In a piece that turns logic on its head, the Wall Street Journal opines that Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s political ambitions got a boost from the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision that his budget balancing was illegal.<\/p>\n
It’s been a bad week for Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. Of course, it’s also been a good week for Republican Presidential Contender Tim Pawlenty.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nWell, no.\u00a0 It’s been a good week for both of them.<\/p>\n
Pawlenty has held the line for eight years against a mostly-hostile legislature.\u00a0 As the article notes, while Minnesota’s budgets rose 21% every biennium from 1960 (the year he was born) until he took office, he’s reduced it to 2% per biennium during his terms in office, and has actually cut spending in this last go-around.<\/p>\n
Or did, until the Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) tossed his unallotments from the last session, putting billions in spending back on the table, to be hashed out between him and the Legislature.<\/p>\n
So what does Pawlenty, who is a lame duck on the state level and has nothing to lose on the national level, actually lose with this?\u00a0\u00a0 A few weeks in a room “negotiating” with DFLers.<\/p>\n
What does he gain?<\/p>\n
\n- A cherry on the sundae of his conservative credentials.<\/li>\n
- A big, hot potato – actually, several billion of them – tossed back into the lap of his would-be successor’s opponent’s lap.\u00a0 Margaret Anderson-Kelliher is going to have to spend a few weeks dealing with the fallout of her spending orgy at a time when Minnesotans are starting to get fed up with spending, when Tom Emmer is well-placed to make hay with it.\u00a0 It’s possible even the customary media blackout won’t be enough to whitewash Kelliher this time.<\/li>\n
- Weeks and weeks of DFL puffery to shoot at.<\/li>\n
- Finally – and perhaps\u00a0best of all – the chance to outmaneuver the DFL like a middleweight boxer in his prime taking on a fat athsmatic drunk in an alley one last time.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
No, the only loser will be the Minnesota taxpayer – and only if Pawlenty loses, and then only ’til November.\u00a0 If they’re smart.<\/p>\n
As the SurveyUSA poll hints they just might be.<\/p>\n
By the way, Blois Olson – a long-time acquaintance who will one day be the Larry Jacobs of the 2010s – is quoted:<\/p>\n
Democrats will counter that there’s no defining Pawlenty achievement, and no significant animating idea behind this record. There’s no “one big thing” that he’s done, says Blois Olson, a prominent political commentator.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Which is a classically-liberal thing to say.\u00a0 Democrats like to see lots of evidence that they moved the levers and pushed the buttons of government more than most; it’s why Democrats love light rail and big warehouse schools.<\/p>\n
To a conservative, less is <\/em>more.<\/p>\nIn sum, this week’s events define what Mr. Pawlenty is: a classic, fiscally conservative Midwestern Republican governor. In a period of voter discontent, Republicans have two years to decide whether that’s the right stuff for the times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s a great start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If we were to build a Minnesota political time capsule, and needed to capture for posterity the smug sense of entitlement the DFL has today, I’d put in a bunch of carefully-folded Lori Sturdevant columns.\u00a0 But to capture the distilled core of the “conventional wisdom”, whatever it is at any given moment, I’d go to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mngop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10801,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10796\/revisions\/10801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}