President Obama declined to comment about the ongoing hostage crisis in the Indian Ocean:
Obama was asked to comment on the situation several times by reporters at a White House event on refinancing for homeowners. Obama, however, stuck closely to the script and replied that he wanted to remain focused on housing.
Teleprompters can only react so fast.
It’s apparently above their pay grade.
Obama shows himself a rank amateur in Turkey:
The Europeans were appalled by Turkey’s neo-Taliban tantrum on-stage at last week’s NATO summit. The Turks fought to derail the appointment of a great Dane, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as the new NATO secretary general. Why? Because he didn’t stone to death the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed.
Which brings us to the even bigger problem: Obama has no idea what’s going on in Turkey. By going to Ankara on his knees, he gave his seal of approval to a pungently anti-American Islamist government bent on overturning Mustapha Kemal’s legacy of the separation of mosque and state.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP, means headscarves, Korans, censorship and stacked elections. The country’s alarmed middle class opposes the effort to turn the country into an Islamic state. Obama’s gushing praise for the AKP’s bosses left them aghast.
Obama’s embrace of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (now orchestrating show trials of his opponents) was one step short of going to Tehran and smooching President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Give him time.
Remember – Obama’s the “smart one”.
I’m told that my post last week on the WaPo’s survey of “Best Political Blogs” pointed to last years’ poll, and that this years’ was still underway.
Well, no more! The WaPo has released “The Fix” for 2009, and…
…well, let’s take a look: It’s time for “American Blog Idol, 2009!” The people (who still read the WaPo) have spoken, and the winners are…:
MinnesotaMNPublius: Predictable, I suppose.
Minnesota Democrats Exposed: This only makes sense; it was by far the most influential blog in Minnesota this past year.
Minnesota Progressive Project: How’s the recovery from your stroke going, Mr. Cilizza?
Centrisity: Congrats to my friend and neighbor Flash. I have to ask – is “Centrisity” a better, more influential blog than, say, “Powerline”? Which doesn’t turn up on this list at all?
Dusty Trice: The “Cleversponge” of 2009. Or maybe the Kevin McKay. (“Clever Mc-Who?” Exactly).
True North: Wow. No idea how that leaked in there, but cool!
Politics in Minnesota: I guess this makes sense, although PIM’s influence isn’t mainly from the blog. Still, they are a go-to source, even with Steve Perry on board.
The Uptake: Well, they’ve certainly accreted themselves a lot of airtime and mindshare over the past year. I’ll give ’em that.
No Powerline. No Ed Morrissey (although Hot Air isn’t based in Minnesota). No TvM (itself a better, more influential blog than four of Cilizza’s “winners”).
Cilizza’s voters remind me of Franken voters in more ways than one…
In 1993, disgusted with the GOP’s pusillanimous acquiescence on the Clinton Crime Bill (as gross an imposition on civil liberty as this country’s ever seen), I left the Republican party in disgust.
“What the hell was wrong with the GOP”, at that time, was that it had completely abandoned the notion of small government, and stampeded with a herd of Democrats to the left on a slew of privacy and civil liberties issues.
I figured that if the party actively subverted what I believed, and I didn’t have the capacity to change it myself or find enough people who believed as I did to change it, I shouldn’t be there. So I joined the Libertarians. I skipped the Gingrich Revolution (although I approved of it). I even ran for office. It was worth it; I developed an appreciation for what major parties are for; organization, mainly.
And in ’98, I came back. I figured I wasn’t going to win every battle, but it was worth fighting for in exchange for having a shot at getting what I believe actually in office.
———-
So after eight parts, I’ve said…what?
That the Minnesota GOP needs a message, one that attracts people.
Of course – as someone involved in party operations noted the other day – the party doesn’t put out messages. The party works the people who do – the candidates and the groups of supporters who put them into contention. The state party chairperson and the other officials elected by the Central Committee and, least of all, the party’s paid staff have very little to do with the message that candidates put out, other than making sure they don’t completely violate the platform.
All that’s true.
But there’s still a problem in the MNGOP.
As we all know, Norm Coleman trails in the “recount” process by something like 300 votes. Leave aside for a moment the byzantine nature of the recount, or the patchwork of “standards” (isn’t that an oxymoron?) that led to the 500 vote swing, or the danger this sort of uncertainty provides to democracy itself, what with not one in 100 voters being able to explain how we got here, and probably not one percent of those able to define the standards themselves.
Why is Norm Coleman behind by 300 votes?
Because he’s “too conservative?” Please. He was a DFLer. He nominated Paul Wellstone in 1996. He won two terms as mayor of Saint Paul as a moderate DFLer.
