Last week, I noted that of the six big DFL pols or organizations that I’d contacted – Franken, Klobuchar, Ellison, McCollum, Rybak, and Growth and Justice – none had responded to my request for an interview.

This, of course, in response to Andy Birkey’s piece in the Minnesoros Monitor, who sniffed that Michele Bachmann seemed to be limiting her media appearances to friendly conservative and Christian outlets.

And we have an update!

I left phone and email messages to all of the subjects save one, for whom I couldn’t find phone numbers. And as I noted, I got responses from only one – and Dane Smith of Growth and Justice will be appearing on the NARN this weekend.

And now there’s another – maybe.

Updates as they are warranted.

It’s now been two solid weeks since Andy Birkey, acting in his capacity as a conduit for lefty talking points, gurgitated:

Have Michele Bachmann’s media gaffes and extreme conservative views driven her to speak mainly to conservative and Christian-right news outlets? Bachmann’s media appearances since her election create the impression of a member of Congress who is shy when not among friends, and perhaps a campaign that is concerned about what happens when a nonconservative microphone or camera is pointed in her direction.

So Rep. Bachmann – the conservative firebrand and lighting rod from the Sixth District – has consistently shied away from the regional, left-leaning media, which has engaged in bald-faced campaigns of context-mangling character assassination against every single Republican to the right of Arne Carlson in recent memory (see: Rod Grams, Norm Coleman, Alan Fine), and has been in the bag for every single DFL candidate for every single office in every election in recent history. Their claims – and those of their apologists – that outlets like MPR and WCCO are “balanced” are utterly disingenuous, and about as plausible as Flash claiming he’s a Centrist, my claims to be the “best” feminist in the Twin Cities, or the Minnesota Monitor’s claims to being “independent media”.
Hm.

In response, I wondered – would local lefty politicians be any different? So I sent invitations, two weeks ago, to the following:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar (Emailed and left a phone message for her press person)
2. Senate Candidate Al Franken (Emailed and left a voice mail message)
3. Rep. Keith Ellison (left a voicemail and an email)
4. Rep. Betty McCollum (I left a message with her local press assistant)
5. Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak (Email sent).
6. “Growth and Justice” poobah Joel Kramer President Dane Smith (email sent)

In this email, I told the truth; that Ed Morissey and I are overt conservatives – and that we pride ourselves on doing incisive, but fair, interviews. Not ambushes. Not slime jobs. Which is better than an awful lot of the Twin Cities’ media (to say nothing of the ever-hack-ier Monitor) can say.

Responses:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar: Nothing.
2. Senate Candidate Al Franken: Nothing.
3. Rep. Keith Ellison: Nothing.
4. Rep. Betty McCollum – my “representative” did not respond.
5. Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak: I did get an automated response – but nothing else.
6. “Growth and Justice” poobah Joel Kramer President Dane Smith: Eureka! Mr. Smith will appear on an upcoming Northern Alliance broadcast.

So – the obvious conclusions are that, even when faced with a chance to “reach across the aisle” to the half of Minnesota that is to the right of center, in a medium that pledges to be fair and even-handed (and has demonstrably delivered on that pledge over the course of four years), Minnesota’s elected DFL politicians and candidates are a bunch of snivelling cowards.

(Comments stating anything to the effect of “I’m glad they didn’t waste their time responding to a bunch of conservatives” will be mocked for what they are – the enabling of craven cowardice).

The other day, I read Andy Birkey’s piece in the MNMon about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s preference for appearing on conservative and Christian media outlets.  I responded by inviting a group of liberal politicians – Senator Klobuchar, candidate Franken, Reps. Ellison and McCollum, mayor Rybak and Joel Kramer Dane Smith – to appear either on the NARN or, via email interview, in this blog.

Some commenters responded “do you honestly think you’re in the same league as MPR or WCCO?”  And to be honest, there were two answers to that question.

When it comes to the quality of the interviews – a level of incisive civility and an aim toward getting actual content from an interview, as opposed to plate-throwing or button-pushing – Ed and I are as good as anyone out there.

But the commenters’ question, and that answer, really miss the point.  Each of these politicans represents (or, in Franken’s case, wants to represent) people of all political and social stripes.  Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum – like Rep. Bachmann – represent districts where large, significant minorities disagree with them, and  have tough questions for them.  The questions deserve answers.  And if a representative won’t face people who have civilly-placed but incisive questions, then can it be fairly said they’re even trying to represent everyone?

So if it’s fair to try to take a whack at Rep. Bachmann for ducking out on an unfriendly, biased media (and let’s do be honest, here; after a couple of decades of Morgan Grams and Alan Fine hatchet-jobbery, it’s a fair cop), then it is certainly fair to wonder why Minnesota’s other elected officials won’t return to the favor (to a media outlet that opposes them, but has, unlike the Strib and Almanac and WCCO, a reputation for fairness and civility and sticking to the facts).

Oh, yeah – so far, I’ve heard back from only one of my invitees.  Since arrangements are still underway, I won’t let it slip just yet, but let’s just say this person is not an elected official.

As to the rest?  Well, I’ll give it a week.

Andy Birkey at the MinMon notes:

Have Michele Bachmann’s media gaffes and extreme conservative views [closed circuit to Birkey; are there any other kind? Or does the MNMon’s software prepend “extreme” to every instance of “conservative” in everyone’s copy? – Ed] driven her to speak mainly to conservative and Christian-right news outlets? Bachmann’s media appearances since her election create the impression of a member of Congress who is shy when not among friends, and perhaps a campaign that is concerned about what happens when a nonconservative microphone or camera is pointed in her direction.

Or – here’s another suggestion – someone who recognized what a hatchet job the regional media has been pulling on her for her entire political career?

Just a suggestion.

But that’s not the point of this post. Let’s try something new: let’s ask the same question in reverse.

How many regional liberal pols will do appearances outside the cozy, comfy club of the region’s reliably lefty-coddling mainstream media? (For a good laugh, check further down in Birkey’s piece – he calls WCCO and MPR and Almanac “mainstream”. [Closed circuit to Andy, again; Ed Morrissey and I are closer to the “mainstream” than either of those outlets – Ed]).

Andy notes that the Congresswoman has not responded to the Monitor’s many requests for interviews; perhaps Birkey feels the Monitor is “mainstream”. Whatever – it probably stands to reason that much of the regional dead-tree media has been asking for interviews. In that context, Birkey’s question is a good one.

Fair enough.

I wonder how well the shoe works on the other foot?

How many of Minnesota’s legions of DFL politicians, media figures and other eminementos feel like manning up and mixing it up with the conservative alt-media?

