With the new session coming up, all you liberals are going to be in for a new experience – being a legislative minority here in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
It’s never happened, not in the political lifetime of any of you out there.<\/p>\n
It’s gonna be a whole new feeling for all you libs – not being able to spin the wheels and levers of government to make it do what you want at will or, at the very worst, to be able to control a chamber of the legislature to bog down legislature.\u00a0 All you have is the veto (and of course DFL control of the state’s bureaucracies, which is not an inconsiderable power by itself).\u00a0\u00a0 He’ll float his “Crack Whore With A Stolen Platinum Card Budget”, just like the people who paid for his election told him to.\u00a0 It’ll get shot down.\u00a0 He’ll turn around and veto the budget put forward by the responsible adults.\u00a0 That’s how it’s done.<\/p>\n
So, speaking as someone who’s been in the\u00a0legislative minority in this state as long as I’ve been in this state – 25 years, now – here’s some advice for all you DFLers.<\/p>\n
You can thank me later.<\/p>\n
The entire legislature was elected, not “Selected<\/a>“<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yes, the people really did <\/em>flush the DFL out of office.\u00a0 Buck up, little campers; 2012 is another election.\u00a0 Although I think we’re gonna clobber you then, too.<\/p>\n Stay Calm<\/strong>:\u00a0 Some of you people are nuts even when you’re in <\/em>power<\/a>.\u00a0 We conservatives are pretty good at tamping down our odd nutbar.\u00a0 You guys need some practice.\u00a0 You’ll probably get it.<\/p>\n Elections Have Consequences<\/strong>: The DFL used its temporary legislative supremacy to try to jam down a phalanx of spending and taxes over the past four years.\u00a0 They were stymied by Governor Pawlenty, who exercised his veto and conducted a masterful rear-guard job.\u00a0 And when he did, you – especially your pundit friends in the media – were downright heart-rending in your demands that Pawlenty also represent the Minnesotans who didn’t <\/em>vote for him, and pass the DFL’s legislation.\u00a0 Now, as a conservative, I’m under no illusion that Dayton is going to vote my <\/em>conscience when he takes office.\u00a0<\/p>\n So I’m counting the hours until we get the first mawkish blog post or Lori Sturdevant column asking Republicans to remember that “you represent the majority of Minnesotans that didn’t <\/em>vote for you”.\u00a0 In that way that the DFL always forget when they controlled all the knobs and levers.<\/p>\n Pack Your Bags!:<\/strong>\u00a0 I thought nothing could match Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon’s narcissistic solipsism in threatening to move to France if George W. Bush won his various elections (and naturally, neither did), until I heard Minnesota DFLers threatening to leave the state if Emmer had won the election.\u00a0 Well, controlling both houses of the legislature is arguably a better deal than having the governor’s office and one chamber.<\/p>\n So since I just bought a truck, do you and your crap need a ride to Hudson?<\/p>\n Get A Grip<\/strong>: No matter what the DFL, Tom Dooher, the Strib’s editorial board and DFL-pet columnists tell you, Minnesota isn’t really going to change all that much when the adults take over.\u00a0 Oh, keeping government fed will no longer be the primary stated mission of government (and if the GOP majority doesn’t <\/em>change that, those of us who sent them there will be happy to bring them home), but the schools will stay open, the parks will still be there for, er, parking, there will still be libraries, cops and firemen will still respond (unless you live in a city where the DFL will hold those services hostage<\/a>).\u00a0 Indeed, the schools will probably do better, you’ll be able to enjoy the park to relax from the job you don’t have now but are more likely to have then, you can spend your time at the library reading rather than job-hunting, and so on.\u00a0 But by and large, not all that much is going to change.<\/p>\n Except, it seems, your (plural) blood pressure.<\/p>\n Buck up, little vegan campers.\u00a0 We conservatives survived.\u00a0 So will you – if you choose to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the new session coming up, all you liberals are going to be in for a new experience – being a legislative minority here in Minnesota. It’s never happened, not in the political lifetime of any of you out there. It’s gonna be a whole new feeling for all you libs – not being able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,144,2],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-16385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-governor","category-minnesota-politics","tag-pawlenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16385","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=16385"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22532,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16385\/revisions\/22532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}