Because the opposition was so strong? Well, it was a bad year for Republicans. But the fact that such a relatively large number of people voted for Dean Barkley – the prickly wonk thrust into prominence by Jesse Ventura’s caprice and Paul Wellstone’s death – shows how little Barack Obama’s coattails were worth, even here.
All that is true. But Coleman also lost because several “Republican party” factions actively campaigned against him, because of some of his votes (ANWR, among others). Did these factions bring up a viable alternative within the party? Of course not. But they did actively sway people against Norm Coleman. Was it 300 votes worth? We will never know, but it’s not unreaonable.
These groups’ reasoning? “The GOP needs to learn its lesson”. So what did we get for it? If this recount wends its way to a Franken victory, we get an even more veto-proof Dem majority in Washington, to further grease the Obama Administration’s path, lubing up the skidway to hell.
So one of the things that’s wrong with the MN GOP is Minnesota Republicans themselves. The party is crowded with people who are in it for a single issue (pro-lifers, God bless ’em, in many cases), or a single candidate (Ron Paul). That’s good, as far as it goes – but here’s a suggestion: if you’re in the GOP, then by all means try to influence the GOP in the direction you want. That’s what caucuses and primaries are for. And an organized, well-motivated group can have quite an effect on the party, there; the Ron Paul supporters made quite an impact last year (and if they have the attention span, they can extend that impact into some real gains).
But if at the end of the day you call yourself a Republican but find yourself actively subverting the party’s candidates, you should ask yourself – is this where I belong? Is the damage I’m causing to what I believe in by, de facto, helping get Democrats and their entire agenda into office really the goal I had in mind?
No, I’m not saying “your party, love it or leave it”. Far from it; I applaud the Ron Paul crowd for the organizing and work they’ve done.
But I am asking; if you find yourself subverting the GOP after the caucuses and primaries, from either side – whether you’re a Coleman-hating paleocon or a Sturdevant-hugging Override-Sixer – then why are you in the GOP? Don’t you belong in the Constitution, Independence, DFL, Libertarian or Natural Law parties?
You’ve got a little over a year to think about it.
Monday: Summing up. I think.
The Daily Kos – with a seven-digit budget and a staff of nine – is among the leftybloggers whining about not being on the liberal gravy train:
Some of the leading liberal bloggers are privately furious with the major progressive groups — and in some cases, the Democratic Party committees — for failing to spend money advertising on their sites, even as these groups constantly ask the bloggers for free assistance in driving their message.It’s a development that’s creating tensions on the left and raises questions about the future role of the blogosphere at a time when a Dem is in the White House and liberalism could be headed for a period of sustained ascendancy.
Those crazies don’t come cheap! Just ask Minnesota Progressive Project.
Wanna bet they’re in line for some “stimulus” money?
…to exclaim “America. F**k yeah! (with emphasis joyously, flagrantly and thankfully added):
The US crew of a ship hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia has retaken control of the vessel, according to Pentagon sources.
Unnamed US defence officials said one pirate had been captured by the 20-strong crew of the Maersk Alabama, seized earlier in the Indian Ocean.
But the vessel’s Danish owners, Maersk, said they could not confirm that the vessel had been retaken.It was the sixth ship seized off Somalia in recent days.
It is reportedly the first time in 200 years that a US-flagged vessel has been seized by pirates.
And hopefully the last.
Note to the world’s scumbags; we don’t even need a military to kick your thieving asses.
God bless America.
Whenever liberals can’t take you on the facts – and let’s face it, they very rarely can – they go below the belt, literally or figuratively.
Jeff Rosenberg reprises a zillion lefties going after a zillion conservatives in a lefty tradition dating back to the Daisy Ad in going after Represenative Michele Bachman, the second-term Rep and unapologetic conservative from the Sixth District.
She doesn’t fit the template of what a woman is supposed to be (zealously pro-abortion, mindlessly subservient to the party on all else), so – just as with Margaret Thatcher and Linda Chavez and Condi Rice before her, and Sarah Palin after her, no insult, degradation or slander is off-limits. Nothing pisses a liberal off like an “apostate”, even if the betrayal is only against their parochial notion of a policital gender role.
Just think about some of her recent rhetoric. During the election, she called for an inquiry into whether members of Congress had “anti-American views.”
She didn’t “call for an inquiry”. She said the media ought to report on some of the less savory views of some of her colleagues.
Recently, she’s called herself a “foreign correspondent behind enemy lines”
An outspoken conservative woman in Minnesota’s browbeaten, lumpen liberal feminist culture? I’d say she’s more of a commando on a mission in an enemy headquarters.
