Just on basic principle, I submit this 1985 classic for your approval.

Not that I need anyone’s approval.

“Zack” at MNPublius called last week’s brouhaha between Drew Emmer and my NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb and I a “GOP Circular Firing Squad”

Zack.  Bubbie.  It was a circular firing squad.  In the same sense that the 101st Airborne was, at Bastogne; facing outward. 

 (No, I’m sure “Zack” doesn’t get the reference.  It’s history.  Ask a Republican about it).

That is all.

I desperately need to remodel my bathroom…

…and who takes out a blogad on my site?

Just saying.  Eerie.

Why, what a rediculos bunch of hepocretecal loosers!

Developing. . . . .

Every once in a while, I like to ponder the big mysteries.  Where did we come from?  Can the City Pages write so much stuff about Diablo Cody that even G-d can’t read it all?

And, speaking of which, what about God?

But Emily Condon apparently has all the answers.  In the City Pages’ Artistes of the Year edition, she reviews Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, and, by way of lauding the pseudo-atheist thesis, notes (emphasis added):

Far from the vitriolic diatribe of a God-hating misanthrope like Richard Dawkins, Hitchens’s work is both appropriately respectful and right.

Hm.

The City Pages is the source of all knowledge, apparently.

Who knew?

(more…)

I see politics – at large, and within parties – as a big game of tug of war. In the exact middle of the rope is a ribbon.

The difference between this and a real tug of war is that you will never pull the ribbon all the way to your side of the pit in the middle, to say nothing of pulling your opponents into it. Oh, it’s a goal – but it will never happen. So every so often – say, every four minutes, or every four years, whichever fits your metaphor better – the referee blows the whistle, and measures where the ribbon is. I’m rooting for the ribbon to move to the right – so I get into the scrum and pull for all I’m worth to get that ribbon moved.

Let’s stretch the metaphor even further. It’s not just a single tug of war; it’s a tournament. And the farther your side gets the ribbon to your side in the semifinals, the more of you will move on to the finals for the big championship round. The catch is, if people get too pissed off at the results of the semifinals and take their cleats and go home, you jeopardize your team’s shot at the finals.  Because the other guys will be pulling with all their might to not only get that ribbon pulled to the left; they want you, and the whole rest of the country, to fall into the mud pit.

We had one of those tugs of war Saturday on the NARN Volume III. Michael Brodkorb wrote about it on MDE;

The point of lampooning of Drew’s and Mitch’s posts was highlight a larger problem that I see that with a certain element of the conservative movement. Some people like to complain and act, while some people just like to complain. It was my opinion that Drew’s and Mitch’s posts were about complaining and not about acting. As I wrote, neither of them had done any volunteering for the Republican effort in SD 25, yet they were the first to complain about the loss. But they both complained because they care about the conservative movement in Minnesota. In reality, our very important conversation wouldn’t have occurred without Drew’s post. For that, we should all offer our sincere thanks to Drew.

The caucuses are a month away (more – much more – on this later). We’re in the semifinals, now – time for the tug of war within the GOP. It’s time for those of us who do stand for the First Principles of conservatism – liberty, prosperity, security, limited government, culture and family – to do what we can to move that metaphorical ribbon within the party to the right.  It’s the time when all of you who think Tim Pawlenty is a RINO, or that Jim Ramstad is too conservative, or who think that Norm Coleman is a Democrat in a nicer suit, or that we need Fred Thompson rather than Rudy Giuliani in the White House, or that the Sixth District needs a moderate rather than an evangelical conservative – need to turn out to the precinct caucuses on February 5.

You need to show up.

You need to vote.

You need to run for the delegate positions, promising to support conservative candidates and principles.

You have to volunteer for your precinct, district, congressional district, and the state convention.

You need to show up at the conventions, and vote for those candidates and principles.  In areas that swing between moderate, conservative and single-issue voters, you need to not only represent your principles – but be involved in the horse-trading that involves forcing the compromises that are at the very root of the word “politics”.

