Let’s take a trip back through the history of Nick Coleman.

In 2004, to impugn Governor Pawlenty’s budget-cutting platform, he paid a potemkin visit to an inner city school (one where my daughter had attended kindergarten) and bellowed “YOUR SCHOOLS ARE BURNING” – as if the academic and social failure, financial wastrelcy and generalized collapse of public schools were something that only happened under Republican governors who twiddled with the budget (and hardly touched education funding).  It was a fairly bald-faced swat at the governor and the state’s thin film of fiscal conservatives.

And, of course, it was wrong.  Theatrical, and wrong.

Later still in 2004, when Coleman tried to tie the idea that people had to go all the way to Minneapolis for free flu shots to Pawlenty:

“It was time to leave the PROFESSIONAL BUILDING. I wished everyone good health and walked out onto Hennepin Avenue. When I looked down the street and squinted, I could almost see Lakewood Cemetery, four blocks away. The gates were open.”

In 2007, Nick Coleman – bailing desperately as his effort to tie the 35W Bridge disaster to budget-cutting slipped beneath the waves – reacted badly to news that engineers were about to tie the collapse to an unfortunate but fairly mundane and utterly non-political material failure; “get ready to be gusseted”, he snorted, like a third-rate illusionist hoping to push back the laws of physics by the sheer force of his rhetoric.

So are we starting to see a pattern?

After seven years of success at taming the state budget monster and running a state that just plain runs better than most of the rest of the country – especially better than the liberal cesspools that Coleman seems to admire so much – Pawlenty is spending the legislative off-season pre-campaigning for President.  And that means knocking around the country.

And just like the burning schools and magic cemetary gates and flying gusset plates, Coleman’s going to try to twist it into some sort of malfeasance.

Because for some reason, Coleman thinks Pawlenty has left something undone back home:

It’s called Minnesota, and although Pawlenty can find 49 other states, he’s having trouble feeling his way around his home state. For good reason: Minnesota’s problems could trip up his ambitions. As Pawlenty travels the Republican rubber chicken circuit, Minnesota is heading into uncharted waters.

And its governor is AWOL.

Minnesota’s “uncharted waters” are these: things are tough, but better than in most of the country.  We have a nasty budget situation – but at least the Governor balanced it (over the DFL’s politically dead body).

But to Coleman, it’s not about substance or those pesky numbers.  It’s about appearances – in this case, appearing to take the yapping schnauzers of his opposition seriously [emphasis added by me]:

Pawlenty’s refusal to participate in a legislative summit designed to stave off looming fiscal disaster was nothing less than nonfeasance. Instead of doing his job at the Capitol last week, Pawlenty attended a shmoozefest in Eden Prairie, surrounded by business leaders and loyalists (not to mention his adoring staff). In shirking his duty, he broke faith with voters and broke bonds with the legacy of his party.

This may be the most perfectly, inscrutably dumb paragraph Coleman has ever written.  I have literally spent five minutes trying to encapsulate the torrent of dumb and wrong; the best I can come up with is a list:

1. The “legislative summit” is a do-nothing charade being thrown by his incompetent, spendthrift opposition to try to make them look like they’re marginally less useless than they are.
2. Er, Nick?  Wasn’t the premise that the Governor was galavanting around the country and couldn’t find his way around Minnesota?  You do know that Eden Prairie is in Minnesota, right?
3. “Nonfeasance” is not a word.
4. Not to be pedantic, but neither is “Shmoozefest”.  It’s “Schmoozefest”.
5. It seems a bit of an abuse of rhetorical license to say that Pawlenty’s staff “adores” him; worse still to say it as if it’s a bad thing.  Perhaps Coleman’s experiences at the Strib newsroom have programmed him to think colleagues should hate each other?

It gets worse:

The Capitol event drew dozens of former state government leaders,

[I’m wondering; I know who elects “government leaders”, but I am trying to think who elects or selects “former government leaders?”  What is their significance?  Why would we care what they think?  Get back to me on that…]

including a bevy of mainstream Minnesota Republicans such as former governors Al Quie and Arne Carlson, who warned the state is steering toward an iceberg with no captain at the helm. He was correct: The “captain” has gotten his own boat and is rowing toward the horizon.

I’m going to depart for a moment from fisking Coleman, and take a shot at fisking the entire DFL. The whole “Arne Carlson was the mainstream” meme was the DFL’s dork-fingered version of Alinsky’s approach to campaigning long before anyone in Minnesota had heard of Saul Alinsky.  Of course, Arne Carlson is not a mainstream Republican. He’s a throwback to a pre-1976 world (which survived until 1998 in Minnesota, where the Reagan Revolution bypassed the MNGOP for twenty-odd years), trotted out purely to try to score points against the GOP.

But the lesson of this last two elections – conservatives win, “moderates” lose – is so obvious, even the MNGOP seems to have been getting it lately.

Both major parties — and the governor — share responsibility for the deep partisan divide that is hampering solutions to Minnesota’s problems. They also share a responsibility to put the state on sound footing.

And, unlike the DFL – which dithered its way through the session, thumbing its nose at the GOP all the way, and then tried to ram through a bloated monstrosity of a spending bill at the last second behind a foul rhetorical cloud of demands for “bipartisanship NOW!” – Pawlenty carried that responsibility out.  He fought – alone – against a two-chamber press.

And won.Twice.

I think he’s carried out his responsibility – the job for which he was elected – just fine.

Now, of course I’ve saved the worst for last.  As I predicted on the show this past Saturday, Coleman – being purely a monkey of the Minnesota mushy-left establishment – is so devoid of insight that he has to resort to casual defamation.

For a guy who acted as if the sky was falling when the president asked to speak to schoolchildren, Pawlenty sure seems laid back about his own obligations. He has dived so deep into the right-wing tide pool that by Thursday, he had joined Sarah Palin and a few other GOP confederates in threatening to invoke the 10th Amendment — in effect having Minnesota secede from the union on health care reform with little regard for the effect on Minnesota’s 450,000 uninsured citizens.

“Secede from the union”.  Just like those slave owners.  Tenth Amendment equal slavery!

Tim Pawlenty is too busy primping for the GOP presidential beauty contest and bizarrely making himself into a financial Pollyanna. Predictions put the next deficit at as high as three or four times the 2009 deficit — and without billions in federal stimulus funds to help close the gap.

Then perhaps the lesson will not be lost on Minnesotans; it’s time to quit electing  spendthrift DFLers to the Legislature.

But Pollyanna’s take on the coming crisis: “It’s a very manageable number,” he told the lovefest in Eden Prairie.

Waiter, I’d like whatever he’s having.

All together now:  Nick, you’ve had more than enough.  You’ve always had more than enough.

UPDATE:  A commenter notes that Coleman’s “prediction” – that next year’s deficit could be four times what it was projected for this year – would mean the deficit would be 85% as large as the budget itself.

And while I put nothing past the DFL, especially the current horde of hamsters in the Senate and House, that seems just a tad implausible.

So far.

In the wake of Minneapolis’ 35W bridge disaster – which occured two years ago tomorrow – Democrats nationwide use the tragedy as yet another reason to call for more taxes, to pay for more “infrastructure” spending.