But wait – we of the “Northern Alliance” use the same precise rhetoric every week! Are we not traitors to the glorious Minnesota motherland too?
and called for Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous.”
Law-abiding Minnesotans should be armed, and dangerous to criminals. It is, in point of irrefutable fact, the duty of every law-abiding Minnesotan who does not wish to be,at least ethically, a drag on the rest of society to be proficient with firearms, and to carry a firearm about their daily busiess.
She seems unable to control herself.
Now, Jeff is not one of the creepy, bottom-of-the-barrel leftybloggers that clog this state.
But, er, Jeff? “She seems” is what we call “weasel words”.
Now she sees even the most benign Federal programs in stark, revolutionary terms. Here’s what she said about a proposed expansion of the AmeriCorps service program:
I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.
Increasingly, Bachmann seems unable to focus on her day-to-day responsibilities to her district and her country.
Well, actually, calling out the abuses and overreaches of our current liberal overlords is part of her job; it’s certainly what she ran on, and what her constituents sent her to do.
Oh, and as re: proposals to morph Americorps into a compulsory social service program? She’s right. Oh, yes she is.
The real question, given the orgy of spending and social tinkering the Democrats are committing to, is “who are the real crazy ones?”
…direct to my brain, it’s Sheila again:
I sometimes feel like I don’t quite fully exist during the off-season, because it seems like something is missing. I can’t put my finger on it. What is it … what is missing …Oh, that’s right. Baseball on giant television screens in every bar you pass.
I don’t feel totally myself until it all starts up again.
Whew. Let’s wash all that greasy NBA, NHL and NFL out of our hair and get life underway!
So what’ should the Minnesota GOP’s message be?
We’ve talked about prosperity – achieved through cutting taxes and spending – and education.
Today, Security.
Security means a lot of things; the Constitution refers to the people’s right to be secure in their homes and possessions. National security is one of very few real clear mandates upon the federal government. Of course, if you’re a liberal, a complex formula of dairy price supports and support for the National Endowment for the Humanities are vital elements in national security.
But at a state level, it means a few really important things:
This makes sense if you’re a Republican – or a citizen who may not be a Republican, but pays their taxes, works hard, and wants to know their neighborhood is their neighborhood, not the scum’s.
It’s easy to make the case that…:
Republicans: Common Sense and Safety.
…presuming we manage to actually embrace common sense: punish criminals, leave the law-abiding alone, quit tolerating (much less subsidizing) bad behavior.
So what’s the alternative? Revolving door justice. Criminals who should be in jail attacking, raping and killing people, and illegal immigrants soaking up our resources while the DFL legislature looks for ways to punish the law abiding citizen (the gun owner) and harass those who run afoul of their picayune social policies (Saint Paul’s dwindling number of small landlords). Our streets grow more dangerous, as the DFL diverts resources away from enforcement and into subsidizing more bad behavior.
Democrats: Chaos and Fear.
It should be an easy sell:
Republicans: Common Sense and Safety. Democrats: Chaos and Fear.
Tomorrow: Getting along.
Tom Mischke Steve Cannon:
I think about the day he was diagnosed with cancer. I knew he hadn’t been feeling well. The last time we had gotten together he hadn’t had much of an appetite. Still, the news was a blunt-force strike to the heart, made more difficult by the matter-of-fact way he addressed what was so awful about his situation.
“There’s still things I want to see,” he said. “These are such interesting times, aren’t they? There’s so much going on. I want to find out how this Obama does, I want to see what changes are going to happen in this country. I want to see the new Twins stadium and the Gopher stadium.”
He was 81, but he might as well have been 21. The world around him was endlessly fascinating to Cannon. He kept up with everything. His mind was sharp, and his biting wit alive and devastating.
It was hard to pick an actual clip from Mischke’s Strib elegy. Just go and read the whole thing. It’s the kind of thing you just don’t see in the mass media.
Remember when Democrats wanted to “count every vote” – like, way back last November?