You need to help pull that ribbon to the right.

And then, when the conventions are over, you – we, all of us, conservatives and Republicans of all stripes, “moderates” and Buchananites and libertarians and Reaganites and every flavor in between, having fought the good fight for conservative principle to the absolute hilt through the caucuses and at each and every level of conventions, need to do something that hardly anyone talks about.

We need to close ranks.

Having fought – and, hopefully, won – the good, conservative fight at the caucuses and in the conventions, we need to get some perspective; while not all Republicans will meet a good conservative’s approval, it’s a safe bet that virtually no Democrats will. It will be time to realize that even an “imperfect” Republican is, in almost every case and on nearly every issue, better than a Democrat.

Because while I join many of you in disparaging the “Republicans in Name Only”, the “moderates”, the Republicans who are liberal enough to earn endorsement from the Strib, and get Lori Sturdevant’s approval, there are two reasons to suck it up and hold your nose and work your butt off, even for “RINO” Republicans, even if they offend some of your conservative principles.

The first reason: Every ten years, the state’s congressional districts are reapportioned. And the party with the most seats controls the process. And the DFL, if they are in control, will gerrymander the state’s districts to reinforce their control over this state.

The second: there will, in the next four to eight years, be between one and three Supreme Court seats opening up. And a Republican-controlled Senate will be better for seeing responsible, constructionist, sane judges confirmed.

And in neither case does it matter one iota if the GOP majority is 100% Reaganite purists or 40% Sturdevant-approved moderates. In these cases, literally, a majority that is 2/3 of “good enough” is better – as in, better for the sake of 10 years of state legislation and 20-30 years of SCOTUS decisions – than an ideologically perfect minority. When it comes to reapportioning the state and US legislatures, numbers count, and count drastically. If you don’t think it matters, then ponder if you will the way the DFL drew the legislative map in 1990; Minnesota’s legislative map looked like a Rohrschach blob, drawn to maximize the effect of DFL votes. It made getting any serious reform impossible throughout the nineties. It made it possible for the DFL to spend surplus after surplus, defeat concealed carry reform, create the Department of Children Families and Learning,  and impose the Profiles in Learning,  and fund and design the Ventura Trolley; for a decade (really, for the third of three decades) it allowed the DFL to spent money like crack whores with stolen Gold Cards. All because the GOP lost a bunch of Legislative seats in the eighties.

My favorite example – the one I’ve been dinging on pretty mercilessly for the last year – is the people who told me before the ’06 election (and after the convention) that they were staying home and not voting for Mark Kennedy because he voted for ethanol subsidies. And I’d like to look each and every one of them up right now, and ask “do you think Amy Klobuchar is any better on ethanol? Is a Supreme Court seat worth losing over ethanol? Do you think Amy Klobuchar is better on immigration, defense, education, life or even, ironically, spending – the issue that ostensibly kept you home – than Kennedy would have been?”

Is there such a thing as “going too far” in finding the point where princple and pragmatism intersect?  Of course.  But I’m at a loss to think of one in the running in Minnesota today.  To pick the most recent example, Ray Cox was far from my personal ideal Republican – he got a “26%” score from the Taxpayers League, and got the Strib’s endorsement, for crying out loud.  Would he be better to have in the Senate than DFLer Kevin Dahle?  Without question.  But to take Michael’s point – the time to argue that would have been before and during the endorsing convention. 

And don’t say you can’t argue with the party leadership.  Although I’ve criticized my district and state leadership in the past, the fact is that grassroots movements work.  Michele Bachmann upended the wishes of the CD6 leadership in ’06 by getting her base out in teeming droves that put wildebeest migrations to shame, upsetting many a CD6 establishment figure’s applecart – and winning the nomination, and the race.  Because conservatives turned out, and worked hard, to see their vision through.  Another great example – Tim Pawlenty; the governor was a pragmatic moderate in the House; it was the grassroots groundswell of support for Brian Sullivan that pushed him to the right.  While it didn’t make him a perfect conservative governor, it did make him a vastly better alternative than Roger Moe – all because conservatives got out and voted at caucuses and conventions.

