I peeled this bit out of my liveblog, since I think it’s worth a discussion on its own.

One of the tempests in the teapot last night; a group of “liberty” members of the party were tweeting merrily away that Norm Coleman and that noted moderate Vin Weber were making phone calls on behalf of Tom Emmer.  Now, among the purist/libertarian wing of the party, Norm (and Pawlenty, for that matter) are anathema, because they’re just not pure enough.

Of course, absolute purism and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee; politics means compromise.  Did Norm and Governor Pawlenty always make the right compromises?  Perhaps not – but you have to be in office to be have an imperfect record.

But here’s a question I’d like to ask (if only rhetorically) to the “Emmer’s a RINO because Norm’s calling for him crowd”; which of Norm’s objectionable policies do you believe Emmer subscribes to, merley because Norm is making calls on his behalf?

Or is this just the most ofay attempt at guilt by association – policy by association, really – that I’ve ever seen?

Feel free to leave an answer in the comments.

4:58 – Seifert announced his retirement.  I say he runs for CD7 if Byberg doesn’t win.  I think it’s a swell idea.

4:55 – I was back on the floor casting my ballot when Seifert conceded.  Incredible class act.

Emmer is on stage now – it took me that long to get back to the press pit.

He’s speaking now. Great acceptance.

Only real question – how many “angry white male” references will the press and leftyblogs snif about?

4:40 – Results in:

• One “No Endorsement”
• Three Undecided
• 22 Blank
• Seifert – 876 (43.8%)
• Emmer – 1118 (56%)

Needs 1199 to endorse.  Seating for third ballot.  Back in a flash.

4:33 – Second ballot results coming out – after Carol Molnau!

4:21 – Still waiting.  Whip count says Emmer up 2-3 votes in CD4.  We’ll see.

3:35 – Change in the report d/t computation error:  Emmer 52.6, Seifert 42.5 is the new official count.

Next ballot now.  Heading to the floor.

3:00 – First ballot results are final:  53-43 Emmer. Herwig, Haas and Davis are off the ballot (none got more than percent, by my count).    Emmer is currently 126 votes shy of the endorsement.  Fifteen minutes til the next ballot.  Bill Haas is coming back to the stage.

Haas has, as I (verbally) predicted, tossed his votes to Seifert.  All 26 of them.

Now Leslie Davis – with six votes – is on stage.  “Rivvizend stakely cash more excusiwavbay.  Yatukka wiveabengay, extortinga file cuz he cknows I’m here”.  No endorsement.

Herwig up next:  Throws his votes, also, to Seifert.  36 of them.

2:56 – Reading results.  Seifert just topped 40% as we plod thorugh the Eighth district – so we’ll definitely have a second ballot.

2:47 – They’re still reading results.  We’ve been through CDs 1,2,4,5 and 6; Emmer is up by a bit, but the 7 and 8 should  both be strong for Seifer.

2:29 – I just got back off the floor, after the usual irritating rules squabbles.  They’re reporting votes a BPOU at a time.

SITD SCOOP

Scoop here:  CD4 hasn’t reported yet, but Emmer took the 4th by 89 to 60 out of 152 allowed ballots.  That’s a better ratio than he had at the CD4 convention.

1:27 – I’m told Davis said if he’s not endorsed, we face “unparalleled misery”.  Let’s just say he’s not got the crowd wrapped around his finger.

1:17 – I’m sorry – it’s actually Leslie Davis.

1:16 – Michael Savage is onstage now.  He’s not close enough to the mike.  First Ringer; “someone didn’t take their non-drowsy pill”.  Hard to hear him.

:14 – Bill C, out on the floor, says it looks like Emmer 3:2.  Chad the Elder says he figured 60-40.  Mark Buesgens says three ballots – but then that’s his job as a campaign leader.

1:10 – Leo Pusatieri tweets “Larry Haas makes Phil Herwig look absolutely dynamic”.  Sad to say, it’s true.

12;56 – Haas on stage now.  Alone.  No organization.  Halting speech.  Gotta be tough to follow Emmer and Seifert’s shows…

Chad the Elder wonders “what makes someone carry on a campaign like this?  No chance, no support…is it ego?  Or what?”  I note that Haas has an actual track record of implementing conservative principles in government.  First Ringer – “He’s the credible fringe candidate”.

12:55 – Larry Colson says the Emmer floor demonstration says crowd feels like 55-45 Emmer.  Floor demo passion looked way in Emmer’s favor.

12:52 – Emmer floor demonstration carrying on.  I’m gonna say it looks like Tom has a slight edge.

12:50 – Emmer shoots fireworks as he leaves stage.  Good thing they didn’t play “Once Bitten Twice Shy”.

12:49 – “Say yes to lower taxes, to leave more money in the pockets of people who earn it!”

12:45 – Shouting out to Annette Meeks – “She literally wrote the book on conservative government”.

12:44 – Emmer talking now.  Kevin Ecker thinks crowd looks 55-45 Emmer.  We’ll know soon enough.

12:32:  Seifert left stage with his mass of supporters.  Emmer video running now.  Or is it Leslie Davis? No, it’s Emmer.  Trying to count the duelling crowds is difficult.

Emmer hitting on the family thing – seven kids.

Hitting on principles.

First Ringer has joined me on bloggers row.  “Vote for Emmer or the kids get it”.

Video ends with tagline – “now’s the time to be done with politicians as usual.

Brian Sullivan on stage to give the nomination.

12:15 – Browser crashes hard jus tin time for Phil Krinkie to introuce Marty Seifert.  Marty on stage now.  His organizaiton is showing, for better (boots on floor) and worse (all those frankly dumb hit pieces).   He’s hittting his rural roots hard.  Not sure if that’s a big winning tack in a year with statewide issues uniting us all.  We shall see.

