Yesterday, I noted that, from an activist’s perspective, the MNGOP seems to want to centralize control of its message – keeping activists and bloggers it doesn’t control at arms length – but at the same time, that it doesn’t seem to know what its’ message is.

It’s a real problem.  It’s easy for Democrats to get on message; most people learned the key points of Democratic/Liberal philosophy in kindergarten; “share and share alike! Take your fair share! Everyone is exactly the same (except your teachers, of course)!”.  Take these simple tropes, tack on the element of state force to get compliance, and you basically have the DFL message; “Share what we think we need, or we’ll take what we want”.  They word it more nicely, but that’s really about it.

It’s more complicated when you’re right of center; many of the tenets of center-right thought are harder, almost counterintuitive, to the things we were tought when we were five years old; merit, tough love, rights don’t impinge other rights, enumerated powers, individual responsibility.

And even with that, there are so many flavors of thought in the GOP:

• The Ron Paul crowd – basically Libertarians who saw a major party ripe for the picking.  They are largely hardcore civil libertarians, largely without the faintest interest in social conservative issues.
• Evangelicals – largely social conservatives; they focus (some of them almost to exclusion) on issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research; I’ve met not a few that were hard-core pro-lifers who were wobbly on Second Amendment and even fiscal issues (I’m talking to you, Mike Huckabee).
• Culture Conservatives – Similar to the Evangelicals, although not always motivated by faith; immigration, gay marriage and the near reaches of social policy motivate them.
• Fiscal Hawks – These range from Center of the American Experiment policy wonks to Jason Lewis’ hordes of tax hawks.  Many are social conservatives, but it’s no lock.
• “Reagan” Democrats  – There are not a few moderate DFLers – union members, blue-collar guys and gals, veterans – who are nauseated by some combination of Dems’ policies.
• Homesteaders – That’s my term for the small, but growing, groups of black Republicans who realize the DFL represents a tragic quackery on education and welfare, and Hispanics who are tired of having their conservative social beliefs piddled on, Asians who recognize the DFL’s threat to free enterprise, African immigrants who’ve already lived through third-world hell and don’t want to see Minnesota even start to flirt with more of the same, and even a few Gay conservatives who are tired of being treated as ripe voting sucks by a party that expects their votes in exchange for not a helluva lot but rhetoric in return.
• “Moderates” – These people used to control the party; the likes of Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman pine for the days when Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger were the voices of the MNGOP.  They[‘re still out there; the Override Six battle showed they’re still alive,well, and – this is important – a non-trivial force in the party.
• “Pragmatists”  – Moderate?  Conservative?  Fiscal Hawk?  Opportunist?  They may be a minority in your BPOU caucus, but they’re pretty prominent in the party leadership and, lest we forget, the governor’s mansion.
• Security Voters – Maybe they remember the joke that was the Democratic Party during the Cold War; maybe they recall the way the Dems giggled and skipped away as the Communists inflicted epic mass murder on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; maybe they’re sick of Minnesota’s catch and release criminal justice system; maybe they still see the Twin Towers burning when they go to the polls.  Whatever; they are Republicans because they see that the Dems are whores on the battlefieldand generals in the bedroom when it comes to security, at home and abroad.
• The Mitch Berg Bloc – This last bloc, of indeterminate size (from one to thousands; nobody knows for sure) represents people who are fiscal hawks, social libertarians, personal Christians, legal Constitutionalists and who are pragmatic yet absolutist on security.

To make it challenging, remember; without any of these blocs (Homesteaders and the Mitch Bergs might be expendable, sorta), the party will have a very hard time winning.  And that means any bloc; the RINOs, damn the luck, are as important as the fiscal hawks.
So what happens when you put a Taxpayers’ League wonk, a MCCL activist and Ron Paul supporter in a room?

Currently, not much; the pro-lifer calls the other two RINOs on social issues; the wonk calls his roommates RINOs on fiscal issues, and the Paulbot bags on the others’ commitment to small government and liberty.