Birkey, or someone like him, will no doubt complain “it’s a lousy comparison! The NARN is bunch of “out” conservatives”. Actually, it’s a cop-out on two counts; at least we, unlike most the the Twin Cities’ mainstream media (to say nothing of the Monitor) are up-front about our biases; more importantly, Ed and I do fair, up-front interviews; we don’t ambush people (you know who you’re talking to), we don’t snip out bits of interview to engineer into a mutated context after the fact. We are, in short, the most honest interviewers in the Twin Cities media by a long, long way.

I’ll be sending out emails to a list of regional liberal personalities, asking them to appear on the Northern Alliance Volume II or, failing that, do an email interview with yours truly for this blog. The list includes:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar (why is it so hard to find an email address on her campaign website?)
2. Senate candidate Al Franken (sent!)
3. Rep. Keith Ellison (left a voicemail and an email)
4. Rep. Betty McCollum (her office’s email processor seems to be mucked up; I left a message with her local press assistant)
5. Minneapolis mayor RT Rybak (Email sent).
6. “Growth and Justice” poobah Joel Kramer (email sent)

I’ll post the answers in this space when they come back.

(Kudos to the thin film of local left-leaners who do mix it up with the good guys; Eric Black, DFL chair Brian Melendez, and…well, that’s about it. On the other hand, brickbats to Nick Coleman, who responded to my request for an interview by demanding a $1,000 donation to a Saint Paul school).

Great idea, Andy!

The boilerplate for my email appears below the fold.

(more…)

Simple fact: when Republicans run like Republicans – with a conservative vision, with lower taxes, smaller and more honest government, safer streets, less-stupid schools, secure borders, a Higher Power and family and country, we win.

We win because there are an awful lot of Democrats who vote for fiscal responsibility, for ethics, and for America, when they get the chance.

We win because there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t care about parties, but respond to vision – and visions are like food. If the other guy’s offering a box of Mike and Ikes, and all you have in response is a snark about how bad for you Mike and Ikes are, people will take the candy. If you offer them the perfectly-done London Broil that is the conservative vision, people take the beef.

We win because, underneath it all, most people are smart enough to see that the DFL way is no way to run a state.

To Lori Sturdevant – who, with Doug Grow’s retirement, is the DFL’s most reliable flak in the Twin Cities media – the ideal “compromise” is bouillon-flavored Mike and Ikes.

When Laura Hemler – a major mover behind Keith Downey’s campaign – called from the Cleanup on Aisle 41 last week to tell me Sturdevant was lurking about the convention, I started taking internal bets to see what she’s write.

My top bet: that she’d treat the conservative insurrection as a form of sickness or dysfunction. In Lori Sturdevant’s (entirely flak-focused) worldview, it seems any approach to life, politics and government that isn’t straight from the DFL Necronomicon is something to fear.

She doesn’t disappoint:

One vote was the elephant in the theater full of District 41 GOP elephants Saturday at Edina’s South View Middle School. It was the vote cast Feb. 25 by Republican Reps. Ron Erhardt of 41A and Neil Peterson of 41B to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto, and put a tax-increasing transportation bill into law.The punishment meted out to the two wayward representatives was stern. Endorsement for the fall election was not only denied them; it was bestowed with ease on their opponents, Keith Downey in 41A, Jan Schneider in 41B.

Got that? Exercising their prerogative as a political party – an organization with actual codified beliefs to which members are expected to largely subscribe – is an “elephant” (hahaha) in the room; that’s 12-step code for “addiction” or “dysfunction”.This is how the DFLMedia views principled conservatism in Minnesota.

I’ve joked about it in this space so many times, I’m running out of new ways to say it; to Lori Sturdevant, the only Republican is a 1976 Republican – back before all that pesky “conservatism” polluted all of that kowtowing to the Tics.

It shows in everything Lori Sturdevant writes:

Applying “DFL-lite” to Erhardt and his late wife Jackie would have been a local laugh line not long ago. A financial planner, Erhardt has been among the party’s most prolific fundraisers and reliable foot soldiers for more than 30 years. He’s run for the Legislature with party endorsement nine times, and has never won his seat with less than 56 percent of the vote. In 2006, he was the second-best Republican vote-getter in his district, behind only U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad.

For years, I’ve wanted to ask Lori Sturdevant; “Lori? For years, Norm Coleman was a reliable DFL foot soldier; he even placed the sainted Paul Wellstone into nomination at the ’96 DFL convention. He was a major-city mayor! He was successful! And yet the DFL hounded him out of the party. Why?”

“For differing with the party on fiscal issues. For going against the party’s beliefs”.

“And so, after all those years of service to, and electoral success on behalf of, the DFL, the party “punished” Norm, hounded him out of the party”.

“Did you get the vapors about that? Was that an “elephant in the room?” Did you solemnly wonder why Tics weren’t the same, responsible, pro-American, fiscally-relatively-sane party they were under Kennedy or, for that matter, Hubert Humphrey?”

“No?”

“Just thought I’d ask”.

That point begs a longer look: In 2006, DFL U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar took District 41 with more than 56 percent of the vote. Pawlenty won there too, but his percent of the vote barely cracked 50 percent.

And in 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried District 41A with 51 percent. Rumor had it that there were rumblings under old Edina gravestones for days thereafter.

You’d think that those votes — and not just the one on the transportation bill — would have been on District 41 minds Saturday. It doesn’t seem to be a propitious time for Republicans to be in purge mode.

Thanks, Lori, but if we want you to do our thinking for us, we’ll lobotomize ourselves with sporks and join the DFL.

When Republicans run as conservatives, we win. If we stand on our principles – as the party to a great extent didn’t in 2000, 2002 and 2006 – then we do just fine without your craven, upsucking advice.

The rest of it? You’re on your own.

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ve read this bit at least once.

In Minnesota, if you choose and need to defend yourself or your family with lethal force, you must meet all four of the following criteria:

1. You can’t be a willing participant in the struggle: you can’t dive into a fist-fight and then shoot your way out of it.
2. You must reasonably fear death or “great bodily harm”: That means “a jury’s gotta buy it”.
3. The force you use must be reasonable under the circumstances: If the police come to your house to find a body with no knife or gun, but clutching your TV, Tivo and monitor, you might have trouble with this one.
4. And finally, You must make every reasonable means to de-escalate the confrontation: That meansyou must back away from the altercation.  In the home, that means you have to try to back away.  There are limits, of course; if you are in a wheelchair, you’re not expected to develop superhuman strength and agility; if it’s -40 outside and there’s a howling wind and you have an infant, no jury and few prosecutors would fault you for shooting; if you have kids sleeping upstairs and your abusive ex-spouse has come through the door with a chainsaw, backing away is a very relative thing.