So argue like crazy, today. Stand on absolute principle. Work your butts off for absolute rigid stiffnecked rock-ribbed conservative idealism. I’m going to; I don’t care if it offends the GOP or not! I’ll fight the good fight, and throw bricks at every part of the GOP that doesn’t measure up to the party I want to see…

…until the conventions. And then, starting with my BPOU, and then my Congressional Distict, then within the state, and finally with every other real American Republican nationwide. I’m going to make my notes for the next nomination and caucus cycle, file ’em away, and get out and try to get Republicans – even the lame, “RINO”, not-quite-conservative-enough ones – elected.

Because the big tug of war is coming next – and the Democrats’ philosophy has always been “compromise is for losers” (until they lose – then they whinge about the “need” for “bipartisanship” and “cooperation”), and moving that ribbon to the right isn’t just inside-the-party beanbag. It’s for laws. It’s for judges. It’s for your pocketbook and our kids’ education and our nation’s security, and all of the first ten Amendments and the unborn to boot.

And if that ribbon is one foot left of the center of that metaphorical pit because any of us stayed home because we didn’t like how the GOP’s tug of war ended up, it’s our fault.

…is an unstable child star who’s going all Dana Plato on us.

What’s the perfect birthday gift?

We can reveal that Kevin Federline feared his ex would use the Beretta pistol he bought her as a birthday gift to MURDER their two young sons.

I’m not sure I’d want to be the lawyer for either of those crazy kids.

(The “funny” part to note, of course, is that either Britney or KFed would have a better shot of getting  a carry permit in New York City than would, say, a rape victim or a person living in a crappy neighborhood.  Good thing they don’t live in New York, hey?)

Fundraising for Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial “celebration” seems to be lagging:

As Minnesota enters its sesquicentennial year today, the state board established to direct the celebration has taken in about $1 million — a quarter of what had been anticipated and far less than the $8.5 million that Wisconsin raised for its sesquicentennial in 1998 and the $1.1 million ($8 million in today’s dollars) that fueled Minnesota’s centennial 50 years ago.

“For many of us, it’s a lifetime opportunity to honor the state we love and do some things that promote us for the future,” said Jane Leonard, executive director of the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission. “I do think we’re doing a remarkable job with what we’ve got, but we could use more help.”

State organizers last year had talked about $4 million for the yearlong celebration — half from the state, half from private contributions — and Gov. Tim Pawlenty included $2 million for the Sesquicentennial Commission in his recommended 2008 budget.

Why, oh why, could that be?

Some Minnesotans already are arguing — on opinion pages and in letters to the editor — over the Dakota War. If you thought the Sesquicentennial was going to be a Whiz Bang party celebrating Wheaties and Scotch Tape, you have been eating bad lutefisk. I mean, really bad lutefisk.

Minnesota was baptized in blood, and reminders are scattered across a vast landscape: A monument in a cornfield that marks the spot of a small settlement whose settlers — all of them — were surprised and killed on the first day of the war. A marker in a woods where more than 1,000 Indian women and children were imprisoned in a pen. A barren place on the Missouri River where hundreds died of starvation and disease after being “deported” by a new state that exiled the people whose language gave the state its name.

“Dear crackers; we’d like to have a state-financed orgy of recrimination.  Please send us money to make this possible.  Thanks.  Signed: Native American activists and their Guilty White Liberal friends”.

The Dakota War deserves a look.  It’s one of the key events in Minnesota’s history.

One of them.

On behalf of my ancestors – dirt-poor Norwegian farmers who came to America 40-50 years after the Dakota wars and raised bumper crops of rocks until they learned better trades, let me respectfully point out that there is more to the story.

Upside:  Conservative who brings economic and law-and-order common sense to a nation that’s desperately needed it since DeGaulle passed from the scene.