And they’re all wrong.  And they’re all right.  And it’s no way to run a party, either way.

———-

In the past, I’ve used the metaphor of the “Tug of War” to describe my beliefs about partisan politics.  We live in a pluralistic society; nobody is ever going to convince everyone to believe as they do, to “pull the other side into the mud pit”, to complete the metaphor; the best they can hope for is to convince as many people as possible to join their team to “pull the rope” for their particular issue as far as possible in the direction they want.  Which doesn’t necessarily mean “compromise right out of the gate”; indeed, it means “pull like hell” – to a point.

As a Reagan Conservative – a center-right fiscal conservative and social libertarian – I’ve set my stake in the ground.  I wrote the “True North Manifesto” almost two years ago – and with its six key pillars (Liberty, Prosperity, Security, Limited Government, Culture, Family) it was a pretty decent summation of center-right conservatism as I’ve seen if I say so myself (and I say so myself).  Those are the six ropes I haul on, and try to convince others to join me in pulling for.

But when you run a genuine big tent party, there are many, many of these tugs of war – many of them within the party itself.  What does “limited government” mean to Arne Carlson?  What is “Security” to a Hispanic conservative, a 9/11 Democrat, or a Ron Paul supporter?

The problem is, to get anything of this implemented into policy, you have to win elections, no matter what bloc you belong to.  And with the Minnesota GOP this fragmented, that looks dicey.  But if the GOP isn’t in power, it’s for sure that the DFL is not going to stand for anything we believe in, whether fiscal sanity or law and order or the sanctity of human life.

What’s a party to do?

———-

My friend Andy Applikowki at the blog Residual Forces  – one of my colleagues on the ruling junta at True North – put it well at an editorial meeting a few months back.  Paraphrasing, he said we need, as a party, to put aside the things we disagree on to fight for the things we do agree on.

He’s right, of course.  If you oppose abortion, who is more likely to return your call when she’s in office – a Republican for whom it’s a non-issue, or a Democrat for whom it’s a social sacrament?

It’s a no-brainer; no GOP power, no progress on the things any of us, Paulbots and MCCLers and Jason Lewis fans and, by the way, me, believe in.

So what do all Republicans, from all corners of the party and every place in between, agree on, on a statewide level (meaning “things that state elected officials will ever have to deal with), that we can turn into a winning message?

Hint:  They all tie in with “Freedom” at the root of it all.  But “Freedom” is an ephemeral concept – a great, beautiful one that hundreds of thousands of our forefathers (and brothers and sisters, really) died to protect.  But one of the great political aphorisms is “it’s the economy, stupid”; people think in terms of tangible things that hit them where they live, day in, day out.

And for the Republican voter, and (more importantly) the non-affiliated voter who can be persuaded, there are three of these issues I’m going to suggest:

Prosperity.

Education.

Security.

We’ll address each of these – and why each gives the voter a reason to vote Republican, and why Republicans do have to agree on these – starting Monday.

“Ollie Ox” at “A Bluestem Prairie” – what is it with leftybloggers and anonymity? – has apparently realized that liberalism is a vapid mind-suck, and that her fellow liberal bloggers range from talentless ninniesm comically depraved hacks, and wannabee Frank Riches, and has decided to shutter her blog:

After posting at this blog for 2 years, 8 months, we’re feeling the need to spruce up the joint. Bluestem will be shuttered after today until June 1, when the blog will return as a venue for nonfiction essays about rural topics.Thanks for reading

OK, I made up the rationale. It seems to be in vogue.

Oh, all kidding aside, I’ve mixed it up with Bluestem Prairie in the past, but “Ollie” was one of very few anonymous leftybloggers who seemed not to abuse her anonymity as a cover for gutless, abusive hackery.  Why, it’s almost like she wrote stuff a normal person could attach a name to.

