I don’t necessarily believe that the Star/Tribune’s news editors sit around looking for ways to boost the DFL. I think the DFL is their only frame of reference when it comes to personal and institutional worldviews; they are like extras in Pauline Kael’s classics response to news of Nixon’s 1972 victory, “none of my friends voted for him!“.

Lori Sturdevant, on the other hand, exceeds even Doug Grow in her rank partisanship. Sunday’s column is full of the sort of grating, presumptive self-adulation that Sturdevant took to new personal heights in this past election.

I’m going to skip most of it, because honestly I can probably paste in parts from every other Sturdevant column I’ve ever fisked over the past 57 months and get the same effect. I can almost write the stereotype Sturdevant column, in fact:

Minnesotans love their government. Minnesotans NEED their government. Government is as much a part of the Minnesota character as breathing and passive-aggression. A few Republicans want to change that – but there’s hope we can roll back the tide and keep government…er, Minnesota happy.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating that much.

But here’s the part that frosts me (and this is really from Sturdevant’s column):

Those polled said in heartening numbers that they still think Minnesotans can solve their shared problems. But they are increasingly skeptical about using what has historically been a powerful tool for doing so — state government. Minnesotans need reasons to believe in their government again — and if this governor and Legislature are going to provide them, they need to keep this season’s spirit alive.

“Minnesotans need reasons to believe in their government again”…or else what? Minnesota has minuscule unemployment, a better-educated, healthier and often-happier population than almost anywhere in the nation…what’s to fix?
Government is not the vehicle of our hopes and dreams, much less the solution to our problems. Government is an employee – a lazy, arrogant one that the rules only allow us to fire every so many years.

Sturdevant is fantasizing about a “golden age” of Minnesota politics, where Republicans and Democrats “got along” and “cooperated” to enact a vision of government…

…that was purely the DFL’s. Sturdevant moons and fawns over an era where the Republicans were too gutted out – by the FDR era, by the era of Big Government it spawned, and ultimately by Watergate – to do anything but. An era – and “spirit” – that gave us huge, arrogant government with boundless appetite, and a populace that had been so sotted with the material rewards of keeping the status quo in power than it didn’t care – until the bills started coming due.

Things have changed. Minnesotans are starting – at 40-years’-long last – to take responsibility for their lives, and for regulating government’s role in them. November 7 was a hiccup along the way – the next decade will show it.

And Lori Sturdevant and her ilk will be there, no doubt, in ten years’ time, kvetching about those damn conservatives, not playing along with the people of Minnesota the DFL.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 5:18 am and is filed under Big Alt-Media, Media, Minnesota Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.