Downside:  I predict the the rebound marriage will last about as long as France’s defensive campaign in 1940.

Hope I’m wrong, naturally.

Bonne chance, Nick.

American Airlines is testing anti-missile jamming devices on some of its passenger planes:

Tens of thousands of airline passengers will soon be flying on jets outfitted with anti-missile systems as part of a new government test aimed at thwarting terrorists armed with shoulder-fired projectiles.

Three American Airlines Boeing 767-200s that fly daily round-trip routes between New York and California will receive the anti-missile laser jammers this spring, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which is spending $29 million on the tests.

Jets will fly with the jammer device mounted on the belly of the plane, between the wheels. The device works with sensors, also mounted on the plane, that detect a heat-seeking missile and shoot a laser at it to send the missile veering harmlessly off course.

I’d heard that the airlines and DHS were going to start testing some kind of countermeasures on passenger planes.  I’d wondered if it would be the little flare launchers that you see on fighters – the ones that launch the magnesium flares when they’re going on bombing runs.  I had visions of spent flares plopping into backyards in Richfield and Eagan.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

Officials emphasize that no missiles will be test-fired at the planes,

Rumors that the “officials” had to emphasize this point to prevent Northwest Airlines from attempting a live-fire test are completely unconfirmed.

Next, they need to put machine guns in the wings, like on WWII fighters, so that the next pilot on the take-off or glide path can come in and strafe the terrorists after they launch.

Romney wins one:

Mitt Romney captured his first win of the Republican presidential race, gaining most of Wyoming’s delegates at stake in GOP caucuses on Saturday.The former Massachusetts governor won six of the first eight delegates to be selected.

Until I got this news, I was worried we’d hear about Hugh holed up in a house with Britney Spears, with a stack of pistols and a crate of cigarettes, telling the coppers they’d never take either of them alive.

Glad to hear that was a premature speculation.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I “The First Team” – John, Brian and Chad – will kick things off from 11-1. No idea, as this is written, what they’re going to talk about, but I’m going to guess it’ll coming down off the natural high of making Nick “Engineering Is For Dorks” Coleman the Loon of the Year. Finding out is half the adventure.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assignment, so I’ll be soloing from 1-3; call in early and often! I’ll be talking about Iowa, and with special guest Drew Emmer about the CD25 special election, the upcoming caucuses, and (with any luck) interviewing Barry Casselman. Tune in!
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King and Michael will talk Minnesota trash after that until 5PM; Michael’s challenged me to stick around and accept an “award” regarding my take on the SD25 race, but I don’t think he means it in a nice way.

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. On the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

(Along with the Stroms, from 9-11, natch).

Peggy Noonan has a take on the “why” of the Hucker’s win:

From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.

We’ll get back to this.

They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools’ squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don’t admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don’t need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

Much has been written about Huckabee’s stealth liberalism, by much better observers than I. 

But the Huckabee’s great strength – “it’s the home, family, schools and culture, stupid!” – is also the deepest pitfall.  It points out an inward-facing, insular coccooning instinct that is the flip side of the post-cold-war euphoria that gave us Bill Clinton.  In 1992, the electorate said “History is over; let’s talk about underwear!”.  Today, it’s “the world is a dangerous place, here and abroad; I wanna focus on “here””.  It’s a current that melds nicely with Huckabee’s propensity to bury problems in money, and his foreign policy naivete.

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs.

Sorta like that other candidate from Little Rock did. 

But history didn’t stop in 1992, and you can’t wish it away today.

Two of my favorite local center-right bloggers – Jeff Kouba and Jay Reding – write posts I’d like to have written myself.

Reding:

Obama, to his credit, does signal a break from the Clintonite school of politics which have corrupted American politics for years now. The “campaign war room” and the politics of personal destruction that marked the Clinton years hardly helped America’s politics. Getting rid of that would be a step in the right direction.

