{"id":1318,"date":"2007-09-17T16:37:06","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T21:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1318"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:53:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:53:45","slug":"exit-rammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1318","title":{"rendered":"Exit Rammer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Ramstad has always been an aggravating case.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I have some residual home-town loyalty going on.\u00a0 Ramstad and I are both natives of Jamestown, ND.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he’s the kind of Republican that makes Lori Sturdevant coo and giggle with girlish glee; a Republican that, when the chips are down, is as likely to vote with the Dems as with the GOP.\u00a0 You know – one of those “responsible” Republicans (to the local media) who don’t bother with all of that “stiff-necked adherence to party principles” stuff.\u00a0 (Oddly – for those of you from out of state – they don’t have any similar guideline for DFLers; to the Strib, John Kline is an “irresponsible\u00a0extremist”, while Keith Ellison is mainstream).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ramstad is retiring<\/a>.\u00a0 And little birds are telling me that the Third CD Republicans want to endorse another “Moderate”, so scared are they of the district’s alleged purplish trends (even though the Third voted for both Bush and Pawlenty).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Note to my readers in the Third District:\u00a0 Rubbish.\u00a0 This is the time to be bold.\u00a0 To stand up for a strong message – for prosperity, security, and our culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now is the time for you – the conservatives in the Third District – to turn off Rush and get out in the street to work <\/em>for an actual, first-principle conservative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember the Sixth District last year; the party orthodoxy preferred Jim Knoblauch (and to be fair, Jim would have made a great representative; indeed, any <\/em>of the four candidates would have been better than Patty Wetterline).\u00a0 But Michele Bachmann won by organizing, <\/em>by getting her people out to the caucuses and voting for her in droves.<\/em><\/p>\n

Conservatives in the Third CD need to do the same thing, or they’ll get stuck with another “moderate”.\u00a0 And they need to do it soon.\u00a0 While the Third, by all rights, should be solid conservative country, the party district\u00a0establishment is a throwback to the old “Independent Republican” era.\u00a0 Between Ramstad and Jim Frenzel, the district has been represented by “Moderates” – which in Minnesota GOP parlance means “people who missed the Reagan Revolution” – for a couple of decades now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You – the conservative in the Third – can change that.\u00a0 We’re going to spend the next few weeks talking about exactly how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Ramstad has always been an aggravating case. On the one hand, I have some residual home-town loyalty going on.\u00a0 Ramstad and I are both natives of Jamestown, ND.\u00a0 On the other hand, he’s the kind of Republican that makes Lori Sturdevant coo and giggle with girlish glee; a Republican that, when the chips are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318","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=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22413,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions\/22413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}