12:05 -And still talking.

11:55 – Snuck away to a standup with Michele Bachmann.  She is studiously avoiding endorsing anyone.

11:45 – Phil Herwig is talking.

11:44 – Rumor has it that someone “really big” is going to introduce Emmer.  Rumor is passing around that there’ a “higher degree of security” than for, say, a congressperson.  There’s talk of Palin, but nothing is confirmed.  Pure rumor mill.

11:34 – Kolls – “Anyone ready to endorse a governor?”  Huge round of applause. Hopes up…

…but all we get is a credentials report.  Still – almost time to head back to the floor to vote.

11:05 – Governor Pawlenty is on stage now.  “Fortunate Son” is the song.  I’m waiting for some leftyblogger to mewl about the “irony” of it, understanding neither the term nor the song…

He opens by thanking the First Lady.  Drew a huge round of applause.

“Ironic that we’re meeting here just a few weeks after “tax day” – or as Democrats call it, “Christmas”.  Hammering on Dems’ spending mania.   “Bailouts – 700 billion.  Increase in deficit – 2 trillion.  Republicans elected in November – priceless”.

Notes that he’s the only governor in the US to sign concealed carry…twice.  “More people have been killed by the Hiawatha Light Rail line than concealed carry!”

Good speech to a friendly crowd; his last as governor, as he noted.

10:48 – Chip Cravaack – endorsed candidate in CD8 – talks.  He’s a former Navy helo pilot.  Dan Severson is a former F18 pilot.  Funny how the Dems have shut up about how important it was that Republicans serve in the military than in 2008, when Steve Sarvi and Ashwin Madia’s service was a dispositive sign of incontestible virtue.

10:35 – I’m back in the Press Pit.  I plan on dividing my time pretty widely about the place today; I’ll be doing some media, blogging, and occasionally sprinting back to 66B to vote – whenever we get around to it.

I had the pleasure of meeting Rep. Mark Buesgens in the walkway between the Party platform and the Press Pit.  Had a great chat with him; he’s an occasional SITD reader (thanks, Mark!), and he notes that bloggers play a vital role; “peole have been getting dumbed down for too long; blogs make people think!”.  I’m flattered.

…in time to seem Michele Bachmann go to the podium as “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” played on the PA.

She has the crowd, naturally, wrapped around her finger.

I’m in the Press Pit again, although I expect to be commuting over to 66B to vote not a few times today.  Craig Westover, Brad Carlson, Kevin Ecker, Luke Hellier and occasionally Derek Brigham are here.  I’m told Lassie is out on the floor, along with King Banaian, Chad the Elder and Matt Abe among others are out on the floor.  I know quite a few people are tweeting if they’re not blogging.

Liveblogging to ensue shortly.

So who will the media be calling a “far right extremist” at the end of the day?

I’m going to be heading back in to the convention in a bit here, after some family business.

Which I say by way of noting that I’m waay too tired to actually post anything this morning so far.

As I’ve been meandering my way through this very long series of Minnesota Organization of Bloggers blogs, I’ve been skipping blogs that haven’ t published any posts in sixty days or more.  A guy’s gotta know his limits.

I’m making an exception for John “Policy Guy” LaPlante, whose Policy Guy blog has been a fairly sporadic thing for a few years now, and is at the moment offline due to technical issues.

However, a little bird tells me that Policy Guy might be making a comeback soon.  Possible.  Maybe.   He’s busy with work and kids and all the usual stuff that makes blogging such an expendable hobby for so many people – but there might be hope.

This is a good thing; John brings the local blogosphere something that it needs; a blogger than writes about policy and politics from a rigorous academic perspective – but yet makes it interesting enough to want to read regularly.

So I’m writing this to hope it helps build a critical mass of interest to get things up and running.

Back to our regular blogs next week!

The GOP’s rockstar diva puts her support behind the “hockey dad.”  Will her last minute endorsement score or just put Tom Emmer in the penalty box?

On the eve of the Minnesota GOP’s two-man dialogue for governor being pared down to a monologue, 2008 Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin has injected herself into the contest with the political equivalent of a powerplay goal for her self-described “hockey dad” candidate of choice, Tom Emmer:

A family man who wants to leave his kids a better future, a “hockey dad” who once played for the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Nanooks, a patriotic commonsense conservative who wishes to serve for the right reasons – that’s Tom Emmer, and I ask you to join me in supporting him for governor of Minnesota.

John “Policy Guy” La Plante asks the 60% question of the evening – is Palin’s endorsement worth having?:

So Sarah Palin has endorsed Tom Emmer. Is this good news for Team Emmer? I’m not convinced.

Why? Because, I suspect, most Palin fans are likely sympathetic to Tom Emmer anyway. But a Republican candidate must appeal to more than Republican voters to win in the general election.

For a good chunk of independents and Democrats open to voting for a Republican candidate, an endorsement by Sarah Palin is the kiss of death. They’re the mirror image of Republicans who disdain a candidate who

gets endorsed by the Star-Tribune .

Much like Emmer’s somewhat questionable choice of Annette Meeks as his runningmate earlier this week, the backing of Sarah Palin makes terrific sense in the context of a political universe that’s set to expire in an endorsement supernova sometime Friday afternoon or evening.  As the adage goes that there’s no bad press as long as they spell your name right, so goes the same logic for the choices that have defined Tom Emmer’s final week before the gubernatorial endorsement.  While picking a highly partisan activist to share the ticket and garnering the endorsement of a polarizing but beloved conservative politician are potential risks come November, they’ve ensured that for better or worse, everyone is talking about Tom Emmer less than 24 hours from what could be the pinacle or nadir of his political career.