Minnesota DFLers used the tragedy as an occasion to pillory Governor Pawlenty – in some particularly ghoulish cases, even before the last girder had fallen into the river – for having vetoed a hike in the state gas tax, and for having taken and held to a “no new taxes” pledge five years earlier, during his nomination process.

In response, many of us asked, hypothetically, “if the DFL had had complete control of the state for the past ten  years – if Skip Humphrey had beaten Jesse Ventura and Norm Coleman – do you homestly believe they’d have spent that time and money doing the unglamorous, tedious, exquisitely expensive work of going and inspecting and repairing old infrastructure (or not-so-old infrastructure – the 35W bridge was half the age of the bridges up and downstream from it) rather than more-visible work, like building light rail and more roads?”

We were, of course, absolutely correct:

Tens of thousands of unsafe or decaying bridges carrying 100 million drivers a day must wait for repairs because states are spending stimulus money on spans that are already in good shape or on easier projects like repaving roads, an Associated Press analysis shows.President Barack Obama urged Congress last winter to pass his $787 billion stimulus package so some of the economic recovery money could be used to rebuild what he called America’s “crumbling bridges.” Lawmakers said it was a historic chance to chip away at the $65 billion backlog of deficient structures, often neglected until a catastrophe like the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed two years ago this Saturday.

The lesson?  Raising taxes and assuming that Democrats will use the money to pay for maintenance is like giving a teenager a credit card to buy school supplies.

Grace Kelly at Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project lets us in on a key facet in the liberal psyche:

They really do believe money grows on trees! 

She assails Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment process:

Perhaps here is why many people thought that unallotment was an empty threat! Balancing the budget through unallotment would violate the rules under which federal dollars match state dollars, resulting in loss of federal matching dollars beyond the unallotment. In this case that meant $72 million of lost federal funding beyond the unallotment.

Right.  That means there’s $72 million dollars that taxpayers in Rhode Island, New Mexico and Mississippi won’t have to fork over to be spent here in Minnesota.

The amount of $72 million comes from Commissioner Hanson’s letter. Check out the copy of MN Government letter from Hanson. An short excerpt is highlighted here from Appendix A.

In a dismal budget year, there’s $72 million that America’s hard-working men and women can keep and spend on things that actually help the economy.

All Republican Governor Pawlenty had to do was come to the bargaining table and give up something to reach a better overall outcome to keep that $72 Million in federal matching funds. I guess what was best for Minnesota would not have made a good sound bite in Pawlenty’s 2012 campaign speeches!

This is one of those things that astounds liberals; it never occurs to them that anyone would want or need to behave differently than a liberal.

Grace (and everyone like her)!  Governor Pawlenty was elected because he was an alternative to irresponsible, economy-leaching, blood-sucking tax-and-spenders!

And then re-elected – almost alone among his GOP constitutional officers – on exactly the same platform!

And if he has any Presidential ambitions, it’s not going to be as someone who grabs his ankles when the DFL tells him to (in the interest of “bipartisanship”, after all); it’ll be because he’s a sharp alternative to the Democrats nationwide.

Thank you, Governor Pawlenty.  If we could hitch heat collectors to the collective brain of Minnesota’s DFL to catch the exhaust heat from all that cognitive dissonance, we could all cut our heating bills 25%.

To balance the state budget, Governor Pawlenty has “unallotted” – pulled the funding for – hundreds of millions of dollars of state spending…

…including the state program that refunded campaign contributions to people.

Naturally, Lori Sturdevant is painting campaign donors as  victims of unallotment:

The Campaign Finance Institute, based at George Washington University in Washington, issued a statement Wednesday noting that its studies have found that small donors play an unusually large role in Minnesota’s elections for legislative and state constitutional offices. The state leads the nation in the share of campaign funds raised in increments of less than $100 — the maximum contribution amount from a married couple that the refund program would reimburse.

Well, not. If that trend survives this unallotment, then that will be true.

If it does not, then the State of Minnesota will have led the nation in campaign funds raised in small doses.  In other words, all of Minnesota’s taxpayers have been subsidizing Minnesotans’ political habits.

“Eliminating the rebate would remove an important force for democracy in Minnesota government,” said the institute’s executive director Michal Malbin. In most states, campaign donations come in larger amounts from fewer donors, many of whom expect to gain influence with their contributions.

That is right – and whether the donation is small or large, that is the way it should be.  If I give $5 to the NRA, it’s because I want to “gain influence” in Saint Paul or Washington when my contribution forces NRA-endorsed candidates over the top to win elections.

So in what ethical universe is it right for Greta Hellemoen in Fergus Falls to subsidize my political donations?

Common Cause Minnesota is urging the 2010 Legislature to restore the program,

Another good reason to cut it.

and Republican activist Robert Carney of Minneapolis has threatened to initiate a class action lawsuit to stop Pawlenty’s unallotment. His argument is that depriving taxpayers of a promised refund sets an unwelcome precedent for the next time the state faces money woes.

Perhaps, arguably.

Allowing the DFL to spend money like crack whores who’ve rolled their johns is even more “unwelcome”, one might think…

Most everyone thought Norm Coleman’s concession speech was gracious and classy.  There were some risible exceptions (see previous)…

…and Charlie Quimby, who notes:

I heard an MPR reporter say that cameras from The UpTake were excluded from livestreaming Coleman’s announcement. Instead, the news service shot shaky video from a neighbor’s yard and posted it here — a mute commentary on the snub.The UpTake has provided the most in-depth video documentation of the various proceedings associated with the recount, but has been systematically stiffed by Coleman’s staff. If Coleman does decide to run for office again, he’s certainly not paving the way with citizen media.

Now, let’s see if we can get this straight:  Uptake, an avowedly “progressive” “news organization”, gets access to “document” the election process from election authorities led by a “progressive” Secretary of State; they do a decent job of covering the proceedings (at least, the parts where their editorial stances aren’t included), but they are unmistakeably in the bag for Al Franken throughout the entire process.

So how is Coleman wrong for ejecting them?

I have no problem with partisan media; I am partisan media!  I have no problem in particular with the Uptake, who I believe generally tries to do a good job (with a few notable problems endemic to its’ “everyone plays!” participation model). 

But being partisan media has consequences.

I am a conservative blogger and host; I can fairly easily get access to Governor Pawlenty, John Kline, Michele Bachmann, and the one good Senator Minnesota has had since 2000, Norm Coleman, at least in part because my allegiances and the audience are pretty obvious.  They all know that while there might be a tough question or two, there will be no ambushes, no smearing, nothing rebroadcast out of context.

On the other hand, last year I sent invites to appear on the Northern Alliance to Senator Klobuchar, candidate Franken, Representatives Ellson and McCollum, and RT Rybak.   Only Rybak responded (we had a good interview!); the rest didn’t even give the courtesy of a rejection.

“Well, of course!”, the standard response went.  “You’re conservative media!  The Uptake is…”

Um…what is the Uptake?

“They’re journalists!”

Well, sure – and by the same standard, so am I.

“Nooooo, Berg – you’re a fire-breathing talk show host! It’s different!”

