Shot in the Dark

Correcting The Record

Last week, we talked about Gene Pelowski (DFL, HD26B) about his reservations about the DFL’s trifecta.

Now, retired GOP Senate leader (in both the majority and minority) Paul Gazelka is publishing a book about Tim Walz.

And it‘s not a flattering look (emphasis added):

During his time leading the Minnesota Senate, Gazelka had a front row seat to observe Gov. Walz’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 riots that occurred in Minneapolis, and many other facets of Walz’s time in office. As such, Gazelka has written a book documenting the “daily battles” he fought with Gov. Walz.

“Now that Governor Walz has been elevated to the national ticket, I believe I have a duty to inform the nation’s voters about Walz’s failed leadership record,” the former majority leader said in a statement. “For that reason, I moved up the release of my book that chronicles Walz’s missteps handling the pandemic, freezing under pressure during the George Floyd riots, mishandling the state budget and more.”

This oughtta be good.

Why yes, I will be interviewing the Senator on my show. Saturday, 2PM.

Hope you can tune in.

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Mitch Berg

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12 responses to “Correcting The Record”

  1. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Walz’s missteps… what a nice diplomatic way of saying screw-ups and cynical party politics.

  2. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    I get it, it’s hard to be the leader of a minority party composed of squishes and wannabes, all afraid of getting bad press for opposing Bad Ideas.

    And yes, it’s great that some Republicans spoke out against some Bad Ideas from tme to time. Not just in the legislature – bloggers wrote scathing posts and the local think tank produced White Papers – so yes, people on The Right did pitch in to argue against Bad Ideas. I just think it would have been better still if Republicans in the legislature had stopped the Bad Ideas. But how? We’re not the majority, we can’t stop the Democrats from enacting Bad Ideas. What can we do? We’re frozen out of power.

    Decades ago, I went to a precinct caucus in Central Minnesota. The incumbent legislator for that area showed up to give a campaign stump speech seeking support. His theme: Vote For Me and I’ll Vote No.

    When the Democrats want to raise your taxes, I’ll vote No.
    When the Democrats want to waste your hard-earned dollars, I’ll vote No.
    When the Democrats want to give certain people special privileges, I’ll vote No.
    When the Democrats want . . . and he stopped speaking, looked at us in the crowd, and we all yelled “Vote NO.” He was re-elected in a landslide.

    That’s what we needed. Someone to Vote No. Vote No and keep voting NO, on every bill, on every proposal, even if it means shutting down the state government again, until Democrats come to the table to honestly negotiate.

    Sure, Democrats will bundle one Good Idea with a hundred Bad Ideas just so the media can claim “Senator X voted against children” and “Representative Y voted against more police” and “Republicans voted against YOU.” So what? They’re going to say that, anyway, you deplorables, you bitter clingers, you hateful racists.

    As well hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Shut the whole damned thing down and leave it shut down until Democrats can’t stand it anymore. They have more to lose than we do.

  3. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    I think we need a repository of wonderful Minnesota political statements, aphorisms to quote when needed.

    Joe Niehaus, House District 16A, Send me to St. Paul and I’ll vote NO!

    Mark Dayton, Governor, Minnesota is not like it was 30, 50 years ago. White, B+, Minnesota-born citizens who cannot accept that should find another state.

    And a Minnesota Democrat legislator whose name I cannot recall (and can’t find online because the search engines are stuck on one word so they only return results about the lottery): When you win, you keep your money. When we win, we take your money.

    Mitch, got a space on the blog for that?

  4. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    As reported by Jon Justice last week. Trump told a story about Tim Jong Walz, stating that Walz called him in a panic, when during the riots, a lot of Trump supporters were in front of the mansion, carrying American flags. As Trump relays it, he didn’t even know him at that point, but Timmy was afraid the they were going to break into the mansion and hurt him, because he only had one guard at the door, so he asked Trump to tell them that “he was on their side and that he was a good guy.” Trump said that he told Timid Triggered Timmy that if they were carrying American flags, they weren’t going to hurt him. None the less, he Tweeted out that Timmy was a good guy, so stay peaceful. During that segment, two of the people that were in that crowd, called into the show and said that Tim was never in any danger.