But La Plante’s analysis is also spot-on.  Palin remains as much of a potential liability in the general as she is an asset in the endorsement.  And Emmer’s camp must be prepared, should he raise his arms in victory on Friday, to find his win credited to Palin’s involvement by the media in a pre-emptive strike to paint the Delano rep into the far-right corner of the electorate.  Such an outcome likely sounds fine to many on Team Emmer given that the alternative is a long fall and summer on the political bench.

11:55 – I voted.  And now I have to head home.  Back tomorrow!

11:21 – First ballot in for Auditor.

• Conlon (who dropped out during his speech) – 5
• Wiita – 327
• Gilbert – 548
• Anderson – 860

1078 are required to get the endorsement.  Rumor has it that Wiita is a friend of Gilbert’s.  You do the math.  This could be a long night.

11:08 – We’re informed the Auditor results are coming.  Soon.  Still debating picayune resolutions – the bane of these proceedings.  “a resolution in favor of a constitutional form of money”.  That’s what we’re talking about.

10:59 – Waiting on the auditor vote to come in.  And waiting.  They’re debating resolutions right now.

10:30 – Finally back.  I appeared with Marty Owings on KFAI.  Then I had to dash back to my district to vote for State Auditor.  We’re waiting for the results…and there’s Kohls with the gavel.

9:21 – Pat is on now.  I’ve been called to do a standup with KFAI.  Switch to Eckernet for updates for the next few minutes.

9:16 – We’ll start the speeches for Auditor now.  Watching the Anderson video now.

8:57 – Motion on the floor to unanimously endorse Chris Barden.  He’ll make a great replacement for Lori Swanson.

8:54 – The convention has unanimously endorsed Severson to run for Secretary of State.

8:49 – Sorry – I’ve been talking with Tim Burke.  Dan Severson is on stage.  I believe he’s running unopposed for Secretary of State.  Huge crowd of red-clad sign waving supporters onstage.

8:12 – Lee Byberg on the stage.  Endorsed candidate for CD7 – Collin Peterson’s district.  He’s got a thick Norwegian accent; I did not know this.  Him, I gotta book on the show.

“This is the American dream!  Have you ever heard of the German dream?  The French dream?  even the Norwegian dream?  Let me tell you, they  have those dreams.  They’re in America!”

“We are born American; it’s time to recommitt ourselves to the American spirit – to be come twice as committed to the American dream!  This is my story!  Our goal is not just to beat Colin Peterson – but to win the next generation!”

Byberg is tearing it up; Norwegians and “inspirational speaking” aren’t necessarily synonymous, but he’s got the mojo.  Saying all the right things to whip up the crowd.  After that rules debate, it’s nice to have the crowd whipped up.

8:06 – “Here’s a Constitution; it’s what I expect you to hold me and all of Congress to!  And once we do that, we will get the budget under control!”

8:04 – Jeff Johnson introduces Teresa Collette, St. Thomas law professor, endorsed to take on the “somewhat less brilliant” Betty McCollum.

7:59 – Pat Anderson is a row ahead, talking with (I think ) Bill Salisbury.  I’m going to try to scrag an interview with her.

7:55 -By the way – yeah, it’s white in here.  Just like a good chunk of Minnesota.  But I’m seeing all kinds of people here; black, Asian, Latino – my Senate District has an Iranian.  Or, as we refer to everyone, “Americans”.  Just so we’re clear on that.

7:54 – More rules debates.  Chatted with Charlie Shaw, my old pal from St. Paul Legal Ledger and Politics in Minnesota.  Looking like  a fun night in the press pit!

7:46 – “This is bulls**t”, says a leader from SD54.  “They’re letting everyone talk about…roll calls?”  They’ve spent a good 20 minutes debating the idea of the roll call…”

7:38 – I’ve just figured out why more people don’t get involved in politics; Rules Committee debate.

7:35 – Mark Drake from the MNGOP tells us that the nominating committee has placed Emmer, Seifert, Haas, Herwig and Davis in nomination.  Bob Carney apparently didn’t meet the threshold of signatures to make the cut.  I had no idea he was trying.  And I am astounded that Davis made it…

7:25 – I’m sitting with Kevin Ecker from Eckernet.  Michael Brodkorb is giving the Rules Committee report.

Kevin and I are looking at the huge lime-green Phil Herwig banner above the arena, and thinking he might have chosen a better motto; “Change We Can Believe In“.  Thinking this may not be Phil’s year.

7:20 – I’m actually a delegate in 66B this year – but I’ll be spending as much in the evening in the press pit as I can.  There’s elbow room, and easy access to the bathroom.  Hopefully nobody squawks; given that the only seat left was about 20 easts in from the aisle and people are jammed together pretty tightly.

Florida’s political version of Hernán Cortés burns his last ship back to the GOP as he tries to chart an independent path to Washington.

It was barely more than 12 months ago that Florida Governor Charlie Crist found himself basking the media limelight.  The politically-saavy governor of a swing state, Crist quickly positioned himself not only as the prohibitive frontrunner for Florida’s open U.S. Senate seat but as a presidential dark horse.  That one year later Crist is bolting the GOP while the party’s Senate leadership that had once backed him are now suing to drain his campaign coffers speaks volumes of how fickle political fortunes can be.

Much has been already written of Crist’s numerous campaign missteps and penchent to spend his dwindling political capital faster than a crack addict with a gold card.  Whether it was Crist’s ill-advised embrace of Obama and the stimulus (both literally and figuratively), his veto of a Republican-backed education reform bill or his Roger Muddesque inability to state why he was running for Senate, Crist’s once-famous campaign aptitude seemed to disappear into a Brigadoon-like political mist.  As NRO‘s Jim Geraghty notes:

You don’t get to be governor of Florida without a halfway decent sense of political judgment, and in fact that’s supposed to be one of Crist’s best qualities: He may not be the boldest or most principled politician, but he’s always been popular and displayed a knack for staying on the right side of Florida voters…

Yet during this election cycle, Crist’s keen judgment disappeared and was replaced with the bumbling instincts of some of our most legendary modern political blunderers…Almost every key decision made by Crist and his campaign since entering the Senate race has backfired.