This last one is one of the most confusing.  Does it mean, assuming that you got parts 1-3 right, that you:

• can defend yourself in your house, but not in your garage?
• must retreat from the first floor to the second floor?
• must – barring any other people in the house or other circumstances – back into the far corner of your house before you shoot?
• can’t defend yourself if a rapist catches you on the patio or in the far corner of the back yard?
• are legally vulnerable to a zillion other situational permutations?

The answer – as for so many of life’s persistent questions – is “it depends”.  In this case, it depends on the zeal of your county prosecutor; if you have a zealous one who hates citizen self-defense (like Amy Klobuchar was, or Sue Gaertner is), that translates to “big legal bills” at best, prison time and a lifetime in civil court at worst.

Solving that – removing some of the vagaries of defending ones’ own home against a serious threat covered by all four of the criteria above – is the point of an eminently sensible bill introduced in the Minnesota House by Rep. Tony Cornish (R, naturally, Good Thunder) that would, as I read it, clarify that corner of Minnesota’s self-defense law.

Naturally, since it empowers real people against criminals, the Strib opposes it, for reasons that are stupid and misleading even by the Strib Editorial Board’s standards.

Oh, it starts out with the truth.

Well, at least conveniently-redacted bit of it:

It’s one of the most frightening scenarios imaginable: While enjoying the sanctity of your own home, intruders break in. When that happens, shouldn’t you have every right to defend yourself?

Under current Minnesota laws, you can.

Which is true, in the same sense that I “can” get a date with Scarlett Johannsen.  The devil – or, in this case, the “long prison term” – is in the details.

Minnesota statutes already indemnify citizens from criminal charges if they wound or kill an intruder inside their home.

I’m no lawyer (and either is Joel Rosenberg, but I’ll page him anyway, since he both wrote the book and taught my concealed carry class), but that indemnification is subject to your shooting being legally justified – and that fourth criterion, “backing away”, is so legally ambiguous and open to so much interpretation.

Hence, the Strib is being technically accurate, but literally misleading.

I see politics – at large, and within parties – as a big game of tug of war. In the exact middle of the rope is a ribbon.

The difference between this and a real tug of war is that you will never pull the ribbon all the way to your side of the pit in the middle, to say nothing of pulling your opponents into it. Oh, it’s a goal – but it will never happen. So every so often – say, every four minutes, or every four years, whichever fits your metaphor better – the referee blows the whistle, and measures where the ribbon is. I’m rooting for the ribbon to move to the right – so I get into the scrum and pull for all I’m worth to get that ribbon moved.

Let’s stretch the metaphor even further. It’s not just a single tug of war; it’s a tournament. And the farther your side gets the ribbon to your side in the semifinals, the more of you will move on to the finals for the big championship round. The catch is, if people get too pissed off at the results of the semifinals and take their cleats and go home, you jeopardize your team’s shot at the finals.  Because the other guys will be pulling with all their might to not only get that ribbon pulled to the left; they want you, and the whole rest of the country, to fall into the mud pit.

We had one of those tugs of war Saturday on the NARN Volume III. Michael Brodkorb wrote about it on MDE;

The point of lampooning of Drew’s and Mitch’s posts was highlight a larger problem that I see that with a certain element of the conservative movement. Some people like to complain and act, while some people just like to complain. It was my opinion that Drew’s and Mitch’s posts were about complaining and not about acting. As I wrote, neither of them had done any volunteering for the Republican effort in SD 25, yet they were the first to complain about the loss. But they both complained because they care about the conservative movement in Minnesota. In reality, our very important conversation wouldn’t have occurred without Drew’s post. For that, we should all offer our sincere thanks to Drew.

The caucuses are a month away (more – much more – on this later). We’re in the semifinals, now – time for the tug of war within the GOP. It’s time for those of us who do stand for the First Principles of conservatism – liberty, prosperity, security, limited government, culture and family – to do what we can to move that metaphorical ribbon within the party to the right.  It’s the time when all of you who think Tim Pawlenty is a RINO, or that Jim Ramstad is too conservative, or who think that Norm Coleman is a Democrat in a nicer suit, or that we need Fred Thompson rather than Rudy Giuliani in the White House, or that the Sixth District needs a moderate rather than an evangelical conservative – need to turn out to the precinct caucuses on February 5.

You need to show up.

You need to vote.

You need to run for the delegate positions, promising to support conservative candidates and principles.

You have to volunteer for your precinct, district, congressional district, and the state convention.

You need to show up at the conventions, and vote for those candidates and principles.  In areas that swing between moderate, conservative and single-issue voters, you need to not only represent your principles – but be involved in the horse-trading that involves forcing the compromises that are at the very root of the word “politics”.

You need to help pull that ribbon to the right.

And then, when the conventions are over, you – we, all of us, conservatives and Republicans of all stripes, “moderates” and Buchananites and libertarians and Reaganites and every flavor in between, having fought the good fight for conservative principle to the absolute hilt through the caucuses and at each and every level of conventions, need to do something that hardly anyone talks about.

We need to close ranks.

Having fought – and, hopefully, won – the good, conservative fight at the caucuses and in the conventions, we need to get some perspective; while not all Republicans will meet a good conservative’s approval, it’s a safe bet that virtually no Democrats will. It will be time to realize that even an “imperfect” Republican is, in almost every case and on nearly every issue, better than a Democrat.

Because while I join many of you in disparaging the “Republicans in Name Only”, the “moderates”, the Republicans who are liberal enough to earn endorsement from the Strib, and get Lori Sturdevant’s approval, there are two reasons to suck it up and hold your nose and work your butt off, even for “RINO” Republicans, even if they offend some of your conservative principles.

The first reason: Every ten years, the state’s congressional districts are reapportioned. And the party with the most seats controls the process. And the DFL, if they are in control, will gerrymander the state’s districts to reinforce their control over this state.

The second: there will, in the next four to eight years, be between one and three Supreme Court seats opening up. And a Republican-controlled Senate will be better for seeing responsible, constructionist, sane judges confirmed.

And in neither case does it matter one iota if the GOP majority is 100% Reaganite purists or 40% Sturdevant-approved moderates. In these cases, literally, a majority that is 2/3 of “good enough” is better – as in, better for the sake of 10 years of state legislation and 20-30 years of SCOTUS decisions – than an ideologically perfect minority. When it comes to reapportioning the state and US legislatures, numbers count, and count drastically. If you don’t think it matters, then ponder if you will the way the DFL drew the legislative map in 1990; Minnesota’s legislative map looked like a Rohrschach blob, drawn to maximize the effect of DFL votes. It made getting any serious reform impossible throughout the nineties. It made it possible for the DFL to spend surplus after surplus, defeat concealed carry reform, create the Department of Children Families and Learning,  and impose the Profiles in Learning,  and fund and design the Ventura Trolley; for a decade (really, for the third of three decades) it allowed the DFL to spent money like crack whores with stolen Gold Cards. All because the GOP lost a bunch of Legislative seats in the eighties.