In a state that prides itself on high voter participation–78 percent participated in the 2008 presidential election–Minnesotans should be ashamed to know thy voters were able to cast a vote that counted in the presidential election. Specifically, of the nearly 22,000 overseas military members and dependents eligible to vote in Minnesota, only
3,362 were able to cast a vote that counted. In addition, local election officials rejected at least 302 ballots or 8.2 percent of the total number of absentee ballots cast by military members, which is nearly four times higher than the rejection rate for non-military ballot. A vast majority of these rejected ballots–about 65 percent–were rejected because they were received after the election deadline. Finally, there were approximately an additional 2,100 military absentee ballots that were sent out but never returned–many of which were lost in the mail, sent to the wrong address, or received too late by the military voter to be returned.Given these facts, it is puzzling that the contest court found no evidence of wholesale disenfranchisement. They had a military absentee voting population equal to one of the twenty-five most populous cities in Minnesota (22,000 voters), and only 15.7 percent were able to vote. When nearly 85 percent of a voting group does not participate, how could this be anything less than evidence of wholesale disenfranchisement? And, what about the fact that military absentee ballots were nearly four times more likely to be rejected by local election officials? Moreover, shouldn’t there be some concern that nearly half of the absentee ballots sent to military voters never make it to the voter or make it too late to be returned?
Minnesotans in the military overseas deserve some discussion of this issue.
I’m gonna guess they’re not going to get it from Mark Ritchie.
Somali pirates have presented President Obama with a shining chance for reaching out:
Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship with 21 crew members aboard, a diplomat and a U.S. Navy spokesman said.The Kenya-based diplomat identified the vessel as the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama and said all the crew members are American. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
After the Abdullah flap last week, if I were the leader of the Somali pirates I’d quickly publicize that it’s proper protocol for a head of state to kiss a pirate’ bare butt, and see what happens.
Last week, KSTP-AM fired longtime utility infielder Dave Thompson.
And yesterday, we’re told, was Bob Davis’ last broadcast on the Evil Talk Empire.
This email made the rounds among KSTP-AM fans yesterday:
Hi [Fan, redacted],
Below is an e-mail just distributed to AM1500 Staff regarding Bob Davis:
I come to you today with news that Bob Davis is no longer with AM1500
KSTP.His last show was today, April 7.
Bob’s contributions over the last eight years are appreciated and we
wish him well. His effervescent demeanor, his always-ready belly laugh and
his iconic head of hair leave a lasting impression on all who meet him.Starting Thursday morning at 9am, we will have a brand new radio program
for the Twin Cities. I could tell you their names (yes, a two-person
show), but you have not heard of them. They are new to Twin Cities radio, but not new to upper Midwest radio and both guys have personal ties to the Twin Cities metro.
Any bets on this one?
I, for one, haven’t the faintest clue, other than they’ll be innocuous, politically “neutral”, a neutered nod to the “glory days” of WCCO (in an era where nobody’s asking for any suc thing); I wouldn’t bet against a couple of sports guys, probably from one of the Twin Cities dailies. That’s just a hunch, worth exactly what you’re paying for it, and I’m certainly not betting my mortgage on any part of it…
…except that’s not going to take the world by storm.
Expect an e-mail from me Thursday morning about 8am with further
details.I am excited about this addition to AM1500 KSTP and I encourage you to
share your view of them after you give them a few listens.As for Dave Thompson, I think you may be interested in the headline of a
news release that was issued earlier this afternoon:Dave Thompson Announces Candidacy to become next State Chair of the
Minnesota Republican Party
Now, that is interesting news.
Thank you for your continued support of AM1500 KSTP as we further
dedicate our focus on serving the Twin Cities.
Steve Konrad
Program Director
This stinks, of course; both Davis and Thompson are longtime friends of the MOB, and deserve a whole lot better than the misbegotten pile that KSTP-AM has become.
Will KSTP-AM’s last listeners please lock up on your way out?
…another promising career….sacrificed in the name of Hopey Changey®.
In case you haven’t heard (because its so relevant to the average American) Kal Penn’s character, Dr. Lawrence Kutner offed himself on last night’s “Can’t! Miss!!!®” episode of House, M.D., and they are making an insipid attempt to make it “real” with a tribute video and memorial web site.
The next day (he should have waited three, maybe?) he is resurrected.
Actor and longtime Obama supporter Kal Penn is joining the Obama administration, the White House confirmed to CNN Tuesday.
What’s he going to be doing, what with all the qualifications he now possesses, having not been a doctor but playing one on TV?
The actor will be part of the White House Office of Public Liaison, which is run by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Penn will be primarily involved in dealing with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and the arts community.
Come again? So he’ll be liaising (yes, its now a word) with Obama and his peeps.
Not what you’d call a lateral move.
When figuring out messages for the Minnesota GOP, I limited my scope to things that elected officials and representatives in the State of Minnesota actually have some control over.
And the biggest single thing the State of Minnesota controls is education. Along with building state infrastructure, education is the biggest bill the state pays, year-in, year-out.
Now, on the one hand Minnesota putatively has much to be proud of; our state’s education system ranks at or near the top of the nation in most categories that matter on the major standardized tests – for those of you who place lots of value in standardized tests (which, let’s remember, test the ability of kids to take tests more than anything).