Keep your stereotypes to yourself.  I’ll put the interviews that Ed and I (and King, and John and Brian) do up against anything on MPR.  Of course that’s a matter of opinion, but it happens to be correct.

So – why the vapors over the “progressive” Uptake’s snub?  Partisan journalism has its downside!

Ever since Governor Pawlenty went down the unallotment route, the DFL has been “warning” that property taxes, inevitably and perforce, will rise.

Gary Gross points out the vacuity and dishonesty of that statement:

I’d love asking Mr. Entenza or these mayors whether they eliminated or reduced spending on wants to pay for the needs. I’d love asking whether the cities thought about doing things differently first instead of immediately raising taxes. I’m betting that the majority of them didn’t.If these cities’ property taxes were raised without the mayors and city councils rethinking their spending or without reforming the delivery of essential services, then the mayors and city councils are to blame, not Gov. Pawlenty. That either makes Mr. Entenza a blowhard who’d rather blame others for his ineptitude or he’s the type of candidate that refuses to think outside the box to protect Minnesota’s taxpayers.

Either way, his behavior in this is unacceptable because there’s no suggestion that he’ll deviate from the DFL playbook of raising taxes first. We already have too many tax-first DFL ‘leaders’. We certainly don’t need another in St. Paul.

Here’s a question to ask your city council and mayor, wherever you live (in Minnesota. All you non-Minnesotans can sit this one out.  For now.  Maybe); why, whenever talk of cutting Local Government Aid (aka LGA, Minnesota’s redisstribution of wealth from the parts of the state that pay their way to the cities) is there talk of cutting the city’s only really essential services – police and fire.  Are you saying they are financed through Local Government Aid, a transitory form of funding?  Why not fund the city’s real essential services with the city’s property taxes, and other revenue that’s not dependent on any other political body? Wouldh’t that be the responsible thing to do?

If your city is funding the real essential services with LGA, and paying for Human Rights Departments and Community Councils with property tax revenue, someone needs to ask “why?”

We’ve visited this topic before; for the past forty years or so, when outstate Minnesota was lagging and the Twin Cities were booming, Minnesota’s government instituted “Local Government Aid”, which essentially subsidized the growth of the rest of the state.  This coincided with a period where Minnesota Republicans, like Republicans nationwide, were very different from the post-1980 Republicans that most of us came to know, and with a period of time when Minnesota – blessed with immense natural resources and brain power, would very likely have boomed anyway.  This period was dubbed “The Minnesota Miracle” by Time Magazine, and it spawned the most noxious myth in the history of Minnesota politics; that Minnesota’s prosperity was a function of Republicans “cooperating” (read: acquiescing without question) with the DFL, a myth that still drives much partisan rhetoric in Minnesota.

And it still drives it, even though the dynamics have changed almost beyond recognition in the past forty years.  A generation of DFL social canoodling have left the Twin Cities short on revenue (“despite” some of the most confiscatory commercial property taxes in the country) and very, very long on spending; for a generation, the DFL has used the urban core as a warehouse for the poor, with all the spending that it causes and, (not very) arguably, attracts.  “LGA” has become a subsidy of the Twin Cities metro by the parts of the state that actually pay their way.

Governor Pawlenty has now followed through on the promise of his veto of the DFL’s attempt to crash a porkfest tax and spend plan through the legislature.  He’s cutting 2.7 billion dollars from the state budget.

Expect the usual yelping from the usual suspects. 

Bob Collins at MPR’s News Cut notes an opening salvo:

On MPR’s Midday this afternoon, Rep. Loren Solberg predicted massive property tax increases because of Gov. Pawlenty’s “unallotment.”

Only if the cities and their elected governments can convince the people that every blessed nickel that they spend is essential.  Oh, no doubt they’ll ram the tax increases through; Saint Paul’s city council still has two years before they face re-election, so they no doubt feel pretty safe, although Mayor Coleman is up for re-election this year. 

But here’s the interesting part:  Bob Colins asks:

How familiar are you with how your city spends tax money? What would you be willing to do without if you were given a choice?

Oh, where to start?

With a hearty nod to regular commenter “Nate”, who left a long list of ideas on a previous posting on the subject (thanks Nate!), I’ll start a list up, speaking in this case for my city, Saint Paul:

• Privatize snow plowing.
• Lose the refrigerated outdoor hockey rinks.  This is a cold city.  We don’t need to refrigerate ice.
• Dump all the STAR program arts grants.  A real artist does it for the love of the art.
• Cut all vacant building enforcement and a good chunk of non-essential Code activity
• Cut all funding for neighborhood councils
• Cut all funding for economic development – HRA and the Port Authority; if they were doing a decent job, we wouldn’t have this problem anyway
• Axe most of licensing and inspection
• Dump most of the Mayor and Council staff (the Mayor has 24 aides, most of them with assistants)
• Sell off all of the City-owned golf courses (all three of ’em!);
• Cut all parks-and-recreation programs and park improvements;
  meter maids;
• Cut or privatize the convention bureau; the local hospitality and events business can run their own operation.
• Slash all money going to support the Central Corridor. 
• Dump the Youth Job Corps; if there’s a need for working youth, employers can fund it; if there’s not, well, looking for work in tough times is one of life’s essential skills.
• Dump every committee, board and commission and all their staff from the Advisory Committee on Aging through the Fair Carousel Board to the Truth in Housing Board of Evaluators.
• Start charging at least a nominal fee to attend Como Zoo; it doesn’t have to be much, but during the fiscal crisis, every little bit helps.
• Remove the costly. wasteful and excessive security at city and county offices. This would have the salutary effect of making city/county workers a lot more circumspect in their demands on the citizenry. That could only be a good thing.

I stress, as did Nate in the original comment, that none of these reflects on the value of any of these programs; merely the need for the city to fund them at all costs at a time when the city’s tax base is heading south faster than Tommy Lee Jones’ career bell curve and people are feeling justifiably insecure about their place in the economy.  Perhaps when the crisis passes, the people of Saint Paul will decide they really do want to fund all of these programs.  And perhaps they will not. 

But “when the crisis passes” is the operative phrase.

What do you think?

Manfred Von Richtoven – better known to history as the Red Baron, the highest-scoring fighter pilot of World War I – was once asked for his “mission statement”, as they’re called in business today.

Paraphrasing closely, he said “My mission is to patrol my sector, and shoot down the enemy.  All else is bulls**t”. 

———- 

As I noted yesterday, Tim Pawlenty has done a great job as governor – in great part because he followed through on his promises.  (And lest anyone think I’m disparaging Governor Pawlenty in any way in saying this, let me add right now that I echo what King says in every single particular.  Thanks, Governor!)

And, as we noted yesterday, the promises that have mattered the most – indeed, the ones that have defined his administration – were the ones he made to get nominated; the No New Taxes pledge foremost among them.  To his immense credit, Governor Pawlenty has largely kept that promise, especially with the big things; I’m willing to sacrifice a pawn to take a queen; I’m likewise wiling (if not thrilled) to trade “health fees” one year for unallotment this year; it’s not purist conservative gospel, and it’s pragmatic, but that’s politics for you.