My favorite example – the one I’ve been dinging on pretty mercilessly for the last year – is the people who told me before the ’06 election (and after the convention) that they were staying home and not voting for Mark Kennedy because he voted for ethanol subsidies. And I’d like to look each and every one of them up right now, and ask “do you think Amy Klobuchar is any better on ethanol? Is a Supreme Court seat worth losing over ethanol? Do you think Amy Klobuchar is better on immigration, defense, education, life or even, ironically, spending – the issue that ostensibly kept you home – than Kennedy would have been?”

Is there such a thing as “going too far” in finding the point where princple and pragmatism intersect?  Of course.  But I’m at a loss to think of one in the running in Minnesota today.  To pick the most recent example, Ray Cox was far from my personal ideal Republican – he got a “26%” score from the Taxpayers League, and got the Strib’s endorsement, for crying out loud.  Would he be better to have in the Senate than DFLer Kevin Dahle?  Without question.  But to take Michael’s point – the time to argue that would have been before and during the endorsing convention. 

And don’t say you can’t argue with the party leadership.  Although I’ve criticized my district and state leadership in the past, the fact is that grassroots movements work.  Michele Bachmann upended the wishes of the CD6 leadership in ’06 by getting her base out in teeming droves that put wildebeest migrations to shame, upsetting many a CD6 establishment figure’s applecart – and winning the nomination, and the race.  Because conservatives turned out, and worked hard, to see their vision through.  Another great example – Tim Pawlenty; the governor was a pragmatic moderate in the House; it was the grassroots groundswell of support for Brian Sullivan that pushed him to the right.  While it didn’t make him a perfect conservative governor, it did make him a vastly better alternative than Roger Moe – all because conservatives got out and voted at caucuses and conventions.

So argue like crazy, today. Stand on absolute principle. Work your butts off for absolute rigid stiffnecked rock-ribbed conservative idealism. I’m going to; I don’t care if it offends the GOP or not! I’ll fight the good fight, and throw bricks at every part of the GOP that doesn’t measure up to the party I want to see…

…until the conventions. And then, starting with my BPOU, and then my Congressional Distict, then within the state, and finally with every other real American Republican nationwide. I’m going to make my notes for the next nomination and caucus cycle, file ’em away, and get out and try to get Republicans – even the lame, “RINO”, not-quite-conservative-enough ones – elected.

Because the big tug of war is coming next – and the Democrats’ philosophy has always been “compromise is for losers” (until they lose – then they whinge about the “need” for “bipartisanship” and “cooperation”), and moving that ribbon to the right isn’t just inside-the-party beanbag. It’s for laws. It’s for judges. It’s for your pocketbook and our kids’ education and our nation’s security, and all of the first ten Amendments and the unborn to boot.

And if that ribbon is one foot left of the center of that metaphorical pit because any of us stayed home because we didn’t like how the GOP’s tug of war ended up, it’s our fault.

I support mass transit options that can be teased into some kind of economic sense.

Which means I oppose almost all of them.  In almost all cases, mass transit is like big box schools; they serve their main purpose badly, but they are superb monuments to the governments that built them.
Now, the Metro’s two big “commuter rail” projects, the Northstar and the Red Rocks lines, could be exceptions.  They are very, very different from the Ventura Trolley and the proposed Central Corridor lines in that

1. they use existing tracks (to say nothing of right-of-way), the same ones that all the freight trains use today.  Other than stations, a few extra switches and sidings, they can be very cheap to build.
2. The rolling stock – the cars and engines – can be relatively cheap.  Indeed, it’s possible to buy used engines and cars from other commuter rail systems, refurbish them, and get them on the road for a fraction of the cost of buying new.

Via those factors – and given decent ridership – it’s actually possible, in theory, to make a commuter rail line self-supporting.

Now, the Taxpayers’ League once made a case against the Northstar; the lynchpin of which being that the line’s ridership was going to be much lower than estimated.  The study took place, of course, back when gas was still below $2 a gallon; suburbanization and exurbanization shows no signs of slowing.  I don’t know any updated numbers, but I’d suspect they’d be worth a second look.

But it’s the other part – the tendence to “monumantalism” – that will continue to cause problems.  And the Strib feeds the monkey without killing it:

Moments after Thomas Barrett, the U.S. deputy secretary of transportation, signed an agreement Tuesday committing $156.8 million in federal funding toward the $320 million Northstar line, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said what others have hoped for a decade:

“I want it to go to St. Cloud,” she said from Washington in a taped message that was played to an audience that included Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Congressman Keith Ellison, state legislators, and officials from the three counties involved, Anoka, Hennepin and Sherburne.

Getting a “Klobuchar Wing” tacked onto a monument is good “Free” campaign publicity.

Watch for more pols to find way$ to tack their name$ onto this project, jacking the co$t$ waaay higher than they need to be.

I’m going to skip the 35E River Bridge – officially the “Lexington” Bridge.  Who cares?

———-

After the 35W River Bridge collapse, Amy Klobuchar famously remarked that bridges just don’t fall down in America.

But if you read the history of the Smith Avenue High Bridge, you’d realize she should have added “But barely”.

First things first; when I show people the Twin Cities at night, there are two views that are were topmost on the agenda; the first was always Minneapolis, coming into town from the north on 35W at night.  The second, always, was downtown Saint Paul viewed from the south side of the High Bridge.  The vista of downtown in all its warm, brownstone glory is really stunning.

Like this view…:

…but at night.

Of course, to get to that view, you have to stomach a bit of history.  The bridge geek carries on:

Claim to fame: the ornamental iron work is made from iron salvaged from the old bridge that this bridge replaced. At 160 feet tall, it is the highest bridge in St. Paul.

The old high bridge was made of wrought iron, and opened in 1889.    

A storm in 1905 destroyed part of the bridge, which was rebuilt using mild steel.

It was a spindly looking structure that looked more like it was made out of metal toothpicks. The bridge closed in the 1980’s, and was imploded in 1985.

The new bridge opened in 1987, and was heralded as one of the seven engineering wonders of Minnesota. The huge steel supports under the bridge looked like a giant letter W, with the two bottom points sitting on piers, and the center forming a large steel arch.    

