{"id":11956,"date":"2010-07-12T07:15:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T12:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11956"},"modified":"2010-07-12T07:15:23","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T12:15:23","slug":"oil-from-a-turnip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11956","title":{"rendered":"Oil From A Turnip"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was one of the Senate’s stranger friendships; Barry Goldwater and Paul Wellstone. \u00a0The two were at the opposite extremes of American politics, but they admired each others’ passion and commitment to their principles. \u00a0They became fairly close friends. \u00a0Wellstone even attended Goldwater’s funeral.<\/p>\n

But that doesn’t mean that Wellstone was ever remotely tempted to vote as a fiscal conservative, or that Goldwater broke ranks with conservatives from his friendship. \u00a0Admiration only goes so far.<\/p>\n

Even in notoriously liberal Minnesota, crowded as its Metro and Arrowhead areas are with invinicble DFL voters, this could be a rough year for the Democratics.<\/p>\n

And it’s when times get tough that some people, at least, start reaching, hard, for plans.<\/p>\n

Grace Kelly, noted 9\/11 truther writing at Minnesota “Progressive” Project<\/em>, believes she has the answer. \u00a0She\u00a0notes<\/a> that the “Goldwater\/Wellstone” phenomenon means that people who are passionate about their principles often have more in common, politically, than mushy moderates who vote more on the basis of pragmatism or, as with so many moderates, last-second gut reaction. She even has a graphic:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So far, so good.<\/p>\n

But then comes the unsupportable conclusion:<\/p>\n

This model would suggest that persuading strong Republicans who hate Emmer politics, \u00a0would be a persuasion that would stick until the election and possibly even create more Democrats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, that’s simple. \u00a0Because while many highly-committed conservatives will get along, at least socially, with many highly-committed liberals because of the same “birds of a feather” phenomenon that made friends of the likes of Goldwater and Wellstone, you will find very, very few “conservatives” who support outrageous tax hikes, featherbedding state employees’ unions, or out-of-control spending.<\/p>\n

Break into the strong Republican social networks and wonderful other things would start happening because the opinions are held on false information and false logic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right.<\/p>\n

Because nothing endears one to a social network into which one is trying to “break” like exuding the belief that “everything you believe is wrong” (especially given that history shows conservatism to be pretty much inevitably right about the things that really matter).<\/p>\n

An outsider has a hard time changing the group, however an insider could really be impressive. So why are we leaving these groups alone again?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I had to guess? \u00a0The DFL is leaving us alone because there is <\/em>no huge reserve of conservative <\/em>Republicans who disagree with Emmer’s politics, or who would do anything with any DFL policy (much less the far left ones) other than line their bird cages with ’em.<\/p>\n

Hope that helps.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was one of the Senate’s stranger friendships; Barry Goldwater and Paul Wellstone. \u00a0The two were at the opposite extremes of American politics, but they admired each others’ passion and commitment to their principles. \u00a0They became fairly close friends. \u00a0Wellstone even attended Goldwater’s funeral. But that doesn’t mean that Wellstone was ever remotely tempted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,24,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-culture-war","category-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956","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=11956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11986,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11956\/revisions\/11986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}