Shot in the Dark

Tag: Pawlenty

  • Chanting Points Memo: LGA Cuts Are Killing Minnesota! (Part 1)

    I wrote about it yesterday:  the regional left wants to make Governor Pawlenty’s cuts to the “Local Government Aid” program a major issue in the campaign. If there is any justice – and if Minnesotans can read numbers – it should backfire badly on the DFL. I wrote yesterday about a piece in Twin Cities…

  • Too Far

    The Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) sent Minnesota’s government into a tizzy a few weeks ago when they tossed Governor Pawlenty’ s unallotment – his legal line-item veto – of  billions in spending in the previous budget. Via NewsQ, Senator Julianne Ortman says the SCOM swerved into activism in throwing out the unallotment – and…

  • Just A Hunch

    I got the strangest sensation last week.  I haven’t had this sensation in the longest time.  Maybe a brief flash in 2000, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. The DFL realizes that they’ve got nothing. The Strib referenced Ben Smith in Politico this morning, saying that…: Pawlenty appears to have run the table on…

  • It’s Paté. Honest.

    A political consultant’s main job, if you think about it, is to try to convince as many people as possible that a crap sandwich is really made out of paté and bread. We’ll come back to that. The weekend’s big brouhaha in re the Minnesota state budget was over the proposal to dump low-income Minnesotans…

  • Things Go Better With Talk

    Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM. Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1. Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central.  Today we’ll be interviewing Governor Pawlenty in the 1PM hour, and…

  • All Hail The King!

    The DFL on Monday voted for an epic tax hike (disguised, per usual, as negotiation) in the middle of an epic recession/depression. The answer – the real answer, anyway – is to toss every single DFLer responsible for this vote out this November. My friend and longtime radio colleague King Banaian is trying to do…

  • RINO By Association?

    I peeled this bit out of my liveblog, since I think it’s worth a discussion on its own. One of the tempests in the teapot last night; a group of “liberty” members of the party were tweeting merrily away that Norm Coleman and that noted moderate Vin Weber were making phone calls on behalf of…

  • Liveblogging The Convention, Day 2

    4:58 – Seifert announced his retirement.  I say he runs for CD7 if Byberg doesn’t win.  I think it’s a swell idea. 4:55 – I was back on the floor casting my ballot when Seifert conceded.  Incredible class act. Emmer is on stage now – it took me that long to get back to the…

  • Looks Like We’re Gonna Need A New Attorney General

    Attorney General Lori Swanson has declined the Governor’s request to join the states sueing to stop Obamacare: She pointed out in her letter to him that Pawlenty can always file his own friend-of-the-court brief to side with the states fighting the law. That prompted this response from Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung: “Governor Pawlenty intends to…

  • The Endless Chain Of What-Ifs

    One of the big political “stories” last week was the “threat” letter sent to thirty-odd US state governors, including Governor Pawlenty. The City Pages’ “Blotter”  caught part of the “story’s” big problem; [The putative senders’] agenda: “The Restore America Plan is a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of…

  • Who Says Cutting Taxes Can’t Help

    Among the DFL’s “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota”-chanting clacque, you rarely see much sympathy for tax cuts; suffice to say that once Obamacare kicks in, we won’t see any for a long, long time. But when it comes time to try to save jobs, suddenly, even the hardest-core DFLers get religion; Governor Pawlenty…

  • Can Minnesota Shoot Itself In The Foot?