As soon as it got cold, the bridge contracted a little more than was planned, and one of the steel sections shifted, causing the center point of the W to no longer meet. Instead, the two beams shifted 11 inches, leaving a huge drop-off on the bridge. The bridge was closed several months while engineers designed a way to move the arches back into position and remove the ski-jump from the roadway.

A newspaper account from January 22, 1962, states that a car left the old high bridge, landed upside down on a telephone line, was sprung back up into the air, and landed upright with no passenger injuries. I guess that is what makes winter driving so much fun in Minnesota.

Roosh body-slams A-Klo’s latest misguided attempt at populism – a bill that would regulate cell contract termination fees and otherwise punish cell carriers for providing an inexpensive solution:

Why are there termination fees? Because if you haven’t noticed, Amy, a cellular phone, even a very basic one, has an acquisition cost of a couple hundred dollars to the carrier. There is no free lunch and there is no “free” phone.

The carriers subsidize the handset in exchange for a one or two-year contract. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure everybody knows this.

That is how carriers have made it possible for virtually everyone that wants one to have one nowadays. 

So, Amy, what will be the result of your ill-advised and asinine proposal (assuming it has a chance)?

Termination fees will be traded for higher activation fees and monthly access fees and equipment costs. Much higher equipment costs.

The Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act? Even the title sounds asinine.

Being a DFLer means never having to pass a cringe-check.

…because unlike certain over-the-hill Metro columnists, I’m not going to pretend to be an engineer, but…

Engineers think they might have possibly found egg on Nick Coleman, Elwyn Tinklenburg, Alice Hausman, Amy Klobuchar and Wreck Chupke’s faces a possible clue as to what might have brought down the 35W River Bridge:

Opening a new window into last week’s fatal bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that one of its areas of inquiry involves the design of steel connecting plates known as gusset plates; the material makeup of those plates; and the loads and stresses they bore.

Hours later, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said the NTSB indicated that the stress on the bridge’s gusset plates may have been a factor in the bridge collapse and that one possible stress may have been the weight of construction equipment and materials on the bridge.

A mistake on the drawing board?

Wow – that would have nothing to do with the gas tax, would it?

Again – it’s way too soon to tell; this is nowhere close to a conclusion.

But if it is, Nick Coleman is going to have some ‘splainin’ to do.

Matt, one of the giggly fratboys at MNPublius and late producer of AM950’s hapless “Minnesota Matters” (I’m not sure if I should congratulate Matt for getting into law school or for escaping the world of freebie PM drive radio), gushes, crushes and blushes over A-Klo’s latest poll numbers:

According to the same SurveyUSA poll that shows Senator Norm Coleman’s numbers tanking, Senator Amy Klobuchar has more support than any other time since she took office. The 61% approval rating released today is nothing short of stunning and is even more impressive when viewed against the backdrop of her miniscule 31% disapproval rating.

He finishes with…: 

Wow, just wow.

Embarassing, just embarassing. 

Note to the crush-stricken Matt: it’s easy to get great approval numbers when you don’t do anything. 

What, exactly, has A-Klo done? 

(More important is what she hasn’t done:  sat at the crux of a serious issue, as Coleman has, risking political capital on issues that matter.  A-Klo has not.  A-Klo gets good numbers because she is a non-entity).

 I’ve been talking with a lot of regional conservatives – as opposed to Republicans, lately, although most conservatives do vote Republican, with one degree of nose-holding or another. 

A lot of them.

And one of the common themes of our discussions is the sense that too many candidates and influential staffers in the GOP – nationally as well as Minnesota – are trying to sneak away from conservatism, back toward the mushy-middle hell that the party endured when many of us center-right bloggers were just becoming aware of politics in the first place.

Of course, with all politics there’s the eternal battle between pragmatism and idealism.  Being on the extremes is easy: the Libertarians, Socialist Workers, Constitution Party and (in most places except Minneapolis) Greens defend their ideals fiercely, unpolluted by the need to actually govern, with its attendant compromises; pragmatists like Jesse Ventura and Arne Carlson, more concerned with getting elected or tinkering with the knobs and buttons of power (respectively), use ideals like election brochures, to be stored away in boxes until the next campaign while they get down to wheeling and dealing.

Most of us pick a place on the continuum between “ideals” and “reality” for a variety of reasons.  Some hover closer to the edges; Paul Wellstone’s idealism was intense enough to marginalize him as an on-the-ground legislator; Ronald Reagan’s was also intense, but communicated better; Phil Krinkie’s made him “Doctor No” on Saint Paul’s Capitol Hill.  Others play the room; Dick Day and Chuck Hegel blow with the most profitable wind.  Tim Pawlenty jumps between both with fluency that, after five years, still astounds me.

And any pol’s position on that continuum is going to influence voters, who themselves have their own point staked out, leading to amazing conclusions; I still roll my eyes at the guy I interviewed at the Patriot Picnic last year who was giving up on Mark Kennedy over ethanol subsidies, as if putting Amy Klobuchar in office would change anything…

And then there’s Norm Coleman. 

Norm’s never pretended to be an orthodox conservative.  It would have been political suicide; he’d have never been elected mayor of Saint Paul had he not first been a DFLer, and then governed as a relatively conservative, pragmatic East Side, Randy Kelly-style Democrat before changing parties.  Since going to DC, he’s been fairly solidly conservative on most issues.  Up until this past year, the big blemish was the ANWR Drilling issue, and while he didn’t vote the way I’d have preferred, it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d drop support over.  He’s been on the side of the angels on taxes, immigration, and especially the UN, where he’s led the charge to uncover the rot in the world’s unofficial, self-appointed government.

And yet…there’s the war.

Hugh is rolling up the towel, perhaps for a vicious snap before throwing it in:  according to Hugh, Coleman is only barely on the “worth fighting for” list.   

Gary Miller disagrees.  Sort of.

We’re not there.  Yet.  The Senator is a champion on taxes, judges and the U.N.  He is a disaster on Climatism and the GWOT.  The former are “nice to haves”.  Getting it wrong on the latter have the very real prospect of plunging the world into a new Dark Ages.

It’s hard out there for a pragmatist. 

And we, the center-right, need to make it harder.  Write the Senator.  Tell him where you’re at on this issue. 

One of the great legacies of the Bush Administration is further proof that tax cuts work.  They stimulate the economy.  They put people to work.  They are a just-plain-good thing.

Now, the Bush Administration screwed up, and badly, by not cutting domestic spending.  Those of us who supported Steve Forbes up until the end of the 2000 convention are justified in going “I Told You So”.  And so we shall.  But Bush’s tax cuts have given us an economy that, by any rational measure (except Lexus/Nexus hits) is one of the best ever.

