{"id":2251,"date":"2008-03-12T06:46:56","date_gmt":"2008-03-12T11:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2251"},"modified":"2020-12-21T05:35:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T11:35:06","slug":"sturdevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2251","title":{"rendered":"The Devil You Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simple fact: when Republicans run like Republicans – with a conservative <\/em>vision, with lower taxes, smaller and more honest government, safer streets, less-stupid schools, secure borders, a Higher Power and family and country, we win.<\/p>\n

We win because there are an awful lot of Democrats who vote for fiscal responsibility, for ethics, and for America, when they get the chance.<\/p>\n

We win because there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t care about parties, but respond to vision – and visions are like food. If the other guy’s offering a box of Mike and Ikes, and all you have in response is a snark about how bad for you Mike and Ikes are, people will take the candy. If you offer them the perfectly-done London Broil that is the conservative vision, people take the beef.<\/p>\n

We win because, underneath it all, most people are smart enough to see that the DFL way is no way to run a state.<\/p>\n

To Lori Sturdevant – who, with Doug Grow’s retirement, is the DFL’s most reliable flak in the Twin Cities media – the ideal “compromise” is bouillon-flavored Mike and Ikes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Laura Hemler – a major mover behind Keith Downey’s campaign – called from the Cleanup on Aisle 41 last week to tell me Sturdevant was lurking about the convention, I started taking internal bets to see what she’s write.<\/p>\n

My top bet: that she’d treat the conservative insurrection as a form of sickness or dysfunction. In Lori Sturdevant’s (entirely flak-focused) worldview, it seems any approach to life, politics and government that isn’t straight from the DFL Necronomicon is something to fear.<\/p>\n

She doesn’t disappoint:<\/p>\n

\n
One vote was the elephant in the theater full of District 41 GOP elephants Saturday at Edina’s South View Middle School. It was the vote cast Feb. 25 by Republican Reps. Ron Erhardt of 41A and Neil Peterson of 41B to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto, and put a tax-increasing transportation bill into law.The punishment meted out to the two wayward representatives was stern. Endorsement for the fall election was not only denied them; it was bestowed with ease on their opponents, Keith Downey in 41A, Jan Schneider in 41B.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Got that? Exercising their prerogative as a political party<\/em> – an organization with actual codified beliefs to which members are expected to largely subscribe – is an “elephant” (hahaha) in the room; that’s 12-step code for “addiction” or “dysfunction”.This is how the DFLMedia views principled conservatism in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

I’ve joked about it in this space so many times, I’m running out of new ways to say it; to Lori Sturdevant, the only Republican is a 1976 Republican – back before all that pesky “conservatism” polluted all of that kowtowing to the Tics.<\/p>\n

It shows in everything Lori Sturdevant writes:<\/p>\n

Applying “DFL-lite” to Erhardt and his late wife Jackie would have been a local laugh line not long ago. A financial planner, Erhardt has been among the party’s most prolific fundraisers and reliable foot soldiers for more than 30 years. He’s run for the Legislature with party endorsement nine times, and has never won his seat with less than 56 percent of the vote. In 2006, he was the second-best Republican vote-getter in his district, behind only U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For years, I’ve wanted to ask Lori Sturdevant; “Lori? For years, Norm Coleman was a reliable DFL foot soldier; he even placed the sainted Paul Wellstone into nomination at the ’96 DFL convention. He was a major-city mayor! He was successful! And yet the DFL hounded him out of the party. Why?”<\/p>\n

“For differing with the party on fiscal issues. For going against the party’s beliefs”.<\/p>\n

“And so, after all those years of service to, and electoral success on behalf of, the DFL, the party “punished” Norm, hounded him out of the party”.<\/p>\n

“Did you get the vapors about that? Was that an “elephant in the room?” Did you solemnly wonder why Tics weren’t the same, responsible, pro-American, fiscally-relatively-sane party they were under Kennedy or, for that matter, Hubert Humphrey?”<\/p>\n

“No?”<\/p>\n

“Just thought I’d ask”.<\/p>\n

That point begs a longer look: In 2006, DFL U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar took District 41 with more than 56 percent of the vote. Pawlenty won there too, but his percent of the vote barely cracked 50 percent.<\/p>\n

And in 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried District 41A with 51 percent. Rumor had it that there were rumblings under old Edina gravestones for days thereafter.<\/p>\n

You’d think that those votes — and not just the one on the transportation bill — would have been on District 41 minds Saturday. It doesn’t seem to be a propitious time for Republicans to be in purge mode.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks, Lori, but if we want you to do our thinking for us, we’ll lobotomize ourselves with sporks and join the DFL.<\/p>\n

When Republicans run as conservatives, we win<\/em>. If we stand on our principles – as the party to a great extent didn’t in 2000, 2002 and 2006 – then we do just fine without your craven, upsucking advice.<\/p>\n

The rest of it? You’re on your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simple fact: when Republicans run like Republicans – with a conservative vision, with lower taxes, smaller and more honest government, safer streets, less-stupid schools, secure borders, a Higher Power and family and country, we win. We win because there are an awful lot of Democrats who vote for fiscal responsibility, for ethics, and for America, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,4,2],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-media","category-minnesota-politics","tag-a-klo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","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=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49836,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions\/49836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}