Hm. Radical concept.

Anyway, all the best.

(Two years and eight months?  Sheesh.  I can do that standing on my head).

To:  Congressional Republicans

From: Mitch Berg, mere voter

Re: Timing is Everything, peabrains.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the House and Senate GOP caucuses:

I’m glad to see that you, plural, are finally drawing the line and doing the right thing on spending:

I’ve received word that the Senate passed our current budget monstrosity 55-43. No Republican defections: we picked up Bayh and Nelson of Florida. Earlier, the House version passed 233/196 with no Republicans voting for it, 20 Democrats voting against it, with supposed fiscal conservatives (and European junketeers) Charlie Melancon (LA-03) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) singled out for special ridicule as being part of the group of Blue Dogs that signed off on a 3.6 trillion dollar budget. In short, the GOP Held The Line again.

Kudos.  I’m glad.

Now, if you’d managed a bit for of this sort of thing over the past eight years, you might just be in the majority today.

Winston Churchill said in the wake of Dunkirk “wars aren’t won by evacutations”.  Likewise, countries aren’t saved by rearguard actions.

Do try to keep this in mind.

That is all.

The executive editor at the NYTimes says the paper will “survive the deluge”:

Times executive editor Bill Keller also said at Stanford:
* Readers have offered to donate money to keep the Times alive. (“Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.”)

Having seen the onslaught of charity the regional left poured forth for Kathleen Soliah ten years ago, I don’t doubt it one bit.  I also don’t doubt that any Darfuri refugee would do a better job of keeping the Administration honest than the Times will.

* “If you’re inclined to trust Google as your source for news — Google yourself.”

On the one hand, Google has been fairly accused of bowdlerizing conservative thought every bit as flagrantly as the NYTimes.

On the other hand, I have little doubt that if Google was circling the drain, we wouldn’t be subjected to the cultural sturm und drang the newspapers are trying to inflict on us.

I wish I had written this take down of Obama sans teleprompter…

“A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?”

Jimmy II, can I lend a hand? Start with Barney Frank.

Brown immediately swivels to leave Obama in pole position. There is a four-second delay before Obama starts speaking [click here for the rest]

Cheeky Brits.

Subliminal advertising in the form of product placement in entertainment programming is nothing new. 

24 in particular – which seems to have performed the unthinkable, and re-jumped the shark and become watchable after its terrible sixth season – has indulged in some really bald-faced placement this past few seasons; Cisco has insinuated WebEx (or some special counter-terror version of WebEx that looks utterly unfamiliar to those of us who’ve been teleconferencing with it for years, now) into the dangedest places on the show this season.

But I noticed something else earlier this season, and it came to a head this past Monday.

In Season Three, Jack Bauer switched from his trademark handgun of the first two seasons, the SIG-Sauer P226 (the Audi of handguns) to a Hecker and Koch USP (the BMW of handguns).

Fair enough.

But for the past two seasons, and especially this season, every time someone picks up a long arm (who isn’t an obvious M16/M4-carrying US serviceperson), it’s a Hecker & Koch weapon; MP7s and G36s have been joining the Redshirts‘ CTU Tac Teams’ FBI’s MP5s in the big shootouts.  Bauer has chased through at least a couple of firefights this season with the esoteric MP7.

And then, this past episode, Agent Hotpants called in that Quinn had used “a Hecker and Koch UMP Submachine Gun” to kill Senator Red Foreman.  Now, you never hear the full make and model of firearms on TV, outside of reality or fictional cop shows (CSI or occasionally Law and Order), and even then only very rarely, and almost always very generically (“Beretta”, “AK”, “Smith and Wesson”).

So I gotta wonder – is H’nK paying for placement on 24?  Perhaps to help move their excellent products from their brand new American factory? 

And if so, could they perhaps try advertising on blogs as well?

Because either way it’s pretty dang cool.