Oh, the Democrats will barber than they starve the government of revenue – which, of course, exposes the central problem with their thesis; the role of our society is not to keep government afloat first and foremost.

The Dems have that wrong – aggressively so.   And they want to “fix” that – to put government at what they call its’ rightful place in the fiscal food chain, way up front.

Jay Reding on the Dems’ plan to gut the US economy:

 To [re-raise taxes] would be to erase the millions of jobs created in the past few years, introduce a huge amount of uncertainty into the market, and ensure that businesses would delay job-creating capital investments until they know what the tax consequences of those choices would be. The Asian markets had a massive sell-off because of similar fears, and the same would happen in America if there was a credible threat of a major capital gains tax increase…However, the worst thing that could happen is for the Democrats to raise taxes, spurring another selloff and then add more to the already burdened entitlement system. That is also precisely what the Democrats want to do — which is why the President should be prepared to veto any bill that raises capital gains taxes beyond the current level.

The economic reality is that capital gains taxes are economically wasteful — they don’t generate much revenue and they hurt economic growth, reducing tax revenues in other areas. Even if a 0% capital gains rate isn’t politically acceptable, neither is a return to a time when capital gains rates were acting as an anchor on economic growth.

It’s here, again, that elections matter.  It’s here that we pay for having the likes of Amy Klobuchar and Tim Waltz in Congress; their philosophy is “government comes first”. 

The “good” news – Minneapolis misses the “distinction” of adding two more deaths to what is shaping up to be a horrible year.

The bad news – the double homicide happened in neighboring Brooklyn Park.

The bodies of a man and a woman were found in a car in the parking lot.

The victims had been shot multiple times.

Names of the victims have not been released and no one has been arrested.

Brooklyn Park is a schizophrenic place; the northern part is an idyllic ‘burb; the south, an expansion franchise for North Minneapolis’ crime quagmire.  A Hennepin County city, it “benefitted” from eight years of Amy Klobuchar’s worthless legacy as County Attorney.

This part kills me.

A woman there said she believed it was her son who had been shot because other young people were calling her about it.

“All we can do now is pray for my son,” said the woman, who was then directed by an officer to go up the block to Brooklyn Park police headquarters.

Yeah.  And everyone else in the area, as well.

Lori Sturdevant – who alone surpasses Doug Grow as the Twin Cities’ media’s most reliable DFL flak – must have been saving this piece for the Hatch/Dutcher coronation she felt the state so richly deserved. She must have dusted it off, changed a few tenses, and run it anyway.

For a not-insignificant share of Mike Hatch’s supporters, and maybe even some of his detractors, the most regrettable thing about the DFL gubernatorial ticket’s defeat last month is that Judi Dutcher won’t be lieutenant governor next year.

Just a brief aside here.

Newspaper columnists; could we retire the phrase “not-insignificant share” for describing a vanishingly small group of believers in a hopelessly picayune concept that is nonetheless a writer’s pet idea?

Judi Dutcher was, if anything, an emptier skirt that Amy Klobuchar. Her only clakim to fame is in being perhaps the state’s poster child for RINOism; she was a hopelessly, crushingly liberal Republican who turned coats (purely for political advantage) and joined the party she should have been in all along. So while her fans might be a “not-insignificant share” of people, I’d suspect that a more significant share, at least among those who care about such things, are glad to see the miserable wretch’s political career take its’ last spiral down the drain.

I digress. Sturdevant wants to make sure the people know Dutcher really does know about Ethanol:

“I felt terrible that people would think that Mike didn’t value ethanol, or that I didn’t know what it was,” Dutcher, a former state auditor, recalled in a recent interview…Minnesotans are forgiving people. My guess is that even in corn country, the vast majority of voters would have given her a pass for her forgetfulness.

They would have, that is, had Hatch not tripped on his own angry tongue as reporters pursued the Dutcher-E85 story.

It was good to hear from Dutcher that Hatch treated her much better than he did the inquiring Duluth News Tribune reporter who said Hatch called him a “Republican whore.” (“Mike was terrific,” she said. “He never made me feel bad.”)

Judi’s such a terriffic gal! And Mike Hatch! What a terriffic guy! Never mind all those former employees and their pesky stories about what a pint-sized Napoleon he is…

It was disappointing to hear that, in the weeks since Hatch first publicly blamed her gaffe for his defeat, then recanted, he has not contacted her personally to make amends. (“For the sake of the relationship that Mike and I enjoyed during the campaign, I’m not going to focus on that letter,” Dutcher said.)

Ah. So maybe “Mike” wasn’t so “terrific” after all?

No matter. One doesn’t read these columns expecting to see any smudge on Mike Hatch to be explored beyond the odd expository sentence.

No, one reads them to see the puffiness of the piece extended to a full eight years of what might have been:

But what was most worth hearing from the 44-year-old attorney and former foundation president was a reprise of her proposed job description for Minnesota’s lieutenant governor.

Her notion sprang from the genuine worry she — and plenty of others — have about widening divisions in this state’s body politic. Rural vs. metro, city vs. suburb, rich vs. poor, Republican vs. DFL — all the usual fault lines have widened into chasms. Not coincidentally, a troubling breach has developed between Minnesota citizens and state government. Getting things done at the state level has grown more difficult as a result.

As lieutenant governor, Dutcher wanted to throw herself into that breach and work to heal it.

“My job would be to work with every legislator, both sides of the aisle — get to know them, personally and professionally, and ask what issues are facing their communities. What can we in the governor’s office do to work with them to get the best results?”

In addition, she said, she planned to convene regional forums, aimed at bringing fresh ideas and more citizen input to bear on public problems.

“We’d bring together elected officials and the best public policy leaders in this state, to understand the emerging trends and how we can address them together,” she said. The topics she expected the forums to address, just for starters, included the aging of the population, business development, environmental protection, and education improvement. Rural development — ironically, in light of the E85 flap — was going to be a special emphasis.

“There’s so much work to do, I wish there were six lieutenant governors,” she said.

And knowing Dutcher’s record, there might have been. Or at least six Second Lieutenant Governors.

I’m not sure what to harp on here: Sturdevant’s notion that Judi Dutcher was anyone that could “bring together” anyone – she’s as left-of-center a figure as any in Minnesota politics – or that bringing anyone “Together” is desirable, or that the columnist’s plaintive cry to “get things done…” is anything but a cover for the unstated coda “…the DFL way”.

What Dutcher describes is quite different from what Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s reelected runningmate has been doing. Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau is also Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnau, the head of one of the largest and most important agencies of state government.

