One Day At Champpppps In Mendota Heights

SCENE:  MITCH is sitting with Inge “Lucky” CARROLL and Bridget GRETELSTEIN, operatives for the ABM (“Alita Buys Minnesota”), at the Champs in Mendota Heights.

MITCH:  (Continuing conversation that started before the scene) Well, yeah – ABM and the DFL’s message – pardon the redundancy – was aimed at low-information voters.

CARROLL(sitting with four empty cosmos in front of her):  Hah!  You are having teh meltdown!

BERG:  Er, huh?  “Meltdown”.

CARROLL:  Yes.  You are having teh meltdown.

BERG:  Well, no.  I’m pretty calm. Bored and waiting for a drink, actually.  Where do you get “meltdown?”

GRETELSTEIN:  It makes you uncomfortable, talking about your declining mental state.  Doesn’t it?

BERG:  No, it makes me uncomfortable that neither of you will answer a question about your organization’s cynical, factually-challenged campaign.  I’ve been documenting all your group’s lies for years now.  And I’m just amazed that so many people in our purportedly “above-average” state buy such a line of transparent BS.

CARROLL:  You’re so angry, you’re about to have teh stroke.

BERG:  What part of “bored and waiting on a drink” do you have trouble with?

GRETELSTEIN:  Don’t go all postal on us!

BERG:  Hm.  OK, I’ll see what I can do.  Hey, let’s talk about what the new DFL majority will inherit – since Democrats are all about babbling about things they inherited.  A balanced state budget, for starters.

(Silence for a few seconds as CARROLL and GRETELSTEIN look uncomfortably at each other).

CARROLL:  You are having teh meltdown.

(And SCENE)

13 thoughts on “One Day At Champpppps In Mendota Heights

  1. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/presidential-campaign/268953-gop-ignores-low-information-voters-at-their-peril
    Pull quote…
    “Democrats – Barack Obama in particular – go after these voters with gusto. The 2008 Obama campaign broke ground by advertising on Xbox video games, prompting thousands of stoners to get off the couch and out to the polls. In 2012, when young women visited a beauty blog, they were likely greeted with video ads of Eva Longoria or Scarlett Johansson telling them Obama was fabulous. And lest we forget the infamous ad where Girls star Lena Dunham invited her fellow young women to make their “first time” special with Barack Obama.”

  2. The Republicans adopted the Tea Party when they were down in 2009 and the Tea Party looked like a way to win. Now that the Tea Party looks like a way to lose, I don’t think they’ll be tolerated for long. Republicans are nothing if not ruthless.

  3. Now that the Tea Party looks like a way to lose,

    Nah. They did just fine in the House.

    Obama won a narrow, lame-duck victory.

  4. The Minnesota Tea Party formerly known as the majority party in Minnesota might have a different opinion about that.

  5. Oh, you’re talking Minnesota?

    Who’s the leadership in the Senate Minority caucus? The House minority caucus?

  6. The premise of this column is that deceptive political advertising was a major component that led to the GOP loss in Minnesota. Republicans now complaining about the dishonesty of the campaign were telling voters that they’d balanced the budget, as if their accounting gimmicks (borrowing from schools and tobacco) had actually balanced revenue and spending. This was the biggest lie of the entire election. Add to that the two proposed amendments. They promised a laser focus on jobs and deliver meaningless votes against human cloning and can’t figure out why they lost elections?.

    To a significant degree, Republicans have been hoist by their own petard. Republicans should not be overly surprised when the house of cards comes down around their ears. It doesn’t make for very civilized politics, but it wasn’t invented and perfected by wishy-washy and overly tolerant Democrats.

    I am a Republican who voted for Democrats to punish the Republican party for glorifying stupidity, and flunking math and science. I will do so again if necessary, but I fully intend to vote Republican again, as the only politicians I respect in this country are Republican. 21st century government must be streamlined, efficient, and directed at providing a minimal safety net for citizens, a sturdy infrastructure for commerce, and no more. I do not know how long I will have to wait for the Republicans to come around, but amongst all of the voices of Republican stupidity, I hear some good ideas from amongst the younger Republicans, particularly in state government. I’ve yet to hear any from the Democratic party.

    It’s lonely out here. I’m waiting for the call to come home.

  7. The premise of this column is that deceptive political advertising was a major component that led to the GOP loss in Minnesota

    No, the premise of this column is that it’s Online Lefty 101 that when a lefty has a weak argument and is out of ideas after the first salvo, they say “you’re melting down!” or “You’re awash in anger!”.

    The deceptiveness of their campaign has been a premise for two years.

    voters that they’d balanced the budget, as if their accounting gimmicks (borrowing from schools and tobacco) had actually balanced revenue and spending

    While I agree that it’d have been better to cut the budget with spending, we were faced with a governor whose orders were to hold out for taxes, even if it shut down the government. So he did. But you show how clearly the left has been suckered by the deceptive ad campaigns:

    Deception #1: Dayton was going to “borrow” twice as much from the schools.

    Deception #2: The shift isn’t “borrowing”; it’s ‘moving the payment to after an arbitrary date so that it appears in a different budget year. School districts have to adapt. Boo hoo. They do it (with maxiumum wailing and gnashing of teeth and Tom Dooher lying on the air).

    Deception #3: The Democrats ran that “tobacco settlement” red-hot when they had control of the legislature. Don’t go there.

    am a Republican who voted for Democrats

    Ah. You know, I’ve never heard that one before.

  8. I am a chemical engineer in a high-tech manufacturing plant in the middle of a rural county in Minnesota. Practically everyone here votes Republican, including lots of smart people with one or more degrees. There’s plenty of intelligent reasons to dislike the Democratic party, and plenty of intelligent Republicans. The know-nothing wing of the party gets all the press, and has had too large of an effect on the nominating process.

    The Tea Party will not last forever, and in four years they might be an afterthought. If nothing else, Tea Partiers are dying off a lot faster than they are procreating. But timing is always hard to predict. I think that if a strong leader moves the Republican party just a little, the Tea Party will self-deport itself. Republicans are putting money behind some truly stupid ideas. The Democrats have no ideas, only opposition to Republicans. Things could change quickly if the Republicans pick better people to put their money behind.

  9. Emery wrote:
    21st century government must be streamlined, efficient, and directed at providing a minimal safety net for citizens, a sturdy infrastructure for commerce, and no more.
    And yet Emery celebrates the idea of the demise of a group of politically active citizens whose name is the anagram of “Taxed Enough Already”.

  10. Mr. Berg wrote: /”Who’s the leadership in the Senate Minority caucus? The House minority caucus?’/

    If you think minority status is good enough for Minnesota Republicans then keep doing the same thing over and over.

    I think the Tea Party will likely be strengthened by an Obama victory, as he is clearly unable to articulate to the American people why the Tea Party nativism serves the country poorly, and why so many of their demands are conflicting. I expect to see big gains for Tea Party Republicans in 2014, and a Tea Party nominee in 2016 (Mr. Santorum or Ms. Bachmann perhaps?)

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