When you’re a conservative blogger, especially in Minnesota, you get used to being actively insulted and derided by the state’s dominant political/media class.

But ignored?

Bear in mind, Minnesota’s center-right blogging community is, if not the most active and vital political blogging community in the nation, easily among the very short list at the top of the heap.  From the bigs like my friends at Powerline and Hot Air, to erudite generalists like TvM and FreedomDogs, to acerbic, focused niche-bloggers like Nihilist in Golf Pants, Speed Gibson and True North and many, many more (see the MOBroll, leave out the non-conservatives and you get the idea), Minnesota’s center-right blogging underground is big, passionate, and disporportionally influential. 

So when Chris Cilizza at the WaPo started a list of the “Best State Political Blogs”, state-by-state, nationwide, it was reasonable to figure that while it’d probably overrepresent leftybloggers (packs of dogs will sniff each others’ butts, no doubt about it) – but you’d think they’d have some fodder with which to impart balance.

Trusting the MSM, of course, is always a long walk to a short splash.  Behold, “Baghdad Chris” Cilizza’s “Best Minnesota Political Blogs”. 

Ahem:

* MN Publius
* Minnesota Campaign Report
* MN Blue
* Politics in Minnesota
* Polinaut

Polinaut is an institutional MPR production; it’s good and useful, to be sure, but not exactly an organic part of the local blog scene.  Politics in Minnesota is a great aggregator of regional political thought; their daily run-downs of the “best of Minnesota blogs” has treated Shot In The Dark and True North very well; they also routinely run four leftyblog links for every overt conservative blog link.  Que sera sera; it’s a game effort…

…compared to the rest of Chris Cilizza’s risible list.

MNPublius is OK; they’re a DFL flakblog; they’re like Minnesota Democrats Exposed, only without the regular game-changing scoops.  Minnesota Campaign Report is earnest but comical. 

MNBlue (Note, Mr. Cilizza; they’re called “Minnesota Progressive Project” these days)?  Well, when they’re not letting Grace Kelly regurgitate her tingly-fingered Obama worship or her addledpated 9/11 conspiracy theories, they’re broadcasting risibly-obvious lies from anonymous hacks with curious axes to grind. In other words, they are the single dumbest blog in all of Minnesota.  Bar none.

In the meantime, you’ll look in vain for Minnesota’s real influential political blogs; Powerline and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, homegrown productions that are among the most powerful blogs in the world; for MDE, which made headlines in the NYTimes and was perhaps more responsible than anyone for erasing Barack Obama’s coattails for Al Franken; for the scads of center-right bloggers that get better traffic and more credibility than at least two of Cilizza’s choices.

It’s a polling thing, of course; liberals read the WaPo, and if you read leftyblogs from Kos and Atrios on down to Minnesota Progressive Report, it’s pretty obvious the typical leftyblog commenter does nothing but sit in his mom’s basement and crank out dyspeptic screeds eighteen hours a day; stacking the votes in a poll like Cilizza’s is child’s play for that pack of loonies.

But otherwise-savvy commentators are passing Cilizza’s story on as if it’s a legitimate commentary on Minnesota’s blog scene.

Not half the story?  Try “not a tenth”. 

(By the way – Rachel Stassen-Berger?  Why does “Political Animal” not take comments or post an email address?)

Guaranteed…had it not been an April Fool’s Joke.

Obama Changes NASCAR by Ordering GM and Chrysler Out

The list (click above) of those outlets that fell for it is pretty interesting…and bi-partisan.

Touche’ Car and Driver!

…then again…who can blame them for falling for it…anything goes in this administration.

Do I have to go the Post Office for warranty repairs on my Suburban now?

I’ve been writing for years about the problems I see in the Minnesota Republican Party.  It’s taken years to even start figuring it all out.

How can an organization so chock full of talented, smart, motivated, passionate people find so many clever ways to shoot itself in the foot with flamethrowers?