But in whatever part of Minnesota you live, we’re slipping. As per-pupil education spending skyrockets faster than inflation, inner-city minority graduation rates are falling. In the rural areas, traditional town schools are being consolidated into big consolidated districts, gaining many of the disadvantages of big urban districts – the maddening bureaucracy, the stunted achievement, the addiction to infrastructure and administrative overhead, the “I’m lost in a huge school” effect that makes urban education such a morass – while losing all the benefits of being a small school, changes made purely for the convenience of the administrative beast. If you live in a ‘burb with a successful school district, mandates on curriculum and funding formulas are having more and more affect on the schools your communities have built. If you’re a charter school parent, the education/media complex is trying to draw a big bullseye on your schools’ foreheads. And if you’ve opted to secede from the school system – like so many inner-city black Charter School parents, Christian homeschoolers, Latino catholic-school parents and Asian kids attending school in the ‘burbs due to Minnesota’s Open Enrollment laws, the DFL majority is aiming the whittle down your choices even as it whittles up the bill we all have to pay for all of those diminishing returns.
And while Minnesota’s test scores – whatever they’re worth – are still strong, you’d be blinkered not to notice that neighboring North Dakota pays vastly less per student for about the same results.
Against this backdrop of failure and anti-parent recrimination, the GOP has consistently stood for the full range of answers to the problem:
Or, to sum it up:
Republicans: Parental Control, Choice and Learning.
Against this, the DFL has consistently fought for what’s best for Education – with a capitol “E”, anyway. This isn’t just bagging on the teachers’ unions; Institutional Education at all levels, from Big Adminsitration to Big Consolidation to Big Union all have their role. Against this, there is no Big Parent; indeed, the GOP is the closest we’ve got to such a thing.
And the best the DFL can come up with is “the GOP wants to cut education funding”. It’s a powerful argument – if you don’t dig beneath the facility of the numbers. Minnesota’s “best” public schools in terms of student achievement are its cheapest; the state’s few remaining one, two and three-room country schools. Its worst, overall, are the ones that are most “blessed” with resouces.
So we can sum it up:
Democrats: Bureaucracy and Failure.
The truth is out there; the track record is clear:
Republicans: Parental Control, Choice and Learning. Democrats: Bureaucracy and Failure.
Tomorrow, “Security”
When I was first in the Twin Cities, producing for Don Vogel, we’d occasionally joke about where and how far we wanted the show to go.
Someone’d occasionally chime in “…and someday, we wanna beat Steve Cannon”.
Then everyone would get a good laugh. Beating Steve Cannon – who’d been doing afternoon driver forever on WCCO even then – was pure fantasy. Cannon – a throwback to an age in radio that seems completely foreign to the casual listener today – dominated afternoons in the Twin Cities for a generation.
Anyway, Cannon passed away yesterday at age 81.
the 1970s and ’80s, when WCCO dominated the airwaves, Cannon held court as the gruffest, most gregarious of the “Good Neighbors,” making his voice as recognizable to many Midwesterners as everyone’s cantankerous but lovable uncle who never skips the cocktail hour.”It’s awfully tough comparing the 125 people in our hall of fame, but in terms of sheer talent, does anyone stand out above Cannon?” said Steve Raymer, managing director of the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting in St. Louis Park, which honored the legend in 2002.
Cannon was famous for doing his show with three “co-hosts” – all of them characters he voiced himself, live and on the fly.
The DFLers that control the Minnesota Legislature want to gut local government accountability, and they want it gutted right now.
Michael Brodkorb, writing in his capacity as Communications Director for the Senate GOP Caucus, sends the following news release (emphasis added):
STATEMENT FROM SENATE MINORITY LEADER ON MINNESOTA SENATE VOTING TO REMOVE REQUIREMENT OF “TRUTH IN TAXATION” HEARINGS; SENATE GOP AMENDMENT TO CONTINUE “TRUTH IN TAXATION” HEARINGS DEFEATED
(St. Paul) – In response to preliminary action today by the Minnesota
Senate to remove the requirement of a separate “Truth in Taxation”
hearing for local units of government, Senate Minority Leader David
Senjem (R-Rochester) released the following statement:“As a former city council member, I will attest that ‘Truth in
Taxation” hearings provide an invaluable opportunity for a specific
meeting dedicated to discussing the budget and to hearing directly from
citizens regarding the tax policy of local governments.Ending ‘Truth in Taxation’ hearings at a time in history when we
need more citizens involved with their government and paying more
attention to tax policy in Minnesota is simply wrong.”###
Senator Senjem offered an amendment to SF 3 to continue the practice of
“Truth in Taxation” hearings, but the amendment was defeated 23 (19
Rs, 4 Ds) to 40 (40 Ds). Please see an attached copy of the roll call
vote.