And Obama as “The New Carter”… 

The problem with Obama is that he’s winning on some vague notion of “change”—while doing little to describe what direction he’d take the country. Obama would be a formidable challenge for the GOP, but ultimately he doesn’t have the executive experience needed to be a successful President. He also votes like a doctrinaire liberal, which undercuts his ability to reach across party lines. He would do better than Edwards, but in the end his appeal is largely skin deep.

Place your bets…:

The worst case scenario is an Edwards/Huckabee match, in which case I’ll say to hell with it and end up voting for Ron Paul just out of spite for such big government paternalists. Ideally, I’d like to see an Obama/Thompson contest—Obama’s idealism is a nice contrast to the general pessimism of the Democratic Party, and Fred Thompson has the strongest grasp of policy. An Obama/McCain race would also be interesting for much the same reason.

I’ll differ from Jay here:  the worst case is an Obama/Hucker match; the media has carefully groomed Huckabee as America’s Second Choice against any Democrat, and the’ll call that marker in in spades.  And I’m nowhere near ready to count Rudy out of this.  But I agree; Thompson’s surge makes me want to hope “he’s just been pacing himself for the past six month”. 

And then there’s McCain; as I noted a few weeks ago, he’s so close to being acceptable. 

Cut Speech Rationing loose, JMac, and you could get yourself a supporter.  Have your people call my people.

Kouba:

This is why I think McCain will now be the likely nominee, because Republican voters will still value a strong candidate on national defense. On the Democratic side, we’ve already seen they want an American defeat in Iraq, and so Obama is perfectly acceptable on that count.

However, let’s not assume history has ended just because the surge in Iraq has produced encouraging results. Think back just a year ago, at the end of 2006 Iraq was in danger of sliding into the abyss. This election was supposed to be all about Iraq. Now it’s gone from the headlines.

We can’t allow ourselves to be fatigued. Our enemies still plot and scheme. We must resolve, as Churchill said,

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Yesterday was Dunkirk for conservatives – and supporting Mike Huckabee and Ray “26 out of 100” Cox and, really, any RINO (you hear me, CD3GOP?) is the march to the Dyle).

Will we have D-Day in October?

Stay tuned.

DFLer Kevin Dahle rode to disappointing victory in the SD25 Special Election yesterday, carried to the Capitol on a wave of college kids that drove over a Strib-endorsed, District-Leadership-approved, not-very-conservative Ray Cox, who proceeded (apparently) to phone in a campaign.

Drew Emmer calls it:

…the DFL has revealed a private side that is strategically superior to the GOP campaign mechanism. We should pay attention. Especially those of us that think being philosophically “superior” to our socialistic opponents is somehow going to carry the day in fall 2008. We can be as right as right can be on the philosophical arguments but as Wheelock Whitney said in his complaint about Pat Robertson’s takeover of the party in the late ’80s “Victory goes to those who show up”.

And the GOP didn’t show up – at least, not enough of them to counter the DFL’s play:

Local politics is finite math. The DFL found victory in coy manipulation of same-day registration and what is reported as a higher than expected student turnout in Northfield proper. There was no credible rallying alarm for the conservative base to respond to. That was largely because many in the conservative base felt somewhat excluded by the process whereby Neuville anointed Cox without the benefit of a grassroots vetting of the GOP endorsement.

Are you paying attention, Third District?  When you take an imperious, top-down process (see:  CD4) and add a “play it safe”, “Sturdevant-Approved (R)” “moderate” Republican who is “safe” for the party leadership (he was endorsed by the Strib!  I mean, what kind of warning sign do you need?) but puts out no reason to vote for him (because if you give the voters a choice between a DFLer and a DFLer-in-all-but-name, they’ll take the DFLer)…

…you lose the veto.

“We” were out-smarted, out-flanked and out-worked. For the record, I did nothing to help in SD25. How about you?

Didn’t think I’d need to, frankly.  I’ve got my own tide to try to turn in my own town.