Which means that much of the success of the Pawlenty Administration came from his reaction to a powerful, motivated insurgency within the party – the conservative candidacy of Brian Sullivan.  Sullivan was a self-funded maverick (not a McCain kind, the real kind) who ran on a platform that’d have done Ronald Reagan proud.  It scared the crap out of the party establishment – so much so that “their” candidate, Pawlenty, had to adopt one of their key tenets to get the  nomination.

The rest, as they say, is history.  The good kind.

Of course, motivated insurgencies are always a headache to the establishment of any organization, at any level.  In 2006, many long-time Sixth District activists were turned off by Michele Bachmann’s organization; she flooded the precinct caucuses with supporters, which gave her a crushing majority of delegates at every level of the endorsement process.  She went on, of course, to win twice, including last fall, when the Conventional Wisdom said she would lose; she’s the most conservative voice in Minnesota elective politics; thank goodness the establishment didn’t get their way.

Another insurgency, we’re still digesting; last year, Ron Paul supporters flooded precincts caucuses throughout the state.  They brought boundless motivation, energy and (after one filtered out a few hundred thousand resolutions about the Trans-American Freeway and 9/11 being an inside job) some good, solid, libertarian-conservative politics.  It scared the establishment, who in some cases had to resort to parliamentary maneuvering that baffled the newcomers; in other cases, they just plain had to organize their opposition.

None of those three insurgencies change the party, fundamentally.  But all of them had their effects; the compromises that the parties had to make through the process made the party stronger, in each case.

———- 

There’s another insurgency this year. It’s not of quite the same import as the 2002 Sullivan assault.  It’s not going to send anyone to Washington.  It’s not going to shake the party down to its precincts.  But it’s important; just different.

For one thing, the battle for State Party Chair doesn’t have the same constituents as a convention, much less a general election; it’s the party Central Committee that’ll be doing the voting.  And nobody vaults into the Central Committee from nowhere.  It’s something that comes from years of service to the party.  Which means that, no matter what one believes, one has developed the network of connections and allegiances that are the building blocks of any “establishment”.

State Chairman elections, thus, are not unpredictable free-for-alls.  The network, the connections, the establishment has a very, very strong voice in the process.  As, perhaps, is entirely fitting. 

Tony Sutton is a good candidate; I believe he will make a good State Chairman.  I also believe that, since he is the establishment’s candidate, his connections with that establishment – the Central Committee – are strong enough that the election is his.  That’s not a bad thing because – this is important – his job is not to define the party’s philosophy.  That’s the job of the individual candidates, and the people who recruit them and, to some extent the districts they come from.  The chairman’s job is to run the administrative wing of the party, and make sure the party supports the candidates, and above all to raise tons and tons of money to make sure that support is there when it’s needed.

I don’t believe there’s any real question that Tony Sutton is going to win.  And I think he will do a good job (and if he doesn’t, I’ll be joining a hell of a lot of Republicans in pointing it out).   While I don’t like “Next In Line” politics, I think Sutton’s experience in the party machinery makes him qualified to run the party machinery.

I fully expect to be congratulating Tony Sutton next Saturday (June 13) after the Central Committee elections, and sincerely offering him my support (for whatever that’s worth) in helping the GOP kick ass in 2010.

But the party does need a swift kick in the pants, too.  The party machinery is decayed and complacent in some areas; the party has ceded the Fourth and Fifth Districts to the Dems for far too long; candidate recruitment and development is lagging badly in places like the First District, and is virtually nonexistent in the Cities.  The party still acts like it’s the 1970’s in terms of decentralizing authority; ask anyone who’s sat at a Congressional District convention and fumed as debate was slashed to ramrod District Committee initiatives through the processes.  The party machinery needs to make a contest of the entire state, not just the South, the Red River Valley, and the second-through-sixth-tier suburbs.

So while Tony Sutton will, I believe, be the next MNGOP Party Chairman, the party needs to put these goals – the need to not just embrace change, but conquer it; the need to adapt to a world where authority is decentralizing – out front. 

They need not so much to fight the DFL, but to present the GOP in a light that wins people over to what the party represents, and to make sure the candidates that do that are supported.

———- 

I don’t “endorse” people on this blog.  I’m just a workadaddy, hugamommy schnook from Saint Paul, with a couple of kids and a mortgage and a day job.  And I am not on the Central Committee, so my opinion really matters only inasmuch as I have a readership and a modestly popular talk show – i.e. not all that much.   To call my opinion an “endorsement” only makes sense as humor.  So I don’t endorse.

But I support Dave Thompson for State Party Chair. 

Part of it is that I like Dave, and I support his positions.  Dave’s politics largely agree with mine.  And I believe that if he were the state chairman, it’d send a message about the kind of candidate this party should be recruiting, and the kind of races we should be running; center-right, unapologetic, as tightly-focused on a solid, winning message as an hour of Dave’s talk show always was.  I believe that Dave has a good command of what politics is turning into in this state – which isn’t so important for an administrator, but is vital for a leader.

It’s not a shot at Tony Sutton or his supporters.  As I said, I believe Tony will win in the end, and I will work to support the party if and when he does. 

But it is a warning shot across the bow of the state party; “I support you, but not without question.  I expect results from you and your administration.  The stakes are too high to be complacent“, not that I don’t believe Sutton knows that.  “Come back with your shield, or on it“.

Whoever wins, the real challenges start June 14: recruit canddiates.  Build a bench.  Raise money.  Get a message out there.

Further conservatism; limit government; promote growth, security, and limited government.

Win races, and make those victories matter.

As to everything else?  Ask the Red Baron.

I was originally going to call this piece “What The Hell Is Wrong With the MNGOP, Part X”; there’s plenty more to talk about in that series.

But in the aftermath of the last legislative session, and especially Governor Pawlenty’s epic, lone stand against the DFL’s tax-and-spend orgy, I’m inclined to answer my question “not as much as there was eight years ago”.  Or last year, for that matter.

Nobody’s ever mistaken Tim Pawlenty for a movement conservative – and some of my Buchananite friends sputter angrily when I even mention “conservative” in the same paragraph as Pawlenty, who is certainly a pragmatist, front and center – but he’s delivered on the one big honka-lunka mega-issue that every conservative should agree on; curbing spending and the size and reach of government.

And while the GOP Senate caucus is too small to sustain any gubernatorial vetoes, the House caucus did itself proud this year, doing something many of us had nearly given up on seeing; doing what they were sent to Saint Paul to do; acting like a party; presenting Minnesota an alternative to the DFL, rather than acquiescing with the majority like a herd of hamsters.

It’d be much better to be in control – but the party showed big signs of hope.

And I think it all traces back to something that happened eight years ago at the State GOP Convention.

If you’re a Minnesota Republican, you remember the story; Brian Sullivan, a movement conservative, took Pawlenty, then the House Minority leader, to 3,000 ballots over forty days and forty nights of voting.  Pawlenty had to move sharply to the right of his normally pragmatic, legislative-negotiation-honed positions to win the nomination, finally taking the Taxpayers League’s “No New Taxes” pledge to secure the nomination.

Sullivan didn’t win the nomination – but had he not been in the race, Pawlenty would never have moved right; conservatism would have lost.