Less has been written about Crist’s path forward.  While a few polls have shown Crist leading within the margin of error in an electoral ménage à trois with Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meeks, the political math remains at a calculus level of difficultly.  Crist would need a bare majority of independents plus nearly 1/3rd of all Republicans and Democrats to secure a plurality.  Just a political combination isn’t impossible but nevertheless rare among candidates not prone to wearing spandex and feather boas.  Nor is Crist aided when 52% of independents claim to be unwilling to vote for him under any circumstances, despite a 60% approval rating among the unaffiliated.

Undoubtably, an independent bid was Charlie Crist’s best chance of being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010.  Unwilling or believing himself to be unable to seek the Republican nomination in 2012 against Sen. Bill Nelson, Crist has bet his once rising star on an all-or-noting Cortés-like strategy.  But left unanswered in his decision is how Crist believes he’ll be welcomed in Washington should he win. 

Should Republicans win the Senate seats they lead in current polling, the GOP would pick up 8 seats this November.  With California and Washington creeping into contention as well, one seat could easily tip the balance of power come January 2011.  Such narrow margins will bring tremendous political advantage to any independent Senate candidate.  Indeed, should the GOP come up one seat short, expect massive political pressure to be applied to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to switch caucus allegiances.  Unable to afford a credible candidate to his right in what will likely be an incredibly bitter general election against a well-funded Democratic opponent, Lieberman might be tempted to caucus with the GOP even if his party affiliation remains unchanged.

Crist has little such luxury.  While if victorious he’ll be courted by both left and right given 2010’s likely outcome, neither is likely to embrace him come 2016.  And should control of the Senate shift sharply away from a narrow divide, Crist almost certainly would be discarded, his political leverage gone.  Thus it would appear that Charlie Crist has gambled his entire political career on trying to acheive a single – and perhaps very lonely – term as Florida’s senator.

Whatever you think about the immigration law, the Arizona Legislature has at least done one bit of unquestionably great work this year.

I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet.

On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”. 

On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is about.  According to actual lawyer Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, who actually has some background in Arizona law, and who noted in my comment section yesterday:

Reasonable suspicion, I think, pertains to searches after an arrest has been effected. The example here being: a cop pulls a guy over for speeding and when the perp opens the car door window, pot smoke billows out. The cop then has reasonable suspicion that there may be pot in the car and can search it without a warrant.

That distinction (if I’m correct) is key to the critical language in the blurb you quote from 11-1051, “Lawful contact”. That term is not defined in Arizona Revised Statutes. However, given the context, I think it may mean a search or arrest pursuant to probable cause. Meaning that the mandate for cops to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain a person’s immigration status (based on a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality) only kicks in if the person is stopped or arrsted for the violation of some other law.

That said, if I’m wrong and “lawful contact” means merely a cop ambling up to some browish dude with an accent and saying “hey, how ya’ doin’? Papers please,” then this law is repulsive, and proably unconstitutional.

If my interpretation is correct, then a lot of people are getting their panties in a wad over nothing.

To the best of my knowledge, the Arizona law does not mean law enforcment will be driving down the street rounding up brown-looking people who don’t have IDs on them. 

As many proponents of the Arizona law note, the law just reiterates federal law, as it is supposed to be enforced (but isn’t).  I’m no lawyer.  I don’t know. 

On the third hand, there are a lot of people who dont’ really care if you know the real truth or not.  To our nation’s media and current political elites, disinformation is just fine.  Christina Cordova at  “MNSpeak” is part of the disinformation, whether as a producer, a consumer, or both:

A new Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and requires local law enforcement to ask for papers from anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally — in other words, anyone that “looks” like they “may” not be… a “white” American. Hmm…

If someone can show me the “racial dragnet” portion of this law, please speak up.

On the third-and-a-half hand, we all know that there are cops who will made their collars first and bother with “reasonable” this and “probable” that later, and pretty much assume that nobody’s got the money to fight City Hall anyway.  And that’s usually a fair bet; I know of not a few situations where the police have trampled over ostensible constitutional rights, knowing that the victims weren’t going to be able to do anything about it on their budgets anyway. 

On the fourth hand, that’s a separate issue.  The fact that some cops give ten miles per hour of leeway over the posted speed limit, and some give none at all, doesn’t invalidate the speed limit law.   We need to keep our cops accountable.

On the fifth hand, more enforcement is only part of the answer to the narcotraficante problem.  The “War On Drugs” is a failure by every possible moral, ethical and practical measure.  We need to end it.

On the sixth hand, until we do end it, we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt.  It’d be far better to keep illegal immigrants on the other side of the border.  Perhaps it’s time to abandon the farce of the “open, unfortified border”, and screw the whole idea of a “fence”, and move the Army down there.

On the seventh hand, barring a major commitment in fence-building or a major redeployment of the Armhy, our border is utterly permeable.  And cops in Arizona – and all along the border – are facing an awful situation.  It’s not just would-be landscapers and fry cooks coming across the border.  Once low-crime Phoenix is awash in narcotraficante crime these days.  Trafficers from across the border are causing all kinds of mayhem, and killing not a few innocent Americans who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And the feds are apparently doing nothing useful, and the mainstream media are pretending there is no story, largely because they ideologically support open borders.  Hey, news anchors need cheap nannies too.