Why would they do this?
Simple. Much of the DFL’s agenda, especially in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, is enacted at the local level. That’s one of the reasons that the DFL cried so long and hard about the cuts to Local Government Aid six years ago; it curbed the redistribution of wealth from the parts of the state that work to the parts that have suffered under generations of debilitating DFL hegemony.
If the peasants can’t see how the local units are spending the money they get, they can’t get upset. If they can’t get upset, then there’s no reason to upset the DFL’s applecart.
The good news? The GOP held the line, and picked up four DFL defectors (more below). It wasn’t nearly enough; that’s one of the reasons the MNGOP needs to get its act together and make the Legislature an actual contest again.
Joining Sen. Senjem in voting for “continue the hearings” amendment; Senators Anderson (!), Day, Dille, Doll, Fischbach, Frederickson, Gerlach, Gimse, Hann, Ingebrigtson, Johnson, Jungbauer, Koch, Koering, Kommer, Lynch, Michel, Ortman, Robling, Rosen, Vandeveer and Wiger.
The rest voted for the amendment.
Your government in action.
So the mission is this: dispense with the careerism and backbiting and just-plain-doesn’t-matter buncombe that occupies so much of the MNGOP’s time, and come up with a message – a message that’ll not only unite the party, but reach out to people who aren’t especially affiliated with either party to begin with. A message that will clearly frame the fact that there is a very clear choice between Republicans and Democrats.
Here’s the hard part; they have to be messages that even Republicans agree on amongst themselves. And that’s a tough one; leaving aside the single-issue voters who might be completely ignorant about issues outside their turf (I can’t count the number of single-issue pro-lifers who’ve claimed to oppose, say, concealed-carry reform, just because they had never cared to learn about the issue beyond what the media told them), a lot of the messages that are absolutely vital to one group of Republicans can be anathema – or at least not very important – to others.
Good example? Gay marriage. It’s an issue worth taking up arms over to some Republicans; to the GOP’s tiny gay minority, it’s a goal; to a lot of us (the “Mitch Berg Bloc”, let’s call us), it’s various degrees of “important, but not the most important issue out there. In any case, it’s an stance that serves more to ensure ideological purity within a movement than to win elections.
The goal here, once again: find messages all Republicans can agree on, and that can win people over to the party. The idea is this; when we’re back in power, we can fuss about all the issues that divide us; if we’re out of power, we lose on all the issues, no matter what; the Democrats will gut-shoot every liberty that matters while they’re in power.
Last week, I suggested three of those messages:
Prosperity.
Education.
Security.
These are all make-or-break issues on the state level (these are not intended for the national party, although two out of three should be), both for unting the party and winning over voters.
We’re going to go over one of them per day. We’ll start with prosperity.
America has a hard time not being prosperous. You airdrop ten Americans in the desert with jackknives and plastic tubing and come back in a week and they’ll have built an ice cream machine, and a commodity market to trade ice cream futures and spin them into complex derivatives that they can sell to the Saudis and then short-sell when the Russians move extra capacity into the sherbet market, making money on the up and downsides.
Oh, business has up and down cycles – creative destruction isn’t just a great band name. But as John McCain (and now Barack Obama) said, the fundamentals of the American economy – immense human and material resources, drive, constantly-replenishing intellectual capital) are more sound than in any econony on earth…
…provided government gets out of the way. The most dismal periods in recent American history – the most extended swatches of misery – are the times when government opted to “help” solve financial crises with taxation, regulation and intervention. Government intervention extended the Great Depression until the beginning of World War II (and, without the war, it’d have likely lasted well into the forties) when it would likely have ended on its own by about 1937-8. And government regulation and aggressive taxation – the bastard children of FDR and LBJ’s policies – helped make the seventies the dismal morass they were. And let’s not forget that the mortgage bubble grew out of the government’s mandates to expand sub-prime lending, socializing the risks of shoddy loans.
The more you leave government out of the equation (yes, yes, make sure nobody’s making baby formula out of arsenic, and yes, the courts exist to an extent to help people get relief from business’ excesses), the better things are. Any number of the world’s great philosophers and economics and economic philosophers, from Smith to Hayek, have shown how it works; all the greatest periods in American (and world) economic history have accompanied periods of enlightened deregulation.