I used to think it was just a problem with leadership.  And there are problems there; I can’t count the grassroots GOP activists who’ve railed against the feeling that all the real decisionmaking took place in a smoke-filled back room weeks before they showed up at the district or state convention; that debate was tolerated as a ticket-punching exercise rather than a key part of setting party policy.

And there are signs that leadership is a big issue; the state and district GOPs seem paralyzed at the thought of devolving any power outward; they seem to want control at the expense of results.  A great example – the party’s “Voter Vault” voter ID database, which is mandated from the national party, but is reportedly so rife with data integrity and usability issues as to be nearly useless for, y’know, identifying voters.  Having sat in boilerrooms and made countless calls to people who had no idea why they were getting calls from the GOP, I’ll testify.

And control is, I think, the MNGOP’s big issue – but parliamentary procedure and technology are only the barest surface layer of the problem.

Closer to the core of the issue?  The party has a notoriously standoffish attitude toward Minnesota’s big, passionate, thriving center-right blogging community. Oh, there are exceptions; Michael Brodkorb and MDE is a big and important one.

But it seems the party is so fanatical about “controlling its message” that it doesn’t want anyone else to have access to that message.

At lunch with another center-right activist last week, I mentioned this; she responded (just before I would have continued with the same line) “they don’t even know what their message is!”

And therein lies the rub; what is the MNGOP’s message?  What does it stand for?

And that, of course, is where it gets complicated.  The MNGOP is a big-tent party, in which social conservatives, Ron Paul Libertarians, “Moderates” (think Ron Erhard or Arne Carlson), Jason-Lewis’ hordes of tax-hawks, 9/11 Democrats, and inner-city political homesteaders try to duke it out for control in an exercise that, at the moment, looks like Italian parliamentary maneuvering.

How does a party fashion a cohesive message out of this Babel?

More tomorrow.

NOTE: While I welcome all comments, this thread (and the threads in this series) are going to be by, about, and for Minnesota Republicans.  I’ll be a lot less tolerant of tangents than normal.  I reserve the right to edit and excise without notice.  Thanks!

The national media loves Michele Bachmann; conservative media have made her probably the most-booked member of the House’s sophomore class because she is a no-holds-barred, no-compromise conservative Ultimate Fighter who is both telegenic and, usually, much more articulate than the typical pol.  Watching or listening to most politicians is indistinguishable from reading their press releases; Bachmann’s got style.

Leftymedia like her because, ironically, she’s got style; as noted here before, she’s not measured and calculating; she speaks from her heart, which is on a specially-built structure way ahead of her sleeve. When she gets on a rhetorical roll, she can be a little like Captain Wild Bill Kelso.

Of course, this being Minnesota, our in-the-bag mainstream media and too-often-deranged lefty “alternative” media will focus on Bachmann to exclusion (as their masters demand).

Fortunately, we have a conservative altmedia these days that can spread the joy around a little bit.  Brian at Fraters has been doing the gumshoe gatekeeping that the rest of the Twins’ media refuses to in re my “representative”, Betty “Rubble” McCollum.  He presents three posts and counting ( here, here and here) of Rep. McCollum’s gaffes.

One consistent theme is McCollum’s tendency to use unnecessary, dramatic adjectives. Example, her comments on the never ending Coleman-Franken election recount:

“Now that the state Canvassing Board has certified Mr. Franken as the winner of Minnesota’s Senate seat, following an exceptionally transparent, bipartisan, and meticulous recount process, it is time for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to immediately seat Mr. Franken to ensure that Minnesotans have full representation in the U.S. Senate.”

Betty McCollum’s hierarchy of transparency:— buttered slice of 7-grain bread: slightly transparent
—- jar of Vaseline: moderately transparent
—— pane of glass: very transparent
——– Minnesota’s election recount process: exceptionally transparent

Oh, there’s more.  Much more. Check it out.