So what we have in Minnesota today – gubernatorial unallotment standing in the way of a state-bankrupting spending orgy – we owe to Sullivan (as well as a governor who has had the integrity to stick to his promises all these years against Thermopylean odds).

And this is what the party needs to recover from the last two drubbings: a coherent message, and the willingness to live and fight for that message when the heat’s on.

So on Saturday, June 13, the Central Committee of the Minnesota GOP is going to elect a new chair.  There are a couple of great choices on the ballot.

What are we going to do?

More tomorrow.

Governor Pawlenty’s discipline is tutelage for Republicans everywhere.

Congressional Republicans — the ones who got tossed because of their embrace of spending and earmarks — might start looking for a message up north. Fiscal responsibility? “It is the fundamental tenet of our party, and the conservative coalition more broadly,” says Mr. Pawlenty, nicely. “If we don’t have that, we are nothing.”

If Republicans are looking to get back their conservative groove, they could do worse than study Minnesota’s budget brawl. Mr. Pawlenty deftly (and amusingly) outmaneuvered his Democratic opposition, not only saving his state from huge tax increases but clearing the way to cut government spending. Call it a refreshing break from the financial-crisis norm.

While liberal TV ads equate fairness with sticking it to the “rich”…

…Mr. Pawlenty kept voicing three simple principles. “Number one, we must have [because of the constitution] and should have a balanced budget,” he told me. “Number two, the state government needs to live within its means, just like everybody else. Number three, we shouldn’t raise taxes in the worst recession in 60 years.” Minnesota already has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation.

While in Washington, Comrade Obama increases the Federal Government and National Debt at unprecedented speed…

this will be one of the first times in modern Minnesota history that the state will reduce the size of government in real terms, not just slow its rate of growth. “The correlation in recent history has been between job growth and states that have reasonable government cost structures,” he says. These cuts, he says, will position Minnesota to take advantage of the recovery when it comes.

A Crisis Not Wasted^™ indeed, Governor.

Now that theLegislature has adjourned without the DFL majority’s budget passed, and with Governor Pawlenty promising to use the line-item veto to unallot the budget back into balance, look for the following:

• Predictions from DFLers of bodies lying in the street (oops – already happened)
• Threats from liberal-run school districts that they’ll have to close, followed by exactly zero schools closed, at least due to state budget cuts.
• More predictions from DFLers of bodies lying in the street.
• Lamentations that “the governor abused his plurality”, which are not only shrieking points, but dumb ones; the governor is an elected executive, not a pluralistic deliberative body.  That’s why the Legislature is given the opportunity to override his vetos.
• Threats from cities to lay off cops and firemen (leaving city garbage collectors, administrators, civil rights commissioners, convention planners, community planning organizers, planning/policy wonks and layer upon layer of other bureaucrats unmentioned and untouched, because people don’t get scared into writing their legislatores to demand tax hikes to protect any of those jobs).

And if all of the above haven’t happened by the end of the day today, I’ll rhetorically eat my hat.  Or would, if I owned any.

Twila Brase writes from the Capitol:

It’s 1:15 a.m. and I want to report the good news. We won! The gavel came down at midnight, the Minnesota legislature adjourned in the nick of time, and the Baby DNA warehousing bill to repeal genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights at birth, never came up for a vote!

This is your success!

Your citizen petitions, the many people who attended the legislative hearings, your emails and phone calls to legislators, the Sue Jeffers show on KTLK, CCHC’s new Protect Baby DNA cards, the Glenn Beck Program, Reps. Tom Emmer and Mary Liz Holberg, Sen. David Hann’s great questions during the Senate hearing, the “Do NOT Repeal Genetic Privacy” stickers we all wore, my opportunity to speak at the Tea Party, our meeting with  Governor Pawlenty, the CCHC report on newborn screening and eugenics, the filing of the lawsuit against the Department, local TV news coverage (esp. WCCO-TV), the prayers of many people, and the unexpected informational hearing on genetic privacy led to this success.

Twila represents the Citizen’s Committee on Healthcare, and she’s been lobbying against the Baby DNA bill – which would allow the state to collect a DNA database from the state’s newborns without any form of parental consent – for years.

Of course, the battle isn’t over.  Check in with the CCHC to get and stay up on this teeth-grinding bit of government arrogance.

Governor Pawlenty – virtually the sole Republican with any semblance of power anywhere near Capitol Hill – drops the “L” word, promising line-item vetoes rather than a shutdown or a special session:

Turning the heat up to a boil in the closing days of the legislative session, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he would use his powers of line-item veto and unallotment to singlehandedly balance a state budget facing a $4.6 billion deficit if a compromise plan can’t be crafted in the next four days.The unusual flexing of executive power seemed clearly designed to make Pawlenty’s adversaries in the DFL-controlled House and Senate blink as the clock ticks toward adjournment.

I’ve criticized the Governor in the past, but I’ll say it now; great job, Governor.

Now, expect the following in the next few days:

• A “Minnesota Poll” showing that Minnesotans oppose this use of the line-item veto (in a poll that’ll oversample DFL voters by 2-1)
• A Lori Sturdevant column bemoaning how Elmer Anderson would be rolling in his grave over this; how he’d have taken the DFL out for beer and lutefisk and cigars and gotten them all together by giving them pretty much what they wanted, but scolding them with a colorful homespun story that left everyone chuckling in that beer/lutefisk/cigar clogged way that old-time pols in smoky back rooms at Jax or Murray’s or the Saint Paul Grill always laughed, and everyone would have walked together into the glorious future.
• Gauzy, soft-focus stories on “the Minnesotans affected by the budget cuts”, which may very well focus on Minnesotans that are affected by budget cuts, but which will certainly ignore reams and oodles of waste, pork and subsidy of things government should not be subdizing.

Blogger reactions?

With dreary predictability (I almost called it word for word), Grace Kelly at Minnesota Preliterate Conspiracy Wackoes With Dubious Senses Of Ethics “writes“:

“Pawlenty’s idea of compromising is “Do it my way!”, each “offer” has been the same offer as before. Pawlenty gave a press conference where he said he will sign bills and not have a special session. Pawlenty announced his intention to use line item vetoes and unallotments to create his own budget without the house or senate involvement. Sounds like we no longer have a three part government, we now have a “dictator” or “king”.”

No, Grace, you deeply dotty little person; we have the governor acting in accordance with a law that was passed by our elected representatives. Elections have consequences.  He’s doing his job.

Zack at MNPublius:

That’s all fine and dandy, except that in the time that Kelliher has been Speaker there hasn’t been a special session (a streak that is only in danger of ending due to Pawlenty’s Presidential ambitions and inability to engage in any kind of compromise).

Notice how often “compromise” is popping up with the leftybloggers?  Pay attention to how often you see it in MSM columns in the near future.  “Compromise” will be the paramount public virtue in this country before long.

This – when they’re defaming you on the one hand, and demanding “compromise” (i.e., silent acquiescence) on the other, is when you know they’re getting frustrated.

Thanks again, Governor.

Governor Pawlenty, from his new Twitter account:

hockey, teacher said she is being laid-off. Union in her district turned down more money to avoid performance-based pay. Go figure!!!