On the eighth hand, the illegal immigration problem predates the drug war in Mexico by quite a bit.  The current drug war and the longstanding illegal immigration problem tie into the fact that Mexico is a failed, socialist state, while the US, so far, isn’t.  The open border has allowed Mexico’s failed socialist government to put off its day of reckoning with its own people.

On the ninth hand, to a big chunk of our nation’s political and media elite, the idea of separating ourselves from a neighbor’s failure – even for both country’s mutual good – is noxious.  America is guilty, they think, for much of the hemisphere’s dysfunction, one way or the other.  The whole “the world is one” conceit isn’t just idle talk to them.

And as part of exercising that conceit, there is an epic slander underway.  It’s of a piece with the slander of all dissent that our political aned media elites are engaged in, in which all dissent on any subject is called “racist”, “violent” and otherwise depraved. 

Part of that campaign is the deliberate blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  You will never see a lefty commentator, from Christina Cordova to Chris Coleman, use the word “illegal” immigrant when talking about the subject of the law; they never qualify the term “immigrant”, to the point of lying (Coleman’s little squib yesterday about the law affecting his sainted Irish grandmother, who would no doubt kick his ass if she saw the way he was torturing context; every good Irish Catholic gramma knows a lie by omission is a lie just the same).

On the tenth hand, I know of not one single conservative, anywhere, who actually favors clamping down on legal immigration.  “Build a high fence, and a wide gate”, most of us say. 

On the eleventh hand, the media would rather cover peckerwoods waving shotguns from the backs of their pickup trucks, a la “Reno 911″‘s classic “Minutemen” episode, than the actual facts.

So with eleven hands raised, where does that leave us?

Make sure the law is constitutional – as in, “actually follows the law”, as opposed to “makes my white-liberal-guilty heart droop”.

Josef Goebbels once gave us the biggest rule of PR, spinmongering, and the general art of getting the untrue accepted as truth; if you tell a big lie often enough, the stupid accept it as truth.

Are Cedar Rapids leftybloggers Sara and Brian Brandmeyer telling the big lie, or have they merely accepted it as truth?

He asks us to imagine if the Tea Parties were run by and mostly attended by black people:

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition.

If they were following the law, why would I care?  Skin color is (to me, at least) irrelevant; I have guns of my own.

And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government?

If those protesters – color irrelevant – were speaking from constitutional principal?  Why would I have a problem?  I share those principles.

If they were not,then – color irrelevant – I’d speak out against them.

It’s really fairly simple.

Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic?

If they – color irrelevent – were protesting in favor of constitutional principles I recognized?  I’d support ’em!

What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Right.  In the same way Thomas Jefferson once did.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired.

That’d be bad.  Of course, not a single “white” protester spat on Representatives Cleaver and Lewis; even they are backing away from the claim as fast as is politically prudent.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Then I’d put Ted Nugent in a ring with Harry Belafonte, give them both machine guns, and make the whole world a better place.

The rest of the piece is, improbably, not even as good as the excerpt, and can be best answered as follows:

THE BRANDMEYERS:  “What if black people said things that bothered you?”

MITCH:  “I’d use my First-Amendment-fu to make them look like idiots”.

It’s how that “free society” thing is supposed to work.  I don’t know why some people find that so scary.

Is the GOP a “big tent?”  Or is it a “pup tent?”

The real answer is below.

But for the biennial pundit palaver on the subject, who better to ask than Doug Grow, who spent decades carrying water for the DFL at the Strib before decamping to the MinnPost?

“The idea of a big tent means different things to different people,” Sutton told MinnPost. “I believe we are a big tent, filled with right-of-center folks. We have social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, people who believe in a strong national defense. There’s a business wing, and we have those people who have a libertarian/populist streak. … But the unifier is the economy. People are anxious about the economy, about their jobs. That makes people more conservative. Business. Jobs. That’s our brand.”

Sutton, as should be expected, gets it right; the GOP should be open to everyone who believes in small government, prosperity for the individual, security and family.

And who better to ask about our tent size than someone who got kicked out of it for supporting bigger government and higher taxes?

But former Rep. Neil Peterson, who was drummed out of his party and office by conservative forces in Bloomington after joining five other House Republicans in overriding Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of a gasoline tax, has a different view. He says the delegates gathering for this convention are not even close to the party regulars who supported him.

“When I was in office, we still had a fairly big tent in my district,” Peterson said. “But those people [the party activists] have all been replaced by much more conservative people. The party has moved from being a big tent to a pup tent.”

And Grow, like much of the Twin Cities media, audibly pines for the days when the GOP was basically nothing more than the DFL with better suits – a half-hearted speed bump to complete DFL domination.

The real answer is “the tent is as big as it needs to be; all who support prosperity, limited government, security and the family are welcome.”

It’s really pretty simple.  If you’re not a reporter with decades of experience covering Minnesota politics, anyway.

Never more than a degree behind the liberal fashion curve, Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman ordered a boycott of city-funded travel to Arizona:

[Arizona’s new immigrtion law], “rooted in hate and fear,” sets a dangerous example, Coleman said.

“It will create a culture where racial profiling is acceptable and will create a dangerous wedge between police officers and the communities they serve,” Coleman said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like for my grandmother had they passed a similar anti-Irish law.

But we can, Mayor Coleman – because your grandmother came here legally.  Just like my great-grandparents.

“Today I choose to stand with the millions of immigrants in our city and across the country who should have access to the same level of safety and opportunity as everyone else.”

Illegal immigrants?

Coleman said he would write to the Democratic and Republican national committees, urging them not to choose Phoenix as a site for national conventions in 2012.

If you care to help out Arizona companies who facing getting hit with financial losses because of the anti-sovereignty bigotry of a few well-heeled lefty governments, here’s a list of companies from Arizona.