Four years ago, when Pawlenty announced that his lieutenant governor would also be his transportation chief, it sounded like a good bargain for the cash-strapped state. Molnau had the qualifications. She’d been a transportation specialist in the state House. She would fill two jobs for the price of the lower-salaried one.

Today, with the state once again in the black, the arrangement doesn’t seem as nifty. It implies no criticism of Molnau’s performance at MnDOT to observe that a commissioner who holds his or her own election certificate is hard for a governor to control.

What’s more, employing a lieutenant governor to run a state agency doesn’t take full advantage of the special asset the occupant of that office has. No other junior member of a governor’s administrative team is elected. He (or, since 1983, she) brings to the office a relationship with the voters.

Molnau’s double job aside…huh?

If 1/3 of the passersby on Nicollet Mall or on Main Street in Fergus Falls could name the Lieutenant governor (much less “who was the losing Lieutenant Governor candidate last November?”), I’d grant a “familiarity” between her and voters. But “Special Relationship?”

Using and building on that relationship as a liaison to the Legislature and the citizens, as Dutcher intended to do, would seem to be in a governor’s interest — and the state’s.

Judi Dutcher’s campaign has been ushered to the scrap heap of Minnesota history. Let her ideas lie on the heap where the voters sent them, to lie atop piles of Lori Sturdevant’s old columns.

Store clerk repels machete-wielding robber with own machete.

In Amy Klobuchar’s Minneapolis, she’d have gotten a stiffer charge than the robber.

…this evening, Gary Miller’s “Kennedy Vs. The Machine” was one of the most important things to happen in the blogosphere in the past two years.

Gary Miller, the Ringer, Doug Williams and Andy Aplikowski showed the world how to outflank a rankly-biased mainstream media, with solid reporting and just-plain-facts that clobbered the “Machine” – the Strib, PiPress, WCCO and MPR – at every turn.

But don’t listen to me – this morning’s letter writer said it better.

It has been your voice that gave hope not just to me but to all who cared when things in this campaign seemed to go south, and not just for Kennedy. It looked bad but you said it would pass, and the Republicans would be stronger for it. You have us hope, even when we didn’t want to hear it.

[…]

The one thing your coverage made me realize that I appreciate the most is the fact that there are still good people in the political realm. My involvement in the political realm has told me the same as well. When I see the image of Mark Kennedy next to Klobuchar, I see truth fighting fallacy. In the tough times I didn’t think we would pull it out, but now, with tomorrow being Election Day, I realize good will win out. People will be driven toward the positive from the negative when the day is said and done.

However the votes tally up – and they’re sure to be much closer than the Machine wants you to think they will – kudos to the guys on a hard job very well done.

So howzabout you take a few months off and then come back with “Coleman Vs. The Machine”?

I’m not one of those bloggers who goes through the charade of “endorsing” for the election. Duh. I’m a blogger – a schlemiel who works a 9-5 job and raises a couple of kids. Who cares what I think?

Indeed, nobody needs to care one iota. But for what it’s worth, on reading the Ramsey county ballot (danger – PDF file!), here’s where I’m going:

• US Senate: Mark Kennedy, obviously. Amy Klobuchar has been a dismal failure as Henco Attorney, is utterly wrong on the war, second amendment rights, and pretty much everything else. Robert Fitzgerald, of the Ventura Independence Party, is basically a DFLer with better hair.  Greenie Mike Cavlan – who cares?  And Constitution Party candidate Ben Powers’ radio ads make him sound downright unhinged.
• US House, District 4: My support for Obi Sium is a matter of public record, not just to defy the DFL’s almost-traditional hegemony over this district, but against the GOP status quo in the Fourth.  The Fourth CD GOP has always been run by an establishment run by, for and of people living north of County Road D.  And while Minnesota is going to turn red one of these next few elections, we will never prevail for real in this state until we make a real go of it in the city.  And the fact is, the city is populated by people who should be Republicans – they just don’t know it yet.  Black Minnesotans lead the rest of us in working for school choice and accountability; Latino culture is, at its heart, socially conservative in a way that the DFL spits on; Asians value education and the  meritocracy in ways that the Anglo mainstream seem to have forgotten about; the Eritrean community from which Sium hails (as well as much of the Ethiopian) community have fought too hard for freedom to take it as much for granted as too many Americans (especially DFLers) do.  Sium is a much-needed blow to both establishments.  On the other hand, when the Minnesota Federation of Teachers says “Jump”, Betty “Rubble” McCollum says “off what?” without evidence of cognitive thought.  I’ll be voting for Obi early and often.
• MN State Senate, District 66: In the past ten years, I’ve voted for exactly four DFLers – Norm Coleman (before the DFL booted him out), Jerry Blakey, Randy Kelly (and I’d vote for him again), and…Ellen Anderson.  Oh, she’s one of the shrillest liberals around, utterly irredeemable on more issues than I can count.  But in that particular election, there was no GOP candidate, and she does have good constituent services; every time I’ve ever called her office, I’ve gotten a polite, courteous and thorough response, even though my status as an objector to the DFL is well-known (I once interviewed her husband Andy Dawkins on my old KSTP talk show, so it’s no secret).  So never let it be said I don’t give the devil her due.  But since the GOP did endorse perennial candidate Warren Anderson, I’ll vote for him.
• MN House District 66B: As good as Ellen Anderson is at constituent relations, Alice “The Phantom” Hausman is bad.  If it weren’t for photo ops, teachers union meetings and fundraisers, nobody in the district would know Hausman existed.  Saved from being the most worthless member of the MN House only the the existence of Larry Pogemiller, Phyllis Kahn and maybe half a dozen others.  I’m voting for Joyce Bevins.  I’d vote for anyone without a felony record, just on principle.
• Governor: Pawlenty/Molnau.  No question.  Tim Pawlenty is one of the most successful governors in Minnesota.  He led the solution of a budget deficit some pundits said would take a decade to resolve.  And he spent some precious political capital pushing the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, which tells you something of the guy’s character.  Even though he’s scampered away from the No New Taxes pledge, he’s basically held the line, against a phalanx of caterwauling.  There is no rational reason to vote for anyone else – especially the rancid Mike Hatch (paired with the vacuous Judi Dutcher), the irritating Peter Hutchinson, or the psychedelic Ken Pentel.
• Secretary of State: Mary Kiffmeyer.  I need say no more; there’s nobody else on the list who deserves more than a passing chuckle.  Mark Ritchie?  Gank.
• State Auditor: Pat Anderson, going away.
• Attorney General: Jeff Johnson.  Years of working for Mike Hatch can only made Lori Swanson into one of two things; Mini-Mike, or a hopeless Stockholm-Syndrome sufferer.  She can get her therapy on her own time.  Johnson’s the man.
• Transportation Amendment: Not a chance.
• Ramsey County Commission: Incumbent Toni Carter is a big light-rail advocate.  As a result, I’ll be writing in “Mitch Berg” for this seat – primarily so that if I ever worry about the integrity of the counting process, I can check to make sure that my vote was counted.
• County Sheriff: This is going to be a tough one.  It’s a non-partisan position – and while Bob Fletcher has done a good job, Bill Finney was also an excellent police chief for Saint Paul.  Since Finney’s been linked with the DFL, and many local DFL activists are exercised about Fletcher, I think I’ll vote for the incumbent.
• County Attorney: Susan Gaertner treats citizens who defend themselves with firearms like criminals first and foremost.  Her Child Support Enforcement division is rapacious and dubiously ethical.  And she runs the County Attorney’s office like a make-work program for underachieving lawyers.  I’ll be writing in Clu Berg – my dog – for this office.
• Soil and Water, District 1: I don’t know either candidate.  I’ll be writing in Candy Berg (the younger of my two cats).
• Soil and Water, District 4: On the other hand, I do know some candidates here.  I’ll be voting for Jack Krenik, a local conservative firebrand, and I urge you to do so as well.  For the other seat, I’ll vote Mary Jane Reagan, because anyone who changes her name to Reagan to win public office in Saint Paul deserves praise.
• School District Levy: I will vote “No”.  I’ve had enough of the Saint Paul Public Schools’ alarmism, social agenda, and systematic political indoctrination.  And I’d vote “no” even if either of my kids were still in the district – which they are not.  Consider it my protest.
• Supreme Court: Barry Anderson.
• Court of Appeals: Christopher Dietzen.
• District Court: I’ll be voting for all of the incumbents (especially Elena Ostby, against former ultraliberal City Council member Jay Benanav), except for Diane Alshouse, against whom I’m writing in Nosemarie Berg, my elder cat.

