I was out at Grand Old Day yesterday. I took a stroll down the avenue from Fairview to about Victoria, and then back. With about 200,000 people out there in high-80s heat and tropical humidity, it was warm out there.
But the Saint Paul GOP booth was set up in a nice bit of shade a block or so east of Lexington. I stopped by to chat with the crew there, including the St. Paul GOP’s school board candidates Pat Igo, Lizz Paulsen and Kevin Huepenbecker.
Now, when you’re a Republican in Saint Paul, you expect a certain amount of flak; most of it rote and unimaginative, some of it just plain weird. It’s normal, I suppose, when you’re in a one party town where the majority have never had to defend their assumptions.
It was, apparently, no exception on Sunday. There were lots of people out on the avenue, and most, not unexpectedly, didn’t care about politics at all. And most that did were perfectly polite.
Oh, there were some of the usual crowd, the ones we get at the fair; the ones that chant a few chanting points (“Single Payer Now! Single Payer Now!”) and scamper away before anyone can engage them. And there was one nutter, apparently a former DFL candidate who’d lost an election, who came to the booth, sputtered for a bit, and when challenged, interrupted; “I’m not here to discuss with you; I’m here to tell you!”.
But while I was standing there, a couple of women – drawn, dessicated, haggard-looking fiftysomethings who’d clearly had a couple of Bud Lights at the beer garden – brushed past me. “You people are cray-zee“, said the first woman, wearing a beer cap and a beer T-shirt.
“Really?”, I responded. “How so?”
The woman, standing on the other side from me of a family, with a couple of small children, bellowed “you can’t run a government with no f***ing money!”. Before we could point out that the GOP is offering to raise the budget, her and her friends waddled away, waving their arms like they were guiding aircraft in to a flight deck. “You know, there’s kids here”, I yelled after her. “Might wanna, y’know, watch the language…”
But they were gone.
And I thought – was this yet another symptom of the St.Paul DFL’s approach to everything? Their ends justify their means? Gotta break eggs to make a vegan omelette; your mania trumps everyone else’s rights? If you wanna yell, then you’re gonna yell, and screw anyone in the way?
Or was it just a couple of drunks, babbling?
I kept 0n walking.
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