I got a rumor from someone connected with the press that The Uptake – the controversial left-leaning “citizen journalism” outfit that has spent the past few months striving for respectability with the Capital Press Corps – has been denied credentials to cover the MNGOP Convention this weekend.

A liberal commenter might response “aw, that’s just because they’re afraid of left-leaning media!”

Well, no.  In addition to the Strib, PiPress, WCCO, KSTP, MPR and KARE, the MNGOP has given press credentials to…

…KFAI, the obstreporously “progressive” Pacifica affiliate.  I used to work at KFAI; the place makes no bones about its’ sympathies.  But apparently its news department has spent some time in recent years trying to develop a reputation for fairness, at least, in its news coverage.

Again – it’s all rumor.

So far.

There are two types of people in the world; the kind that relentlessly sort people into neat taxonomies, and those who don’t.

Likewise, pundits (amateur and pro) fall into two camps; the ones that focus on the jerseys running around on the field, and the ones that look up in the stands to see what the crowd is doing.

Dave Mindeman at MnpACT looks at Tom Emmer’s choice of Annette Meeks as running mate and counts jerseys.

Well, first of all it tells us a little about what DOESN’T concern Mr. Emmer.

1) No help for geographic balance. Meeks is not a legislator. She does not have any natural constituency. She provides no special geographic advantage.

File this under “counting the jerseys on the field”. 

Which isn’t to say that there’s not some value in the conventional wisdom that tickets in Minnesota need to balance the Metro and outstate. 

But there are two flaws to the conventional wisdom:

1. For purposes of getting votes from people who will actually vote Republican – party sympathizers and anyone who can be convinced to be a sympathizer before November – Emmer is balanced, in and of himself.  He’s from the third-ring suburbs, which to0 the conventional wisdom are neither here nor there, but to conservative thought are pretty much the state’s center of gravity.   And, perhaps more importantly…
2. …while regional provincialism is usually very important in Minnesota campaigning, Emmer is banking, for this election, on there being a bigger dynamic at work; revulsion with excessive spending and ruinous taxation.  It’s not a real long shot.

Mindeman continues (and I”ll add emphasis):

2) No offset for ideologic balance. Meeks is a consummate party insider. She will have little name recognition outside of the political junkie subset. And she specializes in conservative public policy. Emmer seems to be telling us that Minnesota wants a right of center governing policy. Independents and Democrats don’t matter.

Again with the jersey-counting.  Look up in the stands.

Conventional wisdom among the jersey counters is that to attract someone who doesn’t agree with you right out of the gate, you need to give them something – a running mate, in this case – who does, as a sort of shiny object to distract them.   In other words, the conventional wisdom is that the GOP needs to “move to the center” to attract voters.

Emmer is taking a different tack; he’s going to spend the next six months giving voters in the “middle” a reason to move “right”.  Except it’s not a matter of left and right; it’s a matter of irresponsible versus prudent; sanity versus madness.  The future of this state and its prosperity is not  a partisan issue!

And Democrats and Independents “matter” not as passive populations to be appeased with potemkin place-holders, but in the way that actually complements their intelligence and dignity as humans; as people to be convinced.

And while it’s arguably risky, Emmer’s got two things going for him:

1. People across the board are very open to the message of fiscal prudence.  Even Democrats are getting scared of Obama’s, and Kelliher’s, lust for taxing and spending.
2. Tom Emmer does a great job of presenting his case to the unconvinced.  I’ve heard him on, of all things, Marty Owings’ “Radio Free Nation”, a left-leaning internet talk show, absolutely kill at explaining why fiscal conservatism works to a hostile but polite audience.   (And while I”ve never heard Marty Seifert face that kind of crowd, I’m told he excels as well).

Convincing the middle to move “right” is what put Ronald Reagan in office.  Emmer, being the single strongest stump speaker in Minnesota politics today, is easily equipped to do the same.

Secondly, the Meeks choice tells us some things that do matter to Emmer…..

1) Special Interests have a say.

Ah.  But those stalwart independents Kelliher, Dayton and Entenza will show us the way on that count, right?

Some of the speculation centered around an early preference for Linda Runbeck, but MCCL intervened….

MCCL staffers did express concern to Emmer’s people about Runbeck, said executive director Scott Fischbach. In 1994, Runbeck was among several Republican lawmakers who changed their votes and tabled legislation that would have required women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion.

Obviously, Emmer fears pressure from MCCL.

Well, the MCCL is certainly a powerful group.  But there are a few other points against the “speculated” (by whom?  when?  in what context?  Mindeman apparently doesn’t feel that’s important enough to tell us) rumored Runbeck candidacy is that she’s been out of public life for a long time, and her last appearance was a tough loss to Betty McCollum. 

That just might have played a role.

He talks the talk about standing up to lobbyists, yet walks the line for the first interest group that weighs in on his first decision making process. How strong are those individual principles?

For my part, I’ll await word the MCCL was “the first” group, or that Mindeman’s unsourced quote had anything to do with the decision.

But I won’t hold my breath.  While Emmer is pro-life, he’s no puppet of the single-issue social conservatives.  One of my most memorable interviews in the history of the NARN was at the State Fair last summer.  Ed and I were talking with Emmer.  Someone in the audience asked him what he thought about gay marriage.

“I don’t care”. 

It is, realistically, not an issue the Governor of Minnesota will ever deal with; it’s of no import.   But wouldn’t a puppet of the socialcons, speaking to the Patriot audience (the very embodiment of the conservative base) have toed the line?

Take Mindeman’s claim with a big block of salt.

2) Feels the Need for Stronger Public Policy Credentials. Emmer seems to be responding here to some criticism of his depth of knowledge in public policy.

Meeks likely will help blunt criticism that Emmer has weak knowledge of public policy and the issues facing the state.