Paying good teachers extra? All hell would break loose!

Eric “Big E” Pusey over at The Minnesota Short Bus Collection Of “Progressive” Whackdoodles So Big It Must Be A Stimulus-Funded Project hops up and down and notes the blazingly obvious; Tim Pawlenty has turned on his previous – as in, over 12-year-old – support of term limits:

Dusty Trice brought it up and I couldn’t help taking a look for myself.  And wouldn’t you be surprised what I found.  Gov. Tim Pawlenty was for term limits before he was against them.

But he wasn’t just for term limits, he actually went so far as to introduce a bill.  This means he really meant it.  Back when he was a turd-flinging back-bencher.

This was a year before he became a serious politician.  A year before he was elected Minority Leader in the House.  A year before he understood how much he liked power.

One wonders where Pusey got this narrative; Pawlenty has always “liked power” (i.e. been highly motivated in his political career, often seen as a good thing when it’s not Republicans).

No person may file to be a candidate for election to a term in the house of representatives or senate that, if served, would cause the person to serve more than ten consecutive years in the legislature.
(From HF30 as introduced Jan. 10, 1997)

That’s all well and good, Timmeh, but your bill also included term limits for Governor as well.  Where do you stand on term limits now?

[What’s that buzzing sound?  Do you hear a buzzing sound?]

Oh, relax.  When a Tic – like, say, Paul Wellstone – does it, it’s called “growing in office”.

Actually, in this case the Wellstone and Pawlenty stories are closer than you might think (especially if you’re completely ignorant of both); Wellstone, if we take him at his word, opted to break his two-term promise because he worried the seat could go to a Republican if he left; the GOP controlled the Senate by a decent margin at the time, and he felt, not-completely-unjustifiably, like he needed to keep the seat in his own caucus.

Governor Pawlenty – who, unlike Wellstone, is an effective politician – can genuinely say the same thing; ceding the state’s last executive office to DFL hegemony, in the absence of an effective state GOP capable of contesting control of the State House, would be a disaster of biblical proportions for Minnesota.

So, y’see, Libs? We Republicans have actual, not-always-base motivations for the things we do, too!
But…but…that buzzing sound?

We all know you like the sound of Three Term Timmeh

Timmeh?  The handicapped kid from South Park?

We have to share a state with these toddlers?

I don’t believe in public subsidies of broadcasters – but I listen to MPR.  I mean, my tax dollars go to them, whether I support the concept of socialized radio or not, so it doesn’t give me any moral qualms.

I didn’t support public money for the Midtown Greenway – but my taxes pay for it, so I ride it with pride.  Dang skippy.

And Jason Lewis is wrong, wrong, wrong; I bike to work on roads for which I pay no gas taxes for my bike, and I do it without a single sleepless night .  I pay plenty of gas taxes when I’m not biking, and my bike does no damage whatsoever to the road that – I haste to add – I already paid for.

I’m not going to join with my conservative friends who are bagging on Governor Pawlenty for not rejecting Minnesota’s share of Porkulus, because, well, we’re ponying up our share.  While Pawlenty has not been the perfect fiscal conservative,  he’s done the best anyone could do under the circumstances under which he’s operating, at least trying to veto the DFL’s worst excesses.

The money’s leaving Minnesota.  Better that it had not left in the first place, of course; better still that we slash the size of Minnesota’s government.  But this is the hand we’re dealt.

Imperfect?  Sure.  But he makes some sense – and makes Rachel Maddow look like the gabbling, overpromoted ninny fighting four intellectual classes above her mental weight she is in the process, to sweeten the deal:

Pawlenty recently appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show, and fairly effectively rebutted the host’s charge that those who criticized the stimulus bill were hypocrites for accepting the funds now that it had passed.“I have a number of responses to that argument,” Pawlenty said. “Minnesota ranks forty-sixth in terms of getting federal spending in relation to the amount of taxes paid — for every dollar we sent in to Washington, we get about 72 cents back. We’re a major payer of the federal government’s tabs, unlike many other states that I won’t mention. I say, when you’re paying to buy the pizza, it’s okay to have a slice. Now, if you were a liberal Democratic governor and you opposed military spending, are you not going to take National Guard funding? If you were a liberal who opposed No Child Left Behind, are you going to take federal funding in education? So I’m wondering why that standard is only being applied now to conservatives.”

Snap!

“All the governors are going to take almost all of the money. I’m not aware of any governor turning down a substantial amount. There’s some talk about not taking unemployment insurance — about 2 percent of the stimulus — because it expands obligations in unemployment insurance, and might require a tax increase later on down the road. But the point is moot to Minnesota, because our benefit level is already beyond what the federal government would require.”

Of course it’s politics – on Jindal and Barbour’s part no less than Pawlenty’s.  Pawlenty has a hideous, DFL-fathered deficit to close, while trying to buff up his rap sheet for a presidential run in the next 4-8 years; Jindal, Barbour and Sanford are aiming to be seen to Pawlenty’s  right.

Does it make a fiscal budget hawk happy?  Of course not; and Minnesota’s not a state of budget hawks.  Yet.

I just got this: 

SAINT PAUL –  The office of Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty announces that the staff of the radio talk show the “Northern Alliance Radio Network” will be taking over the duties of the state press-relations office.

“We think this is a slapshot for good government, and will put us square in the net as far as cost savings and turnaround”, Governor Pawlenty said in an impromptu statement at the Capitol this morning. 

The State Press Office oversees all media relations for all branches of Minnesota’s state government, from the Legislature through the Executive Branch.

The outsourcing of PR services is expected to save the state 45 million dollars a year.  But not everyone is thrilled by the idea.

“I’m outraged…Outraged…” said Ashley Grot-Puttanesca-Steubingfelder of “Peace Through Mandatory Unity”, a non-partisan Saint Paul-based affiliate of ACORN, “…outraged [brief pause to re-collect her thoughts] that the government of Minnesota would turn this vital job over to a bunch of partisans“.

Speaking on behalf of the Northern Alliance/State Press Office, Deputy Press Officer Chad The Elder replied “What kind of name is Ashley Grot-Puttanesca-Steubingfelder?  Good lord, pour me a drink – she’s ugly”.

Satiric fantasy?

Oh, this is Minnesota under the control of the unfettered DFL.  Of course not.

UPDATE:  A bad analogy?  Provided all the UpTake – an overtly left-leaning organization – does is provide a commentary-free feed, perhaps. 

I’ve had questions about the slant of UpTake’s coverage of events; to be fair, they’ve quickly and fairly answered those questions (as, indeed, I seek to do with this update).  To be prudent, it’s perfectly fair to ask if a group can serve two masters – an agenda and “fairness”.

Is UpTake providing a useful service, and doing it fairly?  Perhaps.

Can they – and Secretary of State Richie – expect to be watched carefully?  Absolutely.

As Governor Pawlenty prudently cuts aid to local government, these cities will in turn need to prioritize their expenditures.

I’ve got an idea. Cut lobbying expenditures.