First Ringer from TvM did.  And he notes:

The real reason no one cares to make the slightest issue out of any “oops!” statement Betty McCollum makes is that she’s safely entrenched in her seat.  Short of cutting a campaign commerical with a heroin needle in one arm and a bottle of Jack Daniels cradled in the other, McCollum will be repeatedly returned to Washington by 30 or 40-point margins.  As Fraters‘ Brian “St. Paul” Ward bemoans, “the combination of the belief that she is called on to save the world and her control over US taxpayer dollars, which she believes to be unlimited, is a toxic asset and a prescription for disaster…Does the bubble ever pop on these people?”

They used to say that the only way for a Democrat to lose office in Chicago was to be caught with a live boy or a dead girl.  I’d say “it’s the other way around for McCollum”, but in the Fourth District, I’m not even that sure.

As Minnesotans tighten their belts, DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson spends the equivalent of ten typical peoples’ incomes giving her offices some TLC.

Ryan Flynn at MDE:

What most of people never see is the office where the attorney general actually works in the Capitol. It’s behind the main reception area away from public view.

And, at taxpayer’s expense, nearly $400,000 of repairs and alterations have been done since 2006 at the attorney general’s office at the Capitol and at offices in downtown St. Paul.

Wasn’t that the kind of thing that got people exercised about AIG?

…someone please pass the word to the NotSoBright-o-Sphere that not only is the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) utterly apolitical…

…but our “membership” (which is entirely a matter of saying “Hey, Mitch/Chad/Brian, I wanna be on the MOB Blogroll!” and coming to one of our parties) has no concept of “standing”.  There are no qualifications, no standards, no dues, no nothing.

So if, hypothetically, someone uses the phrase “…MOB Member in Good Standing”, you’ll know that they are just making stuff up.  Again,

Hypothetically.

That is all.

It comes down to three words.

More on Monday tomorrow.

May I present for this week’s Hot Gear Friday Wednesday installment, the Phillips Norelco Nose and Ear Trimmer Model NT9110.

This high-performance, smartly-designed and thoughtfully-engineered grooming aid is a quiet, yet powerful hair removal system for the demanding, highly visible, metrosexual lifestyle of prominent bloggers like Mitch Berg and your own Johnny Roosh.

The NT9110 is 100% water resistant for easy use and cleaning, runs on one widely available AA Battery and includes:

• 2 eyebrow combs, long and short
• 2 trimming combs
• Protection cap
• 2-year world wide guarantee

I especially appreciate the motor’s turbine-like smoothness, the body’s quality feel, it’s sensuous form factor, and the tactile pleasure of holding my Phillips Norelco NT9110’s Soft-Grip rubber jacket as I advance it’s humming proboscis ever deeper into my aural and nasal cavities so as to keep my nostrils and ears free of follicular overgrowth for many hours at a time.

The business end of this precision-designed grooming machine is intuitively canted to maximize comfort and reach.

The water resistant design allows full-stream rinsing to remove the bounty of organic debris that collects as you comfortably navigate the aforementioned body cavities.

The efficacy of this appliance is demonstrated here in recent photos of me “before” and “after” employing my Phillips Norelco NT9110 before a recent MOB Gala.

As you can see, I’m no April fool. So if you’re like me, and of course you are – who wouldn’t want to be – you will appreciate the ease and efficiency with which the Phillips Norelco NT9110 keeps unwanted follicles at bay, leaving you with that just-groomed look for gatherings both business…

…and pleasure.

The NY20 special election is nearly a dead heat:

The race in the 20th Congressional district between Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy is too close to call.

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With 100 percent precincts reporting, Murphy leads Tedisco by only 59 votes, 77,344 to 77,285.

With nearly 6,000 absentee ballots that will essentially decide the race as of Monday, the election will not be decided at least until April 13.