His answer to that criticism is to embrace an academic. Meeks has no actual legislative credentials. She fosters and works inside think tanks. She is a member of the Met Council, but Emmer has openly talked about abolishing that entity. And Meeks herself, has published a paper which made the case for abolishing the office of Lt. Governor.

Right.  She’s no toady.  She’s got a mind of her own (unlike, for example, the DFL’s nominee).

Articulating public policy is far different from implementing it. Meeks can explain the logic of what she thinks should be done, but to put it into practice with real people and real budgets, well, that is quite a different story.

True.

If only there were someone on the ticket with years of experience in the Legislature. 

Emmer has indirectly told us a lot about his decision making process by this first real personnell decision. If Emmer wins the endorsement, and it seems likely at this point, then he will have locked the party into a conservative right ideology. Making a broader, more centrist case to the general public will be difficult.

Which may be a gamble.

And then again, this year, with the Tea Party at his back and the DFL noodling around with four more months of deciding between Same Old and Same Old, it might not be.

And it would seem that Emmer would be comfortable with that. The Emmer/Meeks ticket seems to be designed for another 45 to 47% maximum electoral vote strategy. With Tom Horner as the likely IP candidate, that isn’t going to work.

Only if everything breaks down by conventional wisdom – by counting jerseys.  Which is Mindeman’s game, and that’s just fine.  But…

Emmer has kept himself within the GOP/Tea Party bubble. He doesn’t look like a candidate who will reach out and broaden his base of support. He believes his current base is enough.

…the idea, this year, is to bring that huge, discontented middle over to the good guys.

It was a gamble 30 years ago when Ronald Reagan did exactly the same thing.

Is the time right?

Whether Emmer or Seifert wins the nomination, I’m pretty happy with the prospects.

Jeff Kouba is one of the best writers on the Twin Cities blog circuit.  He’s written for not a few blogs, including Truth Vs. The Machine, but Peace Like A River Peace Like A River (“PLAR”) has been his home joint for a long time now.

PLAR was, at one point, the host of an awful lot of really fantastic writing; Kouba is as good as it gets when writing about politics (especially Eastern Europe) and religion.

It seems that Kouba, with a platoon of young kids and a busy job, has scaled back some of his original writing, becoming a bit of a rarity at TvM lately.  But rather than letting PLAR go fallow, he’s turned it into…

…one of the better aggregators of online news you’ll find.

A random sample:

United States & the Americas

• Pentagon briefing – Clearly, Iran is — when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, they continue to be duplicitous at some levels, wishing to engage with the government in others, trying to undermine their authority, their sovereignty; clearly trying to make the lives of our — of the coalition forces that are trying to bring peace and stability to those two countries much more difficult.  In some case they — cases, more often in Iraq than in Afghanistan, they have posed a deadly threat to those forces. They clearly continue to pursue a missile program.  They have a very large arsenal in that respect.
• DNI – Office of the Director of National Intelligence Fifth Year Anniversary Celebration
• Washington Independent – Philip Mudd, one of the intelligence community’s leading al-Qaeda analysts, has quietly retired from the FBI, where he was associate executive director of the National Security Branch. Mudd confirmed in an email that he left “about six weeks ago,” but didn’t immediately respond to additional questions about his departure
• AP – A U.S. military jury cleared a Navy SEAL Thursday of failing to prevent the beating of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of masterminding a 2004 attack that killed four American security contractors.
• Al Jazeera – Pro-government protesters in Nicaragua have blockaded the country’s parliament in an effort to prevent opposition politicians from overturning a controversial presidential decree. The supporters of Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s leftist president, took to the streets for a second day on Wednesday following violent protests during which cars were burned and three opposition politicians were lightly injured.

Miami Herald – Paraguay’s leftist president wants to impose military rule in the northern half of the country to help soldiers put an end to attacks by a group of leftist guerrillas. Fernando Lugo is asking Congress to declare a state of emergency in five of Paraguay’s 17 departments.

Hopefully it’s a placeholder until Jeff finds the time to do more of his trademark writing. Either way, it’s a worthwhile stop on your daily trip around the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers.

The story itself  is dog bites man:

Three men who showed up in full Nazi regalia to a hardcore punk show at an Old City bar Friday night were attacked by as many as 50 people on the streets after leaving the venue, according to witnesses and club management…

…

“I guess being on 2nd Street in SS uniforms on a Friday night is a way to incite a semi-riot,” [the club owner] said.

But the headline was worth it…:

Concertgoers show the Reich stuff, are beaten by crowd

…as was the lede…:

How did they Nazi this coming?

I mean, I got a yuk over it.

I saw this a while ago, and laughed…

…because (ask my kids) I’ve been doing this for years.

Gang violence has made Chicago the most dangerous city in America – so much so that the locals are asking for National Guard help.

Let’s see if they take the next step and install an authoritarian government who promises to “organize” things in exchange for cashing in their liberties…

…oh, wait.

The “Southern Poverty Law Center” is  finding boogeymen under rocks:

Catherine Bleish is a 26-year-old libertarian who was a Ron Paul delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention. She is a leader of the Liberty Restoration Project which, among other things, opposes the federal “War on Drugs” and denounces the Patriot Act as “an assault against the civil liberties of Americans.”

Perhaps you disagree with those views, but is Bleish dangerous?

Like Janet Napolitano’s watch list, the SPLC believes every conservative is dangerous:

In a special report called “Meet the ‘Patriots’” issued last week, the SPLC named Bleish as one of 35 people “at the heart of the resurgent movement.” The report — which also names WorldNetDaily publisher Joseph Farah and Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media — describes the movement thus:

“In the last year and a half, militias and the larger antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement have exploded, accompanied by the rapid expansion of other sectors of the radical right. … [T]he so-called Patriots [are] people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law, herd those who resist into concentration camps, and force the United States into a socialistic ‘New World Order.’”