  5. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    I tend to remind the hard line conservatives that got angry at the Sen Gazelka, that when you have a 1 vote majority and 5 squishy moderates the math sucks. If the hardliners died on their fiscal hill, the result would be a worse bill passed by a defacto Democrat majority after the squishes defect to avoid a government shutdown.
    I tend to think that Gazelka held his Caucus together about as well as it could’ve been done and doing so cost him any chance he had to get the GOP endorsement for governor. Instead, we endorsed a different squish that happened to retire instead of lose an endorsement because he signed onto the Red Flag Bill. Jensen was then able to sell himself to a room full of first time delegates as a hardline, anti-Covid lockdown, Trumpy conservative. He was even able to fool a member of the New House Republican Caucus. That really worked well for us.
    Nominate the most conservative candidate that can win, and always remember, the Caucus is only as strong as its bare majority. The smaller the majority, the more powerful the squishes become.

  6. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    SMC.
    Jensen is a good man who the left smeared for earlier statements on his abortion stance, taken way out of context as usual and they were pissed off that he exposed the WuFlu agenda, sent to all medical personnel by the CDC. Rat bastard Ellison, got the corrupt state medical board to investigate him, even after he lost. This bankrupted him, cost him his marriage and hurt his practice. Basically, the left was doing their typical hit job on anyone that dared to challenge their arrogant, elitist asses.

    Angie Craig, is doing the same thing to Joe Tierab in a campaign ad, using “Dr. Beth”, taking his edited comments out of context. Fortunately, KSTP has at least tried to fact check campaign ads, corrected his actual stance, calling that ad “misleading”. Too bad they can’t say the truth, “Angie’s campaign is lying”.

  7. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    My take is that I’m disappointed that Gazelka is following Pelowski’s lead in waiting until he’s out of office to say something about Walz, instead of years ago when it might have done some good. Why not? I think there might be a story or two there.

  8. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    Boss,
    Jensen was right on Covid.
    Jensen was ou so very wrong on guns, and it took him 10 months of campaigning to walk his story back with excuse after excuse before he finally said what he should’ve said immediately. “I was wrong.”
    I agree that the DFL smeared him, relentlessly. And that was after he signed onto one of their dream pieces of legislation.
    Scott Jensen would be a better governor than Tim Walz. That’s absolutely true. But he was a horse poop of a candidate that isn’t actually all that conservative. He was just the angriest voice of the GOP hopefuls about Covid. The problem was, the swing voting independents had already moved on past that particular issue.
    Michelle Benson isn’t always the most conservative, but she would’ve been a much better Governor than Jensen would ever be.
    Kendall Qualls would’ve been a better Governor as well, and he was a much better candidate. He had a better breadth of policy positions, and he was better at talking to independents and persuadable democrats. And I would’ve loved to see the DFL try to vilify Kendall as a racist. I might have been able to get father to vote for Qualls. Jensen wasn’t ever going to be a possible vote for him.

  9. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    What Smith says, with various different particulars, about a bunch of GOP candidates. I am a conservative in the Reagan mold with a touch of populism, and my take is that the GOP needs to seriously understand that to move the ball at all, they’ve got to get over “throwing red meat to a big part of their base” and move to “nominating candidates that don’t give moderates the heebie-jeebies.”

    Things in particular; don’t nominate candidates whose personal lives are a huge mess (e.g. Herschel Walker, Roy Moore), don’t nominate candidates who have been removed from previous office for misconduct (Roy Moore), and don’t nominate candidates whose views are of the fringe even in your own party. The GOP can get a lot moving if only they understand, in the words of the Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometime, you might find, you get what you need.”

  10. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Smith;
    Agreed! I knocked doors for Kendall when he ran against Dean Phillips. He’s got a great family, too.

    During that time, I met people that had been with the MNGOP. They told me that they actually wanted to run Emmer’s wife against Dayton in 2010, but Tom’s ego wouldn’t let her. A lot of them got pissed off at Tom, because they knew Jackie would have won.

  11. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    Boss,
    I’ve been involved since 2008, and I was a candidate in 2010. I know staffers from before that time, including my wife. I’ve been on good terms with the Emmers since I met them (Tom helped to encourage me to run against Paymar in 64B), and my wife’s family have known them considerably longer (Tom’s joke about each wanting 3 or 4 kids and compromising with 7 was originally my father in law’s joke before they ended up with 11 kids). This is the first time I’ve ever heard of running Jackie for Governor. Tom is and always was the politician. Running for Office was never Jackie’s thing. I can only assume these people you mentioned were wish casting about Jackie and feel supported by Emmer coming up short 2010.

  12. Bill C Avatar
    Bill C

    Bigman: https://www.azquotes.com/author/23151-Cy_Thao

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