Without the veto, the next session is going to look like the shower-room scene in Midnight Express.  Hang onto your wallets; if you thought you could escape the Komintern by fleeing to suburbia, hang on.

More – much more – on the NARN tomorrow, and in this space on Monday.

So we’ve determined a few things so far in this series:

1. It can be frustrating, being a conservative in the city.
2. Tossing “warm body” candidates out there to take their shots at Congress, State Legislative and city/county offices can feel pretty futile.
3. It’s largely because the Democraticicicicic party has spent several generations and four decades patiently insinuating itself into every facet of urban life.  The entire infrastructure of the city is tied up in the DFL; many of the inhabitants of both cities are either government employees or – after several generations of using the city as a warehouse for the poor or an unloading point for immigrants – beholden to the government.  (It’s not entirely a bad, or at least malicious, thing; Bruce Vento was instrumental in bringing the H’mong from refugee camps in Thailand to Saint Paul.  Did the late congressman do it to earn the loyalty of thousands of future voters?  It was Bruce Vento, for crying out loud; he didn’t scratch his nose if it didn’t benefit the party.  But no sane person begrudges the H’mong their place in America; they earned it, and, if you leave out the whole “patronage” thing, it was perhaps Vento’s greatest achievement). 

So how do we – Republicans who live in the city, and/or Republicans who know this state’ll never be a “red” state until we can at least contest Saint Paul and Minneapolis – start to put the city in play?

There are a couple of options:

1. Wait for a Ronald Reagan or a Brett Schundler.  You might be waiting a long time.
2. Keep throwing candidates at offices they’ll never win, barring a visit from a Democraticicicic-seeking virus that leaves the entire DFL electorate flat on its back on election day.
3. Start building some real grass roots in the cities.

We’ll talk about #3 on Monday.

(…because it went utterly unreported), Wretchard at The Belmont Club notes that our troops in Iraq just sustained the lowest rolling three-month death toll of the entire war in October through December:

US deaths in Iraq are at the lowest 3 month total ever…The three month total for October, November and December 2007 is 93. It’s also the first time a 3 month total has dropped below 3 digits.

A commenter notes that the combat death toll is even lower; seven of the 21 December deaths were non-combat related.  Not to trivialize them, but to note that combat casualties are even lower than the numbers would show on the surface.

…I remember reading books from the 1910’s through the 1930’s, in the back room of the local library, that predicted what life’d be like in, say, 1975 or 2000.  The technology predictions, of course, were the funniest in retrospect; dreams of personal aircraft buzzing people about on sky highways, robot servants, automated houses looked like the quaint noodlings of a bunch of grade school kids, to my sophisticated eighth-grade perspective in 1977.

But I can imagine, say, certain bloggers sitting around in 2040 looking at yesterday’s Houston Chronicle and muttering “hurry up, dammit” under their breath.

Via Pianomomsicle, a car quiz:

1. If money were no concern and LOOKS the only consideration, what car would you get yourself? A Triumph Spitfire.  
   
2. If money were no concern and YOUR LIFESTYLE the only consideration, what car would you get yourself? Jeep CJ7 (with a freshly-overhauled transfer case).  I used to have one a lot like this one:
   
3. What is the best thing about your current car? It’s almost paid off.
4. If cars could be skinned the way cell phones, laptop computers, and iPods can, what would be a really cool skin for your car? I life-sized skin of itself, only bigger.
5. If you were going to decorate a friend’s car with a custom-made skin as a practical joke, whose car would you skin and what would it be? There’s a lady down the block who’s Subaru is entirely encrusted in “Franken ’08” and “Air America 950” and “You Can’t Simultaneously Prepare for Peace and for War” bumper stickers.  I think a skin to make it look like a Hummer H2 with “Kill a Commie for Mommy” and “Gun Control Is Hitting Your Target” stickers (and, of course, AM1280 The Patriot) would be fun.  And an inexpensive neighborhood improvement. 

That is all.