Conservatives stand for “limited government” – but that’s another ephemeral concept to an awful lot of people. How do you shrink government? You starve it!
So how do you sum that up briefly?
Like this:
Republicans: Low Taxes, Prosperity and Freedom.
Low taxes lead to free markets lead to jobs, which leads to prosperity. Low taxes mean you have more money; having more of the fruits of your labor at your own disposal is freedom – very likely the most-used freedom in our society today. It’s the freedom to take a trip, donate to charity, put money away for your kids’ education, buy a car, change careers…whatever you choose (which benefit in turn the travel industry, charities, banks, car dealers…)
Republicans equal low taxes. Low taxes equal prosperity. Prosperity equals freedom.
So how does this compare with the alternative?
Democrats: Taxes and Control.
The Democrats believe that your earnings belong first to government; that government’s mission, and keeping that mission funded, is the reason you work. Anything left over? Well, don’t spend it all in one place!
When government claims the fruits of your labor, you don’t control what you do with a third of your life. You cede control of what you do to the government; you cede your freedom.
DFL Senator Cy Thao put it well at the beginning of the 2007 session; “When you guys win, you get to keep your money. When we win, we take your money!”. If the GOP doesn’t make up T-shirts with this saying emblazoned in white on black and distribute them througout the state, they don’t deserve to be a party.
The choice is simple; freedom to enjoy the results of your hard work versus being (in effect) government property.
It’s not just fuzzy-headed libertarian theory; Obama’s current spending mania is going to make you, your children, and your grandchildren into de facto government servants for their entire lives.
There’s nothing abstract about this.
Republicans: Low Taxes, Prosperity and Freedom. Democrats: Taxes and Control.
Tomorrow: Education.
It’s that most wonderful time of the year, Tartan Day!
Today, Scots-Americans will stream through downtown Saint Paul and Minneapolis, clutching ill-concealed liquor bottles and blaring on noisemakers. Politicians and media people will prepend “Mac-” to their names and recite Keats and Burns before crowds of cheering onlookers.
Large, unruly parades led by bagpipe bands will step through slicks of vomit (tinted blue, from the blue-dyed stout and single-malt whiskey that’ll be lubricating the good times) amid hordes of tartan or blue-and-white clad, kilt-bedecked revelers, wending their way to both City Halls, where the crowds will paint their faces a merry Saint Andrew’s Blue and moon the government, bellowing “Ye canna take our FREEDOM!”
The questions they should ask themselves is, without Scots-Americans, would there even be an America as we know it?
From the framers of the Declaration of Independence to the first man on the moon, Scottish-Americans have contributed mightily to the fields of the arts, science, politics, law, and more. Today, over eleven million Americans claim Scottish and Scotch-Irish roots — making them the eighth largest ethnic group in the United States. These are the people and the accomplishments that are honored on National Tartan Day, April 6th.
So put some Black Watch and Big Country on your IPod (you do have some Black Watch, right? Or the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders? The Pipes and Drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards? Oh, for crying out loud, even the amalgamated Bands of the Highland Division? C’mon, people) and celebrate!
It’s Tartan Day, 2009. Rejoice!
The latest news from Fargo/Moorhead is that the Red River of the North is headed for another crest in 2-3 weeks, and it could be higher than the one last weekend. There’s some controversy about this – Fargo’s mayor Dennis Walaker, who is an engineer with some background in the subject, says he believes it’ll actually be lower than last week’s peak – but time will tell.
In any case, the Red will remain high, and the dikes will to some extent remain under pressure, and a wet spell in the next few weeks could change all that for the worse.
So while Mayor Walaker has told the citizens of Fargo to rest up this weekend (and they deserve it), city engineers and workers are checking the dikes, and making plans to raise the ones they have, and reinforce and upgrade the secondary dikes they’ve built as insurance against failures in the primary dike system.
So here’s my question: anyone in the Twin Cities thinking about car-pooling up to help one of these weekends? If the next crest falls on a weekend, I’m thinking about trekking up to the F/M, and I thought I’d see if anyone else was interested.
Hopefully Mayor Walaker is right and it won’t be an issue, but…well, see the title.
I try to be civil. Really, I do. Even across party lines. Some of my best friends are liberals. I talk with liberals; I’m the guy who works overtime to invite liberals to MOB parties; heck, even Uptake invited me on their show to talk last weekend. I got interviewed in the friggin’ Utne Reader, for crying out loud!
Not saying I try to cozy up to the other side. But I am not one to suspend the Golden Rule just because I differ with someone’ politics. I prize civility.
But I have my limits.