    Over at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, a writer named “MNBearBud” plaintively asks “Can Minnesota Elect a Bold Progressive Governor in 2010?” It’s a mash note for As I have been helping out at a couple different DFL Conventions in the past couple weeks I have been hearing something that kind of disturbs me. The following quote…

  • Rhetorical Paxil

    Dave Mindemann sounds depressed: I wonder if Pawlenty even wants to help anybody. He doesn’t care about the poor…we got that loud and clear. He’s playing games with the bonding bill, which means he is in no hurry to help with jobs. He reversed himself on climate change, which means he doesn’t give a rip…

  • The Fiscal Monkey On Our Backs

    I’m willing to go back and forth with people who favor the so-called “high-tax, high service” model of government. “Mighty big of ya, Berg!” Well, no – that’s how democracy works; we each go out and plug for our various positions, and at the end of the day some sort of compromise gets reached.  One…

  • Much Ado By Association

    I’ve spent much of the life of this blog – eight years, now – railing against the evils of smearing by association.  It’s a particularly slimy tactic in the hands of the not-very-bright, on all sides of the putative political aisle.  Being a conservative, I bag on particularly egregiously stupid examples from the left (like…

  • Grudge Match

    Over at his new gig at Politics in Minnesota, former City Pages and Minnesota Independent reporter Paul Demko – who is as a rule one of the smarter bloggers in the regional Sorosphere, and I promise you I don’t mean that in the “Jessica Simpson is smarter than Anna Nicole Smith” sense of the phrase,…

  • Where Have You Gone, Pat Anderson?

    Our state turns its lonely eyes to you. Especially when hearing from the current occupant of your old office, Rebecca Otto – a skirt so empty she could sit in for Betty McCollum without anyone knowing the difference. Otto is bagging on her boss, Governor Pawlenty (and apparently trying to make it appear as if…

  • Governor Pawlenty is Way Off Track

    …and so too should be the plan to spend billions, that we don’t have by the way, on a high-speed link to Chicago. According to the plan, freight and passenger rail 20-year capital costs could range from $6.2 billion, with nearly two-thirds of that provided by federal, state and local government. The Twin Cities-Chicago line…

  • The Affliction That Dare Not Write Its Name

    The big Minnesota story du jour is about Mark Dayton’s “coming out” last week about his long battle with depression. Bob Collins at MPR addresses the issue: Former Sen. Mark Dayton revealed in a Sunday column that he’s suffered from alcoholism and depression. It’s now an issue in his quest to become governor. In politics,…

  • Early Handicapping

    Mark McKinnon at The Daily Beast indulges in the wonk’s favorite weekend pastime – putting together lists. This one – the top ten GOP contenders. He’s got Mitt at the top of the list, followed by Palin and Pawlenty.  Not a bad start. Moving down the list, though, you get the impression he’s trying to…

  • Party Integrity For We, But Not For Ye

    Remember before the ’08 election, when the left and media (pardon the redundancy) stood, like Captain Renault, and bellowed “I’m shocked, shocked, that you would enforce an ideological purity test” (against the “Override Six”,  six GOP legislators that stabbed Governor Pawlenty in the back and voted to overrride his veto of a huge spending bill,…

  • Unintended Consequences, Predictable Reactions, Part I

    Tony Kennedy, writing in the Strib last week, addresses the latest charter school “crisis”: Minnesota’s charter school movement, which sparked a national rethinking of public schooling nearly two decades ago, has been infected by an out-of-control financing system fueled by junk bonds, insider fees and lax oversight. “Out of control”. Interesting bit of hyperbole, there. …

  • Note To Local Leftybloggers

    I realize you get that sense of edgy rebellion by calling our governor “Timmy”.  And ordinarily I’d not be the one to rain on your parade, however pathetic “your parade” would seem to be. However, he was elected by a plurality of your neighbors – twice.  So it’s actually “Governor Pawlenty” to you. That is all.

  • Pawlenty: Balz To The Walz

    Remember the key dictum in Media-Republican Party relations – which is such a truism I may codify it as another Berg’s Law: any Republican can be “the good Republican” , until they’re a threat to the Democrats. So the piece the other day by Dan Balz in the WaPo might actually be good news for…

  • That Specious, Erroneous Sense Of Inevitability

    The primary mission of society is to keep goverment at all levels supplied to its satisfaction. Well, no, that’s absurd.  Or at least, so think most of us. But to Jeff Van Wychen of MN2020 – writing an “op-ed” at the MinnPost?  Maybe not co much: Since last December, Gov. Tim Pawlenty has unilaterally cut…