And so we get to the peak of the peak; the top ten Minnesota Conservatives that Minnesota liberals and Democrats hate!\u00a0 These, for the most part, are the people who drive Minnesota liberals into paroxysms of rage because…they disagree with them.<\/p>\n
Drum roll please!<\/p>\n
10. Ed Morrissey<\/strong>: Yeah, I’m surprised the mild-mannered Morrisey made the top ten, too.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the effortlessness of it all that they hate so much; Ed, my radio colleague, mows through national lefties like a riding mower through a cabbage patch, and doesn’t break a sweat, and makes it back to the Morrissey Mansion in time for reruns of The Wire <\/em>with the First Mate; he may have more influence on national opinion than Media Matters, and until recently he did it for the love of the game.\u00a0 If you were George Soros, you’d hate that.<\/p>\n 9. Norm Coleman:<\/strong> There is nothing <\/em>the left hates worst than apostates; we’ve seen how they detest female conservatives throughout this poll; Democrats who flip parties are one circle of Lib Hell removed from them.\u00a0 Norm flipped when he was mayor of Saint Paul, and went on to be the best Senator this state has had in years, and the best we’re likely to have until at least 2014.<\/p>\n 8. Mitch Berg<\/strong>:\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 Me?\u00a0 A guy with a blog that gets a respectable but strictly-C-list 2,000 visits a day?\u00a0 OK, I claim home field advantage; I got a lot of votes, but my passion index was the lowest on the Top Ten.\u00a0 Still, it’s fun to see!\u00a0 Thanks!<\/p>\n 7. Jason Lewis<\/strong>:\u00a0 Let’s not mince words; Lewis is to Minnesota conservatism what the Wright Brothers were to aviation; before them, conservatism and heavier-than-air flight were both\u00a0theories; it took them to make it all happen.\u00a0 Jason Lewis brought the Reagan Revolution at long last to Minnesota.\u00a0 His impact on politics in this state is easy, and wrong, to understate. Before Jason Lewis, Arne Carlson was the face of the GOP in Minnesota.\u00a0 Without Lewis, he still very well\u00a0might be.\u00a0 And that makes the DFL and media’s (pardon the redundancy) jobs harder.\u00a0 And we know how liberals hate to work.<\/p>\n 6. David Strom<\/strong>: If Jason Lewis brought the Reagan Revolution to Minnesota, David Strom taught that revolution how to invoke Hayek and spell Friedman\u00a0and, by the way, how to make their representatives do it, too.\u00a0 If the DFL sold dartboards, his picture would be on them.<\/p>\n 5. Michael Brodkorb<\/strong>:\u00a0 Michael – my former NARN co-host – cut his public-image teeth as the owner of Minnesota Democrats Exposed<\/em>, and became the Matt Drudge of the Minnesota alt-media almost overnight.\u00a0 He didn’t just eat the Dems’ lunches every day; he ran laps around them, and never broke a sweat, ever.\u00a0 If anyone has ever let the air out of the Minnesota political media establishment’s tires, it was Brodkorb.\u00a0 He’s earned the hate!<\/p>\n 4. Katherine Kersten<\/strong>:\u00a0 The Twin Cities’ leftymedia hated Kersten partly because she didn’t know the secret handshake; she didn’t get her late, lamented column after years of covering city council meetings and dog shows and one-car crashes; she actually had a productive career – but there are few things journos hate worse than people who get printed in newspapers without bothering to join the Order of Most High Priests of Information. And if journos hate her, then the DFL will hate her too (even without considering that she’s a female and a conservative, which puts her beyond the pale); and Democrats hate whomever their superiors tell them to hate.\u00a0 So Kersten became a reviled figure, even though most of those doing the reviling, the Twin Cities leftyblogs and their followers, had put no more thought into it than dog puts into fetching a stick.\u00a0\u00a0 Although she’s #4, she had the second-highest “Passion Index” – average ranking – of anyone in the poll.<\/p>\n 3. Rep. Tom Emmer<\/strong>: Of course, there’s almost nobody the Democratics hate more than any conservative who can beat them.\u00a0 Emmer finished third; I suspect it’ll move up after the Dems have to figure out how to make Mark Dayton beat him this fall.\u00a0\u00a0 I suspect Tom’ll make a run for #2.\u00a0 But not #1.\u00a0 You’ll see why.<\/p>\n 2. Governor Tim Pawlenty<\/strong>:\u00a0 The DFL hates him for the same reason the Persians hated King Leonidas of Sparta; because he almost singlehandedly stymied them on pure personal and conservative principal for four years, fighting against two DFL-controlled chambers and a media that would have to develop a whole lot of integrity to be called merely “in the bag for the DFL”.\u00a0\u00a0 TPaw is only reason all income above the “living wage” hasn’t been confiscated from\u00a0 you by the State of Minnesota and given to AFSCME.\u00a0 In a just world, he’d be in the top three contenders for the White House.\u00a0 He knows how to beat back the DFL like perhaps nobody in history; he’s more than earned the hatred.<\/p>\n And finally, the most-hated conservative in Minnsota…<\/p>\n [trumpet fanfare]<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0Rep. Michele Bachmann<\/strong>:\u00a0 It wasn’t even close.\u00a0 She not only got more votes overall, but never finished lower than #2 in anyone’s rankings, and even then only two or three times.\u00a0 Her “Passion Index” is just south of a perfect “10”, over two points higher than the next highest contender, Kersten.\u00a0 Bachmann is everything the left hates rolled up into five feet three inches of explosive charisma; she’s a pro-lifer who’s spent a life putting her money where her mouth is (five biokids and a couple dozen foster kids), she’s been sounding the most articulate jeremiads about the federal spending orgy of anyone on Capitol Hill; she\u00a0is one of the faces of the Tea Party (which, to the horror of the left, is led and largely peopled by women); \u00a0she endures the most scabrous assaults of anyone in Washington, slips them all and bobs back up smiling and shooting from the hip (with an AR15 – oh, yeah, she’s a perfect 100 on Second Amendment issues, too).\u00a0 Bachmann is unabashedly Christian and Reaganite and Pro-shining-city-on-the-hill – all things that give Minnesota liberals seizures.\u00a0 And not only is she a woman, but she’s among the leaders of this year’s conservative female revolution, which threatens to undercut the Democratics’ traditional monopoly on the female vote.<\/p>\n You can see steam shoot out of lefties’ ears when her name is mentioned – partly for what she stands for, and partly for how she does it; with the pure glee that comes from always kicking your opponents’ asses in every way.<\/p>\n Congrats, Rep. Bachmann!<\/p>\n So there we go for this year!\u00a0 Maybe this will be an annual, or at least biennial, tradition…<\/p>\n GREETINGS, HOT AIR HEADLINES READERS: \u00a0Thanks for stopping by! \u00a0I’ll also direct you to the first two installments – for places 21-30<\/a>, and 11-20<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And so we get to the peak of the peak; the top ten Minnesota Conservatives that Minnesota liberals and Democrats hate!\u00a0 These, for the most part, are the people who drive Minnesota liberals into paroxysms of rage because…they disagree with them. Drum roll please! 10. 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