate, when people who clearly had not been to state conventions questioned “roll call voting” that had, in fact, been practiced since the Civil War (at least – I mean, I dunno); it turned out that the BPOU by BPOU roll call vote was the hit of the convention, giving an unprecedented level of transparency to at least the first ballot; each person in each BPOU had a fair idea of who’d voted for whom, and the whole convention could stink-test the results in real-time.

But that’s just education.  It’ll come along.

Bess Folsom, a Campus Republican from Gustavus Adolphus, attended her first MNGOP convention this past weekend.  She wrote as good a report of the climactic moment – Marty Seifert’s dramatic, aggressively-conciliatory concession –  as anyone in  this piece on her experiences at the event:

Two ballots, hundreds of handshakes, multiple cups of coffee, and one epic parade of “Seifert v. Emmer” enthusiasts later the delegation was getting ready to start a third ballot. With Emmer in the lead and the Seifert supporters standing firm, we were all prepared for a long night. Suddenly Marty came running to the stage and energetically grabbed the mic. It was then he announced that he wanted to throw his support behind Tom Emmer to elect Tom as the next governor of Minnesota. The Emmer crowd went crazy and the Seifert supporters looked like they’d seen a ghost.

Marty instructed his supporters to take off their Seifert stickers and slap on some Emmer ones. He was passionate as he urged the delegation to unanimously endorse Tome Emmer. And so it was done.

Tom came bouncing to the stage and embraced Marty. Balloons were falling down as the Emmer clan surrounded the two men, all grinning and happy stage one of the fight was over. It was a quintessential scene of unity. As corny as it sounds, I actually had goosebumps.

I was talking with Michael Brodkorb – deputy party chair and my former co-host on the Northern Alliance – as we were walking to the afterparty .  The final scene was spontaneous, of course – when Marty Seifert’s vote totals dropped rather than rose on the second ballot, he clearly knew that it was time to wrap it up.  He had the option of stalking away petulantly, of course (not that he would have), but he instead chose to make it a dramatic unifying event.

But it almost looked choreographed; it was so perfectly timed.  People were casting their third ballots; many had been glued to their seats since 9AM, and there’d been no lunch break, and suddenly at the crack of 5PM, just in time for the evening news and a well-earned dinner, we had this rousing outburst of class, unity and reconciliation?

Of course, if you’ve seen political parties trying to choerograph anything, you’d know how far-fetched that was.

Anyway, it was a great convention – and, I have to hope, a clear signal to Minnesota, coming after the snarky and indecisive DFL gathering in Duluth…was it really only a week earlier?

It was a great convention.  I’ve been to three State conventions, now, and this was by far the best.  Tony Sutton and Michael Brodkorb and the whole staff should feel proud of their efforts; while there will always be complaints (and I’ll be registering at least one of them), it was a smooth, open and participatory a political convention as I’ve ever seen.

The below is a contestant in the “Write Lori Sturdevant’s Next Column” contest, written by “Dave From Mound”.   Vote above.

Last weekend, the DFL loyalists journeyed to Duluth to make their endorsements for statewide offices, including governor.  They joined together, deliberated, and celebrated.  They made history and exited Duluth unified behind their flag bearer.

On Friday, it was the GOP’s turn in Minneapolis.  Needless to say, their convention had a palpable feel that was not evident at the DFL’s productive and positive environment.  It felt as if the caustic infection that afflicts the body politic in Washington DC has invaded our ‘Minnesota Nice’.

Whether it was the heated speeches by Michele Bachmann, who took as many cheap shots and one-liners at the DFL and President Obama as time permitted, or the anti-government Tea Partier banter heard among the delegates, the atmosphere was less a political convention than a well-dressed and better-organized lynch mob.  Where have the reasoned and balanced Republicans gone, such as Governor Arnie Carlson or Jim Ramstad?

Friday’s events were highlighted by the endorsement of Tom Emmer, the conservative state house representative from Wright County.  In contrast to the DFL’s convention, this day of endorsement battles again revealed deep fissures in the GOP by way of petty partisan attacks made by Emmer and his endorsement rival Marty Seifert.

Even after the bruising endorsement battle ended, the sniping by the delegates and their candidates continued as they exited the convention hall.  Each side remained steadfastly committed to their candidates, leading to significant speculation that Seifert will break his previous pledge not to run in the August primary.

The bitter divisions were best illustrated by the political punches thrown by the Lieutenant Governor candidates.  The first body blows were thrown by Annette Meeks, the running mate for Emmer.  In speaking informally with delegates, Meeks was heard disparaging her counterpart, Rhonda Sivarajah, over revelations of her pass DFL association and not-so-conservative past credentials.  Sivarajah, Seifert’s running mate, countered with Meeks’ association to Newt Gingrich, during the time when his infidelities to his cancer-ridden wife were at their height.

Needless to say, the contrasts between the two conventions were stark.  Last week, a unified and energized group of DFLers left Duluth a cohesive political force, ready to take back the Governor’s mansion after 20 years in the political wilderness.  In witnessing the adjournment of the Republicans, the divisions appear incredibly and permanently deep, too deep for their recovery in time for November’s elections.