“Patriots generally believe…”

The weasel words are the candy coat on a blood libel. 

The SPLC’s scary references to militias and conspiracies and a “resurgent movement” very much echo Bill Clinton’s recent conflation of the tea party with Timothy McVeigh and, like Clinton, the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization singled out Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling her an “enabler” of the Patriot movement. Also labeled “enablers” by the SPLC were Glenn Beck and Andrew Napolitano of Fox News, as well as Ron Paul, the Texas congressman whose quixotic 2008 presidential campaign helped turn Bleish into a full-time political activist.

This was the sort of thing Joe McCarthy has been pilloried for for half a century – and at least he was partially right.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict Lori “Unofficial DFL PR Flak” Sturdevant’s Sunday column; it was a gauzy, florid paeon to Margaret Anderson-Kelliher. 

I come not to bury Sturdevant’s column – which was a howler…:

Before the balloting started, [Former state auditor, governor candidate, endorsed Lieutenant-Governor 2006 candidate, and former fair-weather Republican Judi] Dutcher and [former state Senator and two-time goober candidate Becky] Lourey, both now private citizens, predicted that this year would be different — not because it was finally a woman’s turn, but because of Kelliher’s other qualities.

“Margaret is such a candidate in her own right. She is so qualified for this job,” Dutcher exuded.

Lourey added: “There’s an energy here to endorse the person who can win in the general election. That’s Margaret, because of her communication skills.” Not her gender.

…and I certainly don’t come to praise this vapid group hug:

…A ripple of feminist pride added emotional punch to her victory celebration, revved up by Kelliher’s call, “DFLers, are you ready to make history?”

But there was no sense at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center that an upstart girl had defeated the good ol’ boys….

 Noooooo!  Not a bit!…

She won’t be another guy in a gray suit. She’ll stand out, and compel voters to take a closer look.

Former Secretary of State Joan Growe…said Kelliher’s bid to make history should bring her primary and general election support from “Republican women, or former Republican women, and independents…Older women particularly might be drawn to the chance to elect the state’s first female governor… 79-year-old St. Paul delegate Joan Wittman confessed, “It would be a dream to me to elect a woman governor. I’d like to see it in my lifetime.”

The scary part was, though, that I pretty much wrote Sturdevant’s column in my head on Saturday night after I got the word of Kelliher’s nomination.

I could have practically published the whole thing, thought for thought if not word for word!

I knew, after decades of reading Sturdevant’s bald-faced mash notes to the DFL, that there’d be some combination of…:

• She’s an old pro!
• But yet a new voice!
• And an impromptu conclave of strong yet approachable women are spritzing her with concentrated Sisterhood!  Yay!  Sisters are doing it for themselves!
• In the meantime, the tough woman is going to be facing The Man In The Gray Suit!

And it occurs to me; why not save Sturdevant, the environment, and the body politic the trouble for next weekend, after the GOP endorses its’ guy in a gray suit candidate?

Because I think we’re all familiar enough with Lori Sturdevant’s list of cliches – the gauzy soft focus, Up With People vibe for Democrats, the rote invocations of Republicans past (who happened to vote, spend and act like DFLers), the victorian vapours at the idea that conservatism is making inroads in “her” state – to take the next big step.

I want y’all to write Lori Sturdevant’s next Sunday column.

We know it’ll be a wrapup of the GOP convention; she’ll be beholding the new GOP Gubernatorial nominee the way a new father beholds his baby’s first diaper.  Write the column, or some portion of it, in the comment section.  I’ll be moving this post up through the week to make sure everyone can enter. 

Winners will be announced Saturday night.  The prize?  I will publish the “winning” Sturdevant column before the Strib does, so the winner gets bragging rights, and an eternal place of honor on my Contests page.

Would you want more than that for this kind of prize?

And by all means, reprint this challenge in your blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, the Dewdrop Inn, or wherever – and forward any entries you get.

I’ll be live-blogging the State GOP Convention this weekend – provided, of course, that the wifi situation pans out at the Convention Center.

My current plan is to attend, and live-blog, the State Auditor endorsement on Thursday, as well as the race for the Governor nod on Friday.  I may also pop in to some of the other stops at the party. 

This won’t be my first state convention, per se; I did manage to attend an afternoon session at the ’04 convention; the NARN broadcast, of course, from the ’06 event.  We won’t be broadcasting this year, unfortunately – but that means I actually get to pay attention to what’s going on on the floor. 

So it’ll be great!

Stay tuned!

Tom Emmer has picked Annette Meeks as his running mate:

Meeks is a member of the Metropolitan Council — a public body Emmer has singled out for criticism in the past. She founded and heads the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, a, non-profit organization that “develops and actively advocates the principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility, economic freedom, and limited government.”

She volunteered to help promote the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul and was deputy chief of staff for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Meeks was a key part of Newt Gingrich’s staff in 1994.  She’s got more experience at changing and improving government in her fingernails than the entire DFL ticket all rolled together.

Meeks is a spectacular choice.  And I don’t just say that because she’s an admitted reader of this blog.

Congrats, Annette!  See you at the convention!

The “Coffee Party” founder in danger of ouster, as coffee partiers (all fifty of them) want a more radical leader

Annabel Park says there’s no coup in the works to remove her as the leader of the Coffee Party movement and replace her with someone more angry, radical and willing to be confrontational with conservatives. But a recent article in Newsweek suggests otherwise.

Park, contacted through Facebook, criticized the Newsweek article and it’s author Steve Tuttle for quoting a woman at a Washington DC Coffee Party who said the movement would die “unless we get someone a little more powerful.”

The movement will die unless it comes up with a purpose deeper than “trying to act like they’re smarter than their competition…