Mike Huckabee – the GOP’s Jimmy Carter, the Republican that Hillary! wants to face in November – has apparently won the Hawkeye Cauci:

Mike Huckabee, a Baptist preacher turned politician, grabbed a slight lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Thursday night in the Iowa caucuses, first test in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards vied for the Democratic victory.

Sigh.

Decent finish for Thompson, anyway.

Ed is liveblogging the Iowa Caucuses.

(Not to be confused with King Banaian, who’s been known to liveblog from the Caucasus).

Me?  Well, one of my neighbors asked me why the heck someone isn’t throwing a Iowa Caucus party.

Hmmm.

There’s an idea for the New Hampshire Primary…

Over at True North, Swiftee assails the Minnesota Monitor’s (and its parent body, the Center for Independent Media’s) claims of “independence”.

As does this piece by Danny Glover at the Beltway Blogroll:

I don’t have a problem with [partisanship and political principle in journalism], and I’m perfectly fine with both existing within the new media order — so long as people are transparent and honest with readers about their partisan leanings and their principles.

I don’t believe that’s entirely the case here.

I think that’s been the issue most of us on the right have had with the Monitor and the CIM since its inception; not that it’s a rent-a-blog, but that it’s been opaque to the point of disingenuity about both its funding and its mission.

Glover:

The folks behind the center clearly understand “independent” to mean something different than most politically informed Americans, and Morley was transparent about defining the term as he understands it. But casting as independent a Washington-oriented publication that admittedly is not politically independent, of both party and philosophy, is still misleading…calling the new publication The Washington Progressive and its parent the Center For Progressive Media would be far more truthful. Why run from the political terminology the operation embraces?

That’s bothered me; it seems as if the Center and the Monitor have tried to have their cake and eat it too – publishing explicitly “progressive” content, while trying to camouflage the motivation.

The Center for Independent Media has a worthwhile mission, and people with competing worldviews should consider organizing similar efforts to train the next generation of journalists. Anyone who reports the news with what Morley calls a “moral perspective,” regardless of what that perspective is, needs to pursue “rigorous adherence to the highest standards of journalism.”

Unfortunately, the center’s word choice, something endemic to sound journalism, does not rise to those standards.

Read all three pieces.

Special election in Senate District 25 today.

It’s cold out there; bad weather usually favors Republicans.  Ray Cox would seem to be a serious favorite anyway, but after the last round of elections, it’d be fun to wad a DFLer up like used kleenex and toss him under the bus.  Electorally speaking, of course.

I’ve been going to GOP precinct cauci and district conventions in Saint Paul for nigh on 20 years now. The ritual is always the same. There are only small variations.

In good years for Republicans – say, 1994, 1998 or 2002 – the GOP “Basic Political Organizational Unit” (BPOU – the lowest level of GOP organization) and City party conventions will whip up some enthusiasm for candidates for the House, Senate and City Council; money will be raised; impassioned speeches will be given; “this could be the year!”. Delegates will be elected that will go to the Congressional District (MN4, in this case) convention, who will in turn endorse a candidate for US House.

And on the first Tuesday in November, the candidates will all lose by 20 points.

On the other hand, during bad years for Republicans – 1996, 2006 – the City, BPOU and CD conventions will start with somber speeches about how the inner-city districts have to try to at least make a showing, to draw away some spending from the safer GOP districts out in the ‘burbs; to fight the good, futile fight, in other words. And the candidates – usually long-time party functionaries – will be endorsed, to put a warm body in a place on the ballot. And they’ll campaign, either with great enthusiasm (Obi Sium, the CD4 US House candidate last year, or Alan Fine over in CD5), or they’ll put in a dilatory showing of the flag.

They’ll lose by 30 or 40 points.