Plymouth taking an exit from I-494 lobbying group

Unhappy that Interstate 494 has not been widened through Plymouth as it has through Minnetonka and Eden Prairie, Plymouth plans to pull out of the 494 Corridor Commission and pocket the $16,000 it would have contributed to the lobbying group next year.

Over the past 10 years, the city has paid more than $100,000 to be part of the multi-city group but without obvious benefit, Mayor Kelli Slavik said. “They don’t seem to be lobbying anything for Plymouth,” Slavik said. “If we are truly interested in getting a third lane on 494, then we need to refocus our efforts and spend that money more wisely.”

I can’t imagine $16,000 per year is a large line item for a city the size of Plymouth; that’s probably the annual fuel cost for one of their snow plows.

Some perspective:

Local governments spent a total of $7,817,620 on lobbying activities in 2007.

Sixty-five local governments (two more than in 2006) directly employed or hired contract

lobbyists in 2007Local governments paid dues of $10,024,137 in 2007 to local government associations that also represented their interests before the legislature.

Statewide, $18,000,000 per year and growing. Seems like a lot of money to hire someone else to spam the legislature with phone calls and emails.

Dopey me, I guess. I am sure there is so much more to the art of being a lobbyist.

Somehow the idea of taxpayer money being spent to lobby for taxpayer money smacks of government waste at best; corruption at worst.

The Strib’s post-election editorial holds no major suprises – those all came before the election, when the Strib surprisingly endorsed Norm Coleman over Al Franken.

But when I say “no surprises”, I also mean there’s no change in their overall policy toward Republicans; “the only good republican is one that’s indistinguishable from a DFLer”. 

First, on Governor Pawlenty:

Despite losing out to Sarah Palin in the VP competition, Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s future within the Republican Party remains bright. He’s a legitimate candidate for the GOP nomination in 2012, when he might well face Palin again. What will Pawlenty’s national aspirations mean for Minnesota?

Actually, they’d make a great team:  Palin, given four years to polish her approach, has the potential to be a Reagan-like spokeswoman for free-enterprise, limited government, and America as a “shining city” (as opposed to a sick, old giant that needs intensive care – the central message of Obama’s supporters, if not The One himself).  Pawlenty could provide the George HW Bush role – the duo’s technocrat, the head-knocker, the detail guy. 

That’s unclear, but what is certain is that Minnesota needs the governor to provide the state with skilled and pragmatic leadership as we negotiate a deep economic downturn and serious budget challenges. In January, he’ll be working with a new Legislature comprising more DFLers and fewer moderate Republicans. Pawlenty should read DFL legislative successes as a call from voters for him to take a less rigidly conservative posture as the state addresses what is expected to be a major budget deficit.

Good lord, why?

Indeed, that’d be exactly the wrong “lesson” to take from the election.

“Moderate” Republicanism – the GOP of facile sloganeering and going along to stay in power – was the biggest loser of the last two election cycles.  If Pawlenty doesn’t see the real message – that real conservatism, in the guise of Michele Bachmann, Erik Paulsen and John Kline was the big winner (among GOP factions, obviously – we got beaten nationwide, surely enough) in this past election – then he needs to.   

More than ever, Minnesotans need and expect problem-solving compromises at the Capitol.

And to Strib editors, “compromise” unfortunately always seems to be “shut up and go along with the DFL”. 

We can not have that.

The Strib moves on to the Ventura “Independence” Party.

Even harder questions need to be asked by, and of, the Independence Party. After another round of weak showings and indistinct messages by its candidates, the IP’s reason for existence is no longer clear. What is clear is that IP candidates were spoilers this year, contributing to the election of candidates who lacked majority support in several key races. David Dillon, the party’s Third District congressional candidate who won 11 percent of the vote, hit the right note Wednesday. “It’s a legitimate, fair question. It bugs some people in the Independence Party that we have to wonder what our purpose is if all we’re doing is ruining the results for one side.”

It’s a question I keep asking my V“I”P friends:  since your party really is nothing but Jesse Ventura’s ever-eroding legacy, and in non-presidential years you barely cling to major-party status in Minnesota, and the party’s essense is really just the most irritating possible combination of “DFL-Lite” policies and third-party idealism (“We greens/libertarians/Constitution Party/whatever are not in power, and never really will be (shaddap about Ventura), so of course we can solve all the world’s problems – in our minds!”), and they will never again win a single significant office in this state (and Minnesota’s  V“I”P is nothing but the ghostly, solitary echo of what was once Ross Perot’s “Reform” party, nationwide – then why do you exist? What is the goal?

Don’t say “Winning elections” – the Libertarians say the same thing, with about as much credibilty.

Does the  V“I”P really want to just go on as spoilers forever?  As they soak up votes for moderate/pragmatic DFLers (and people who are suckers for idealistic sloganeering) I’m fine with that, of course, but for your (plural) own good, you might wanna think about it…

…had crashed into the green room at Orchestra Hall last night, it could have had a sweeping effect on Minnesota conservatism.

At one point, I was sitting with Senator Coleman, Governor Pawlenty, Representative Bachmann, candidates Erik Paulsen (who will be a guest on the NARN this weekend), Barb Davis-White and Ed Matthews, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager and James Lileks, talking about the campaign locally and nationwide.

Not sure if anyone from the Strib covered “Talk The Vote” – Salem Radio’s cavalcade of stars touring battleground states nationwide to whip up conservative support – but if they had, they’d have found plenty of conservative support, er, whipped up.  Bear in mind, the Patriot’s been pleasantly surprised by turnout at these events before; the “Patriot Picnic” in 2004 drew hundreds more than we’d planned on, and our fabled Final Debate Party in 2004 attracted 700 to the Minneapolis Hilton – not bad, considering we’d had 100 RSVPs and it was a night every bit as cold and miserable as last Sunday was. 

Bear in mind also that this even was announced perhaps ten days ago, to an audience that largely has businesses and jobs and families and responsibilities.  The Patriot’s promotions department had figured maybe we’d fill up the floor level seats.

We filled every seat in the place; the floor and all three tiers of balconies.  There were people standing in the halls and the lobby, the last I checked.  And the crowd?

No lack of energy there.  Sorry, Sorosphere; after weeks of declaring the election already won, it’s just not sinking in with all of us plumbers and hockey moms.  Suffice to say that even if Mac loses, 2010 is going to make 1994 look like a Camp Wellstone sing-along.

The speakers?  Look – there are not three people anywhere in talk radio that can work a friendly room like Hugh, Michael and Dennis.  Especially Prager; you’d never know it from his fairly laid-back radio show, but in front of a room, the guy is like a nuclear reactor with the regulator rods pulled out; he gets the crowd stoked, and as the crowd’s energy picks up, so does his; I’ve never seen him speak from any kind of notes at all, so the whole world is his speech, and eventually he covers the whole world, getting more and more animated as he goes, stopping just short of pounding his shoe on the lectern.  An amazing performance, even allowing for the tactical flub of attacking Sweden at a stop in Minneapolis.

Me?  I’m feeling a lot better about this next week, and the next two years. 

So the veto of the gas tax didn’t result in the 35W bridge collapse?

My esteemed overlord hates to say “I told you so.”

Allow me.

Mitch told you so.