As my friend and Salem Radio colleague Dennis Prager says, I strive for clarity more than agreement. Being clear is a genuine virtue, especially in political blogging – a trade built to a great extent on obfuscation and spin.
So when “Tom Angelo” at Minnesota Progressive Project writes:
Mitch “Thank God for Tom Delay” Berg likes to pick on us here at MN Progressive Project…
Let’s do try to be clear: I don’t like to “pick on” the MPP.
I like to reply to little bon mots like this, in about the same way I like to shoot rubber bands when I’m bored:
Here is an excerpt from a post on Mitch’s site yesterday:
The stock market does well for a president – Clinton – who, to be fair, was forced to do a decent, hands-off job on economic policy by a conservative congress, and to be even more fair was benefitting from the “Peace Dividend” Ronald Reagan gave him: “The President is responsible for the strong market!”
The stock market starts correcting into a mild recession as overvalued tech stocks correct at the very end of his term in office: “The President is not responsible for the market!”
The already-ailing market tumbles after 9/11: “The President is responsible for the weak market!”
Leaving aside the historical errors in the post, you can see what he’s doing, making the case that the performance of the markets is assigned to the president on a partisan basis. When there is a Democrat in office and the market is doing well than it’s because of the President. When a Republican is in office and the market is doing well it’s not because of the president.
But do you notice what is missing from Mitch’s post?
Proof.
That’s right, “Mr. Angelo”. Because it’s a qualitative observation. There is no quantitative measurement for impressions of bias (which is why people like, say, everyone on the MPP can get away with saying the mainstream media is conservative). There is no “proof”, per se, short of piling up dozens of quotes from drooling leftybloggers and cable-TV shills saying…exactly what I said.
But let’s continue. I like to mock the Minnesota Progressive Project for their mindless hyperdramatics.
I like to make sure the world knows that some of your “writers” are shrieking ninnies who are groaningly incurious and are, let’s be honest, almost too obvious to parody.
I want to make sure that we’re clear on the fact that the Minnesota Progressive Project posted a “diary” by an anonymous hitblogger who turns out to be a sad, risible little fellow from New York who is motivated by a curious vendetta; the piece had not a single word of of truth in it (except for the bits that are either standard industry practices or things the NARN has been joking about for years). It used a manufactured source that has gone public and disavowed the use of his information in the context that Fred Gates (“Jimmy Olson” to the MPP) presented it. It was, in short, a lie. Pure and simple. And the MPP ran it without question.
Hit the link. It’s got the proof.
Oh, yeah – and that if you want to find out things about Mitch Berg, you should do what a “journalist” would do and ask, rather than send giggling, dippy chuzzlewits like Grace Kelly calling around town looking for dirt on me. (Yes, Grace, you gutless hack, you are busted!)
And when you pile all that together, I guess I don’t so much like to say “if brains, talent and integrity were gasoline, the entire staff of the Minnesota Progressive Project couldn’t drive a moped around the inside of a Cheerio” so much as I merely find the statement accurate enough to run with.
Glad we’re clear on that.
I’m on my way to The Uptake’s undisclosed location in Saint Paul for a taping.
On the one hand, I’ve been told to be careful; “Uptake’s a bunch of hard-lefties; watch for the ambush”. I’ve certainly encountered the group’s seamy side before.
On the other hand, I’m always up for an adventure. Things seem – before the fact – to be on the up-and-up.
We’ll see!
Interested in opposing the Baby DNA bill? Check out the following:
And make sure you call your state reps, senators, and of course Governor Pawlenty. Tell ’em you don’t want the state building a genetic database without our informed consent.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM:
So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:
Join us!
(Title: Mr. Bad Example)
This is good news for Saint Paul.
Tonight, I attended the formal announcement of the Eva Ng For Mayor campaign, at the James J. Hill Mansion on Summit Avenue.
Ng (pronounced “Ing”) is about five feet of dynamite. She’s a Vietnamese-American businesswoman with a long track record as an executive and – are you paying attention, Saint Paul? – turnaround consultant.
In a city that on the one hand complains about being short of money and on the other hand is building ice arenas and gives the mayor a staff of 22 (most of whom have one or more deputies), she’s a woman who’s had to make payroll and come in on time and under budget.
Just as important, perhaps? In a city where the foreclosure crisis is leaving thousands of vacant homes (exacerbated by City Council policies) sending property values into the tank, she’s a property-rights advocate (and I saw not a few property rights people from across the aisle – DFLers! – at the party tonight).
Candidate Ng is going to be on the Northern Alliance Radio Network on April 11. This is gonna be dynamite.
UPDATE: Jamie Delton was also there.
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