And yet, as I’ve said over and over again, the inner city is positively clogged with people who should be conservatives:

• African-American parents, for whom the failure of the inner-city schools to help make their kids competitive is a finger in the eye, an insult added to the injury of 400 years of slavery and racism in this nation, and who should know that the DFL stands foursquare behind the foetid status quo.
• Asian residents, whose commitment to free enterprise did what two generations of government programs couldn’t; saved inner-city Saint Paul.
• Legal immigrants, who are – according to polls – increasingly opposed to coddling illegal immigration.
• Hispanic residents who see that the DFL piddles on their Catholic/Evangelical social conservatism.
• Anyone who can see that three generations of “city as DFL social laboratory” have made parts of Minneapolis among the poorest, most dangerous inner-city enclaves in America.
• Oh, yeah – and all of us Republicans. And you might never know it, but we’re one of the biggest minorities in Saint Paul; 28% of the city registers GOP – and if the party could ever field a serious candidate, a fair chunk of the DFLers who are growing tired of the Tax ‘n Spend claque that has City Hall under its boot might be convinceable, too.

This, indeed, has worked for Republicans; Brett Shundler spent years as mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, running on a platform of security, fiscal discipline, low taxes and common sense – in a city that’s even more hamstrung with Democrat tradition than the Twin Cities (6% registered GOP), and with a state Republican party that’s worth even less than Minnesota’s for supporting conservatives anywhere, much less in the inner city.

So why not here?

Why, indeed, is “inner city Minnesota GOP” almost as big a synonym for frustration as “Vikings in the Super Bowl?”

Chalk it up to infrastructure.

No, not bridges and roads…well, actually, yes – the political equivalent of bridges and roads and fixing potholes.

Bear with me, here.

The DFL has spent three generations or more in complete, unquestioned power in inner Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Over those decades, the DFL has insinuated itself into every aspect of life; it runs the schools; it controls the city councils (shut up about the Greens, already – they are indistinguishable on the streeet); they control the planning, zoning and spending apparatuses; they control the public employees unions that run the schools, the administrations, the civil service, the public works departments, even the police and fire deparments and libraries. DFL is a de facto synonym for civic life and, in many ways, day to day non-political life as well. You can literally not not make contact with the DFL or a DFL-controlled organization in some part of your day to day life in the inner city.

You can literally count the elected Republicans in Saint Paul on one hand – School Board member Tom Conlon – and get four fingers’ change.

This complete control of all political and civic life in the city has several effects which stunt the city as well as the opposition:

• The city’s residents are disproportionately employed by DFL-linked unions; AFSCME, MAPE, Education Minnesota and the various Teamsters and AFL/CIO bodies are very disproportionately represented among residenets and voters – and those unions are all but subsidiaries of the DFL.
• Even non-political residents are in constant contact with the apparatus of DFL power and control. This is important both for showing people what “the norm” is, as well as giving the DFL an audience that doesn’t know better than to question the DFL’s claims as to what’ll happen to government “services” if they ever lose power.
• The DFL controls the entire revenue stream; the government that levies the taxes, the administration that collects them, the council that budgets the money, the district councils and schools and departments that do the spending, all are controlled by DFL sinecures.

Every aspect of life in Minneapolis and Saint Paul – family and personal as well as civic and political life – has contact with the DFL.

And so, every couple of years when the GOP throws “warm bodies” and “sacrificial lambs” at the entrenched DFL bureaucracies, it’s not unlike the British and French marching across No Man’s land into the teeth of machine guns entrenched in bomb-and-bullet-proof concrete pillboxes; it’s a slaughter, and everyone knows it will be even before they climb out of the trench or leave the BPOU/CD meeting.

So how is that going to change?

More tomorrow.

…congratulations to Ben from Hammerschawing and Mall Diva from Nightwriter on their recent engagement announcement of courtship.

They’re a cute couple…

…if you tape a piece of paper over Ben’s side of the picture, anyway.  Lucky is the guy who can “marry up”.

On the other hand, be careful, kids. Strom is lurking.

UPDATE:  Not engaged yet; courting, as the father of the bride notes in the comments.  I plead fatigue on first reading.  I’m not so familiar with this particular institution.