Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember Aesop’s fable about the country mouse and the city mouse?  I felt that way when I moved to Saint Paul.  Not because the buildings were strangely tall but because the residents were strangely liberal.

Years ago, I attended an out-state Republican Precinct Caucus in Senate District 16A represented by Republican Joe Niehaus, who came to the caucus and asked for our votes.  He promised that if we re-elected him, he’d go to St. Paul and vote NO.  If they ask to raise taxes, he’d vote NO.  If they ask for unilateral disarmament, he’d vote NO.  If they . . . by the time he finished, the whole crowd was yelling NO at every punch line and they meant every word of it.  Whatever it was, he was against it, and so were all of us.  Joe Niehaus was my kind of conservative because he understood that things which have stood the test of time should continue, government should do only what’s absolutely necessary and then at the lowest organizational level, and when you maximize personal responsibility, you maximize personal freedom to boot.

Years later, I attended a St. Paul Republican Precinct Caucus and sat between two people who would have been branded Commies had they been out-state.  The resolutions passed up to the county level were just as leftist as anything the out-state Democrats would have wanted.  I felt completely out of place at that meeting.  I was the only Joe Niehaus conservative there.

I’m getting that feeling again, watching senior Republican members of Congress congratulate themselves for caving in to Democrats.  They didn’t have to cave in, they didn’t have to do anything at all.  Just sit quietly until the default date appeared, call the President’s bluff, and wait for him to come to the bargaining table. How hard is that?  Just do . . . nothing.

I miss Joe Niehaus.  I wish he were a candidate in 2014 so we could send him to Washington solely to vote NO.  Now that’s a campaign I would donate to.

Joe Doakes

Sometimes “No” is the only answer you need.