The Strib wants you to quit saying things that hurt their feelings:

The phrase? “Cut and run.”

Anyone advocating immediate or even sometime-soon withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is apt to be accused of wanting to “cut and run,” meaning they advocate a dishonorable, cowardly retreat.

OK. Let’s be ruthlessly clear and accurate, here:

Leaving Iraq now would allow Iraq to fall even deeper into a civil war that the central government is, so far, unable to handle. We are the only power in the world that can do anything useful about this.

“Cutting and jogging” – moving our troops to Kuwait, or Okinawa, or (as the hapless, terminally-dim Amy Klobuchar posits) Afghanistan – would have the effect of taking Omaha Beach, and then withdrawing to England while we let the French sort the rest of their liberation out.

Counterinsurgency warfare is a slow, ugly grind – but it can be won, or at least resolved favorably. It takes skill. More than that, as every successful counterinsurgency in history shows us, it takes patience.

But calling for an end to a fruitless, bloody conflict to which this nation has devoted itself for 3½ years, and which shows no signs of ever ending on terms favorable to the United States, is in no way cowardly. It’s a reasonable, even brave, perspective.

“Truth is lies, Winston”.

It might be reasonable, under some circumstances – if you assume that taking a hill from the enemy and then giving it back, to be taken back again, is “reasonable”.

“Brave?” No. It is the very sort of armchair-generalship and parlor leadership that the left sniggers about when they yap about “fighting keyboardists” and “chickenhawks”. The troops – and the Iraqis that come out to vote, volunteer for the Iraqi Army and Police, and live their daily lives amid the horrors concocted by the “insurgents” – are brave. The Strib editorial board and other advocates of cutting and running are merely stating an opinion. In our nation, this is not “brave”, it’s merely par for the course, thank God.

That honorable point of view actually fits well with the original meaning of cut and run, lost now on most who use the term. In nautical battles among sailing ships, when enemy vessels were bearing down on a navy caught at anchor, the ropes to the anchors would be cut and the ships would run with the wind, thus surviving to engage the enemy on more equal terms. An admiral who cut and ran was more likely to be praised for saving his fleet than criticized for cowardice.

Since the Strib wants to invoke picayune, irrelevant bits and pieces of trivia, let’s go further. In 1973 the US – at the behest of leftists like (or, in some cases, including) the people who run the Strib’s editorial board, “cut and ran” (by whatever definition) from Vietnam. Oh, we did it with a promise – we withdrew “over the horizon” to Okinawa and our bases in the US (had Amy Klobuchar been in office, one wonders if she might have suggested we pull back to Honduras or Cuba), with a guarantee to Saigon that we wouldn’t leave them in the lurch.

And then, with full control of Congress after Watergate, they cut off both the funding and any other hope for rescue to the South Vietnamese. The killing fields, the boat exodus, and seven figures’ worth of carnage ensued.

While that example isn’t as picayune and meaningless as the Strib’s nautical excursion, it’s the best I could come up with – and it happens to be front and center on the conservatives’ conscience right now.

A case can be made for not considering withdrawing from Iraq until the conflict somehow is redeemed. But that case should be made with real arguments, not with sleazy accusations that those who advocate a different course want to “cut and run.”

We’ve given you the former, Strib Editors. And you’re going to continue to get both.

I did this two years ago (and on the air two weeks ago); people seemed to like it. Time for a reprise.

This bit isn’t aimed so much at the undecideds, or at those of you who are planning to vote DFL/Democrat. No, this is aimed at those of you who are Republicans who are thinking about staying home because of one imagined slight or another. I’ve talked with all of you over the past year. I’ve heard your complaints, in person, in this blog, and on the NARN show. Most of them are valid; Bush did spend too much; If John McCain and his urge to drag the party back to the seventies is gaining traction, then this party does have problems; I think Coleman and Kennedy were wrong to oppose ANWAR drilling and support ethanol subsidies; Harriet Miers was an incomprehensible choice for the SCOTUS; there should be no compromise on securing the border, if nothing else (the complaint that Michele Bachmann played excessively hardball in winning the CD6 GOP nomination is not valid, but that’s OK – I’ll work with you anyway).

But whatever you’re angry about, it doesn’t rise to the level of the consequences of your action (whether it’s staying home on election night, or voting for some inconsequential third party, or just hoping the GOP “learns a lesson” by getting ushered from power.

The consequences to Minnesota, the nation, the world, and yes, even the GOP are too great to risk this. Since 48% of this nation’s population doesn’t have the common sense to run Bemidji much less the world’s only remaining superpower and the world’s great rampart of democracy, it’s up to each of us to think bigger than Miers, Anwar, Ethanol or whatever.

The party, state, nation and world depend on you doing better than that

So I present 100 reasons to change your mind, starting locally, moving globally.

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