{"id":11342,"date":"2010-06-10T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11342"},"modified":"2010-06-10T13:20:47","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T18:20:47","slug":"jeff-rosenberg-its-really-pate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11342","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Rosenberg: &#8220;It&#8217;s Really Pat\u00e9&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I checked out the <a href=\"http:\/\/mnpublius.com\/2010\/06\/horner-campaign-gaining-support-o-influential-republicans\/\">big headline <\/a>on Twin Cities \u00fcberleftyblog <em>MNPublius <\/em>this morning, and I started to worry:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Horner campaign gaining support of influential Republicans <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and read the lede&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tom Horner is becoming a serious problem for Tom Emmer and the Republican party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Wow&#8221;, I thought.\u00a0 &#8220;This could be serious business.\u00a0 What &#8220;influential Republicans&#8221; have lined up behind the big-tax, big-spend, big-government Horner?<\/p>\n<p>I read on, drum roll playing in my head:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0Bryan Anderson, press secretary for former Rep. Gil Gutknecht<\/li>\n<li>Former Pawlenty communications director Dan Wolter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mnpublius.com\/2010\/06\/horner-campaign-gaining-support-o-influential-republicans\/\"><\/a>\u00a0To which I responded &#8220;Huh&#8221; and &#8220;Huh&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Two press guys?\u00a0 One for a Congressman who ran too far to the center and got beaten in 2006, and another that&#8217;s been out of the governor&#8217;s office for years?<\/p>\n<p>Two guys who&#8217;ve never won an election?<\/p>\n<p>Two guys who may have never even changed a single person in their lives to switch a vote?<\/p>\n<p>One guy I&#8217;ve never, ever heard of, and another that I dealt with oh-so-briefly back during, if memory serves, George W. Bush&#8217;s first term?\u00a0 Both of whom I suspect are known only to wonks and media people, are utterly unknown to anyone who doesn&#8217;t eat, drink and live politics?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s ludicrous, and I suspect even Jeff Rosenberg knows it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening:\u00a0 faced with Emmer&#8217;s two-month head-start and very anti-establishment message, and\u00a0knowing that\u00a0at\u00a0the end of that they&#8217;ll have to sell Minnesota either a national laughingstock or a woman whose entire platform is summed up &#8220;spend money like a crack whore with a stolen Platinum card&#8221;, the\u00a0\u00a0entire regional Sorosphere (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.minnesotaindependent.com\">paid <\/a>or not) is trying to repeat a couple of transparently bogus lines so many times that people start to believe them:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>That Tom Emmer\u00a0 &#8211; who is running on making government more sane and responsible and less expensive &#8211; is &#8220;extreme&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>That Tom Horner &#8211; big-government, big-tax, big-spending PR flak with establishment connections that&#8217;d make Chris Dodd blanche with shame, and who once slapped an &#8220;R&#8221; after his name, back when &#8220;R&#8221; in Minnesota meant &#8220;DFL with better suits &#8211; is an alternative.\u00a0 But only for Republicans, mind you.<\/li>\n<li>That the Emmer campaign is &#8220;scared&#8221; of Horner.\u00a0 You see it in practically everything every leftyblogger in Minnesota writes about the subject.\u00a0 <em>What an amazing coincidence, huh?<\/em>\u00a0 (Aint&#8217; so, by the way.\u00a0 I am utterly unconnected with the Emmer campaign, but I know plenty of people who are.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s just say they&#8217;re looking forward to the end of primaries, to say nothing of November).<\/li>\n<li>That, indeed, every single thing that every single conservative\/Republican blogger says or writes in any medium for any reason is motivated by &#8220;fear&#8221;.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I&#8217;ll say this in their defense; if I was looking forward to having to support someone like Mark Dayton\u00a0 or Margaret Anderson Kelliher against a Tom Emmer, I&#8217;d stick with repeating big lies in the hopes that gullible voters will believe it, too.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, it worked 18 months ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I checked out the big headline on Twin Cities \u00fcberleftyblog MNPublius this morning, and I started to worry: Horner campaign gaining support of influential Republicans &#8230;and read the lede&#8230; Tom Horner is becoming a serious problem for Tom Emmer and the Republican party. &#8220;Wow&#8221;, I thought.\u00a0 &#8220;This could be serious business.\u00a0 What &#8220;influential Republicans&#8221; have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11342","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=11342"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11358,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11342\/revisions\/11358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}