I think it was Mark Twain that said “a lie can make it around the world while the truth is waiting in line at Caribou”.

That’s the little swatch of human behavior that the Dayton campaign, and especially its’ money-laundering smear shop, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, seem to be hoping dominates the upcoming election.

Because to the extent that ABM’s strategy is intelligent, it’s in this way; a simple lie takes five seconds to tell; that same like will take sixty seconds to refute.  Do Minnesota voters have the attention span to absord sixty seconds of facts to counter five seconds of lying?

The GOP needs to hope so.

And if you’re ABM, or the DFL?  Do the phrases “A thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in Minnesota” and “Yes, We Can!” ring a bell?  They most certainly do to the people on the Dayton/Rockefeller family payrolls that are ginning up the dirtiest, most cynical political campaign in Minnesota history.

So I’m gonna get started on those sixty seconds right now.

ABM’s house blogger – inevitably anonymous (and, we’re told, paid) – writes:

Either Tom Emmer is still stuck on the first stage of grief because of his disastrous campaign to date,

Fact: Two points less “disastrous”, by all accounts, than Tim Pawlenty’s at this point in the race eight years ago.

which recently voted several staffers off the island,

Fact: What, campaigns never change staff?  The local jabbering class has spun the Emmer campaign’s turnover as some sort of unusual event after a primary.  Just plain dumb.

or he thinks that he’s campaigning to become governor of The Matrix. Tom Emmer’s most recent “I have absolutely no budget plan” distraction technique unveiled today is the red pill inspired: “There is no spoon”.

Fact:  Opinion:  Matrix references?  What next?  “Dayton is Spock, Emmer is Ferengi?”  Good lord, Emmer’s being attacked by the friggin’ chess club!

From Tom Emmer via MPR:

Where is the deficit? We talk about ‘You got to raise taxes, government has to invest.’ I’ll say it again, government in the state of Minnesota is scheduled to get a 7 percent increase in the next biennium. Government will have more money to spend in the next two years than it is spending right now.

You see, Minnesotans? There is no spoon. Whoa. The deficit is all in your head! If the budget crisis doesn’t exist –bam– no plan needed.

Fact: Opinion: ABM is a plan to employ the innumerate.

There might be a more civil explanation, but I got nothin’.

Even with his attempt to melt our minds by going all Neo on us, no one is fooled.

I’m having high school flashbacks.  Trekkies insisting they were really “TrekkERs”. “Live long and prosper”.  Ugh.  Must move on.

Despite Emmer’s selective accounting, we know we’re facing a historic budget crisis, and as Tom Scheck immediately points out, the major reason for the uptick in state spending cited by Emmer is that Tim Pawlenty’s kicking of the budgetary can is coming home to roost. (Mixed metaphors win elections)

I’m not sure if Tom Scheck of MPR is honest enough to point this out; it’s for sure ABM’s anonymous blogger is not.

Let’s accept that Tim Pawlenty “kicked a budgetary can” for sake of argument.

That “can” was made big and stinky by a DFL legislature that was fixed on raising spending, and especially using the state budget as a vehicle to launder money to help local governments hide their own rapacious spending – especially the DFL governments in the Twin Cities and Duluth, which got and get 250% more money than non-metro cities, entirely as a means to camouflage their ruinous spending and the costs of the DFL’s policy of warehousing the poor in the inner city.

With over a billion in school shifts and half a billion in temporary cuts coming off the chopping block, many of the gimmicks bullied through the legislature by Tim Pawlenty–with the full support of Tom Emmer and House Republicans– are putting the state in an even worse situation next year.

And all of that with an economy collapsing.  Wow. What do do?

What to do?

Instead of owning up to his role in the budget debacle we find ourselves in…

…that “role” being arguing for fiscal restraint against a DFL near-supermajority in the House that was fixed on spending first (and covering it with taxes from Minnesota’s productive classes) first and asking questions later.

— and provide us with what would actually be a “new direction” — Tom Emmer has decided to try and confuse us.

Fact: Opinion: In fairness to Emmer, it doesn’t seem like  it’d be that difficult a job…

Whether it’s mashing up $20 billion and 20%, or comparing Minnesota to a wagon full of Clydesdales, Tom Emmer is willing to say anything, except what he would actually do to the services we all use and rely on if he became governor.

Fact: The DFL and its paid spokeshamsters at ABM are being incredibly disingenuous.  Emmer has always said his plan will be out in September.  And so it will.  And it’s gonna turn the Dayton campaign on its ear, I have a hunch.

The problem? It’s pretty hard to dance around the fact that he introduced things like cutting the minimum wage while pushing for lower taxes on corporations.

Fact:  It’s even harder to dance around the fact that context is being waterboarded here.  Minimum wage cuts and lower corporate taxes are both proven means of creating more jobs.  Raising taxes and spending are both proven ways to kill (non-government) job growth.

We wont forget that — when he bothered to show up to vote– that he consistently sided with big businesses instead of working Minnesotans.

Where does this guy think “Working Minnesotans” work?

For the new direction the Minnesota needs someone ready to make the hard decisions to move us forward.

Speaking of “hard decisions”:  What is Dayton’s big proposal?  Besides “eat the [working] rich”, I mean?

We need someone who can lay out a plan to get Minnesota back on track, not more Pawlenty-styled governing by press release.

Well, you asked for a plan.  I suspect you’ll get one pretty quick here.

Then the fun will begin.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Campaign '10, Slander Files. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.