I do try to get along with people.  Even liberals.  Even leftybloggers.  Part of it is that I grew up a liberal, in a liberal family; I’m not one of those who sees liberals as an evil “enemy”, necessarily – because I used to be one of them, and I was no more “evil” or “enemy” then than I am now. 

And there are some good leftybloggers out there.  I’ve called them out when I see them. 

Which doesn’t change the fact that the Twin Cities’ leftysphere is one of the world’s mother lodes of Mittyesque fantasy, deranged paranoia, hopelessly hatred-addled ranting masquerading as “thought”, and (at the end of the day) mindless passing-on of what ones’ superiors want passed on.

But every once in a while, a leftyblog tries to actually “report” the “news”.

Now, as I noted last weekend, a couple of minions from Dustrytrice.com (a DFLer whose blog is to Minnesota Democrats Exposed as Debbie Gibson was to Chrissie Hynde) were busy videotaping GOP gubernatorial candidates’ appearances on the NARN last weekend.   They stood there for two hours, getting vid of Paul Kolls, Pat Anderson and Marty Seifert and, as I got off the air, I saw they were getting ready to film Laura Brod.

I mentioned this to Laura, who is the sort of irrepressible conservative that will no doubt get her labelled as “crazy” by the DFL noise machine in fairly short order here.  Always looking for a scrap, she walked over to introduce herself to the camera guys.

And I thought “Hm.  I wonder how this is going to come out?”  I already had a hint; earlier, Trice had twittered that the utterly mild-mannered Paul Kolls – easily the lowest-key of the four three and a half gubernatorial hopefuls – was “hateful”.  I figured “this is gonna be a doozy”.

So I was mildly shocked to read Trice saying that Brod – who is nothing if not a good GOP trooper – had “said”:

Over the busy opening weekend a few DUSTYTRICE.COM tipsters were volunteering to help tape over at the Patriot Radio booth. They caught up with Rep. Laura Brod as she was getting ready to go on air. One of the tipsters mentioned that none of the GOP candidates were speaking at the GOP booth.

Well, according to Laura Brod they aren’t letting them speak.

Huh. 

Well, I took the liberty of talking with Brod before our NARN interview yesterday, and emailing her this morning just to make sure.  And while the both communications were off the record, let’s just assure you that that was not what Laura Brod said.  She said nothing about the GOP not “allowing” candidates to speak at the booth.

So what I want to know is why the MN GOP is preventing their candidates from speaking to the 1.6 million Minnesotans at the Fair?

And what I want to know is, given that Brod said nothing of the sort, and Dustrytrice.com has absolutely no corroboration of this rather odd charge, where does this curious claim come from? 

Oh, yeah.

We know their booth is only seeing light traffic,

[althought not nearly as light as the DFL’s; I spend two hours a day watching the place from my vantage point across the street at the Patriot booth; it’s a morgue, even though it’s at one of the highest traffic intersections at the fairgrounds.  And I’m seeing easily 2-3 times as much GOP swag and flair as I am DFL as I wander a, which is a huge turnaround from last year] 

 so are the GOP party bosses afraid nobody will be there to listen? Are they worried that the extremist right-wing candidates (Pat Anderson, Tom Emmer) may drag down the more moderate candidates (Bill Haas)?

Nah, Dusty.  In the age of Obama, conservatism is not a drag.