Many regard the race – in which Tedisco, a GOP challenger, seeks to flip the seat formerly held by the rep who got promoted to Senator to replace now-Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton – as a referendum on President Obama.  I don’t see it quite that way; we’re barely two months into Obama’s epoch of joy term. The real referendum is coming in about 19 months.

Still, it’d be nice to flip a seat so early in the reign of enlightenment Obama’s term.

Paul at TvM reviews Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs by Robert Spencer:

A recurring theme is how Islamists target non-Muslims who resist the subversive Islamic supremacist campaign. Chapter Four “The International Jihad Against Free Speech” discusses controversies such as surrounded the 16-minute film “Fitna” by Dutch politician Geert Wilders and America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It by Mark Steyn (the darkest and most illuminating book that I have read in a while).

To understand how Islamic supremacists subvert US security by exploiting the bureaucratic and legalist mechanics of PC sensitivities, I urge leaping to the final two chapters. The penultimate, Chapter Ten “Compromised” recounts the most prominent US security compromises to accommodate Islamists, epitomized by the philosophical dispute between U.S. Army Reserve Major Stephen Coughlin, a top non-Islamic expert on Islamic law at the Pentagon, and Hesham Islam, special assistant for international affairs for the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Gordon R. England. Coughlin’s contract at the Pentagon was not renewed.

That’s the problem with small-“l” liberal democracy; its enemies turn its freedoms – and, as we’ve seen on American campuses, which would seem to be a vehicle for proving Parker’s thesis, its most closet-authoritarian tendencies – against it.

So what to do?  Well, for starters, continue throwing brickbats at the worst excesses of political correctness in this country. Find the place where it ceases to be a vehicle for positive change – I don’t really care if the “N-word”, “faggot” or “semprini” are ever acceptable in polite company again – and becomes a vehicle for petty authoritarianism and, as Spencer notes, worse.

What’s the worst thing about Al Franken’s slow, apparently inexorable path through the courts to the Senate?

Is it that he is – by all accounts from people who’ve had to deal with the guy socially – a jerk?  No – we aren’t electing a pal.

Is it that he has all the “Gravitas” of Carrot Top?

It will take Tuesday’s long-awaited ruling from a three-judge panel, an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, maybe a swing through the U.S. Supreme Court and possibly a separate journey through the federal court system.

And if all that works in Franken’s favor — well, that will be the easy part. Because even assuming he ultimately defeats Norm Coleman, Franken will still have to convince his new colleagues that he’s not just a celebrity.

“He is going to have a lot to prove,” says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker, “not only because of where he came from but by the means with which he got there. Republicans are going to regard him almost in the same way as Roland Burris, and clearly he is not.”

“Like all the celebrities that came before him, Al Franken is going to have to demonstrate he’s not using the U.S. Senate as another stage,” Baker says.

Yeah, that’s part of it.

Is it that he demonstrates for all to see that Minnesotans – 50.00000001 percent of them, anyway – are, yet again, a bunch of chuckleheaded yayhoos who treat their franchise with all the serious reverence of a frat-party drinking game?

Yeah, that’s another part of it.

That since election day Franken has spent less time in Minnesota than some Serbian war criminals?

Oh, yeah.  Big part.
Is it that you not only couldn’t find one Minnesotan out of a hundred who could explain to you how we went from a 200-vote Coleman lead on election night to a 300-ish-vote Franken lead today, and that there are dozens of different standards for counting contested votes in this state, and that even the state’s courts aren’t on top of it all, and that an election system which, we’ve been assured for decades, is awash in integrity really seems to be just as malleable and perforated as a New Jersey sanitation contract?

Yeah.  Big part of it.

It’s hollow consolation that Franken guarantees me six years of great blogging and talk radio material; my gain is Minnesota’s loss. What next, Minnesota?  Kathleen Soliah for Attorney General?  Betty McCollum as regent of the U of M? Phyllis Kahn carrying the Football for Obama?

A Minnesotan with a ballot is like a teenager with a can of spray paint.

Half of ’em, anyway.