Number 1:  When the engineers finally release their report about what actually caused the 35W Bridge Collapse, a lot of regional lefties – Elwyn Tinklenberg, Rep. Alice Hausman, Nick Coleman and others among them – are going to owe the Governor, Lt. Gov/Transportation Commissioner Molnau, the Taxpayers’ League and the “hold the line on taxes” crowd – a lot of apologies for a lot of defamation.

Number 2: None of them will actually give those apologies.

Nick Coleman’s article of August 2nd is no longer linkable. But here are excerpts of Nick’s rabid blather at the time from Roosh Five:

The death bridge was “structurally deficient,” we now learn, and had a rating of just 50 percent, the threshold for replacement. But no one appears to have erred on the side of public safety. The errors were all the other way.

There isn’t any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble than a bridge falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared.

Nick Coleman: Drama Queen. Hack Journalist. Dead Wrong.

Only this isn’t a metaphor.

But when you have a tragedy on this scale, it isn’t just concrete and steel that has failed us.

In a word, it was avoidable.

For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It’s been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase – the first in 20 years – last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

I’m not just pointing fingers at Pawlenty. The outrage here is not partisan. It is general.

At the federal level, the parsimony is worse, and so is the negligence. A trillion spent in Iraq, while schools crumble, there aren’t enough cops on the street and bridges decay while our leaders cross their fingers and ignore the rising chances of disaster.

I-35W bridge was doomed from the start

Investigators will say the blame lies with designers who erred in calculating the size of key gusset plates, sources say.

Original designers of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis likely neglected to calculate the size of key gusset plates that eventually failed, a human mistake that culminated 40 years later when 13 people died after the span collapsed, federal safety investigators have found.

They also have determined that corrosion of certain gusset plates, extreme heat and shifting piers did not contribute to the bridge’s collapse on Aug. 1, 2007, according to sources with direct knowledge of the probe.

Elwyn Tinklenberg, Rep. Alice Hausman, Nick Coleman will undoubtedly not be reachable for comment. Mr. Coleman’s resume can probably be found on Monster.com.

Regional pundits that remember the seventies constantly bemoan the lack of “bipartisanship” in Minnesota politics.

Of course, the only “bipartisanship” they seem to get around to is the kind were Republicans act like and coalesce around DFL positions.

Never, ever stories like this:

Longtime DFL legislator Doug Johnson said he was ingrained with the political philosophy of Minnesota legendary Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey — “The worst Democrat is better than the best Republican.”

But on Nov. 4, the former chairman of the powerful state Senate Tax Commission, will split his vote for the first time ever. His ballot will be marked in a familiar Democratic way for Barack Obama for president, Jim Oberstar for 8th District congressman, Tom Bakk for state senator and David Dill for state representative. But in the U.S. Senate race, Johnson will cast his vote for incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

So when the Override Six betrayed Republican Party principles and stabbed Governor Pawlenty in the back, Lori Sturdevant demanded that the GOP keep a wide, Wide, Wide open mind toward their self-interested treachery, and chided the GOP for trying to squash the traitors.

Wonder how Johnson’s move is going to play in the DFL – and with the likes of Sturdevant?

UPDATE:  Welcome Hot Air readers!

originally posted 2:35 PM

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) is canceling print and broadcast interviews for the day…

Strib

Pawlenty cancels TV interviews

Pioneer Press

Pawlenty abruptly cancels afternoon interviews in Denver

CNN is reporting a “cone of silence” forming around Governor Pawlenty and that friends of the Governor are suddenly not able to reach him (which is not uncommon if he is in fact flying at the moment).

Pawlenty cancels media interviews

Asked if he has the experience to be vice president, Pawlenty reminded reporters, as he often does, that he does not address GOP presidential V.P. speculation.

Pawlenty then went on to say: “I would note I have been a governor for six years, commander in chief of the Minnesota National Guard for six years, and before that I was the majority leader of the Minnesota Legislature. [I] have some other life experiences as well.”

VP selection process complete, McCain campaign confirms

Drudge posts “Romney Family gets Security Sweep” and then pulls it, but leaves up “PAWLENTY CANCELS NUMEROUS PUBLIC APPEARANCES…“

4:50 PM: A neighbor of Governor Pawlenty is reporting to me that news helicopters are hovering overhead.

6 PM: Drudge: Meet Tim Pawlenty…

9:59 PM: McCain camp won’t reveal VP tonight (I’m going to bed)

Early 8/29: Pawlenty confirms in an interview with WCCO Radio that he will not be in Ohio today and is not McCain’s choice for Vice President.

HT “Chuck”

Rod Hamilton – one of the six “Republican” legislators who stabbed Governor Pawlenty in the back last session – is learning the hard way; the DFL doesn’t make Republican friends; they just recruit stooges:

Six months ago, Rod Hamilton was center stage in the biggest drama at the State Capitol. And so was Hwy. 60, a crucial roadway splitting southern Minnesota that many believe is in need of expansion and improvements.

Today, the theatrics continue, with Hamilton in effect complaining that he was duped, and Hwy. 60 is no nearer to getting the attention he thinks it needs.

And so Hamilton – with five other Republicans In Name Only – joined with the DFL to ram through one of the most egregious tax hikes in Minnesota history.

Oh, he had his reasons…:

At the time Hamilton made things clear: If DFLers would provide funding for Hwy. 60, they would get his vote.

When Hamilton, a pork producer [Hahahahahahahaha! – Ed.] whose district relies heavily on the highway, cast his vote to override, the legislation contained 22 lines that appeared to instruct the Minnesota Department of Transportation to give Hwy. 60 a higher priority for funding.

…but that all depends on what the definition of the term “is” “funded” is.

But MnDOT now contends the language was never clear and is withholding any commitment to the Hwy. 60 project.

What’s more, the key DFL legislator who sponsored the transportation bill said Hamilton misunderstood the language concerning Hwy. 60.

Rod Hamilton:  Traitor?  Naive?  Stupid?  All the above?

I bet it all seemed like such a good idea back when Lori Sturdevant was offering to paint his toenails…

I’ve heard Governor Pawlenty talk live twice while he’s been governor and have been tremendously impressed by his unflappable posture and his ability to successfully steer a talk away from politics when the subject of the talk was clearly not politics.

He is one of the most comfortable, adept leaders we have had around here in years and certainly the GOP and McCain have taken notice for some time now.

Yesterday in Ames Iowa the Governor spoke out in a way that may portend a near future role in the McCain campaign as it was uncharacteristic of Tim Pawlenty.

“He’s put so many contingencies around it that I wonder, in fact I question, whether he would do it at all,” Pawlenty said after he helped open Republican campaign office in Ames. “It may be a way for him to gain favor during the election, and tube it later because all the contingencies weren’t met.”

Pawlenty further criticized Obama, saying there is not one issue of national prominence where he has led the country. He said a vote for Obama “is the political equivalent of bungee jumping.”

A clear shot at Obama, Pawlenty’s comments are uncharacteristically direct, and encouraging as it relates to the Governor’s political future.

His cool and unflappable reputation gives his criticism of Obama a certain gravitas and McCain is going to need all the help he can get.