{"id":25107,"date":"2011-12-29T10:08:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T16:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25107"},"modified":"2014-10-05T14:39:20","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T19:39:20","slug":"back-to-the-future-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25107","title":{"rendered":"Back To The Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s what I’m hoping happened on Tuesday:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Senate took a move to reassure people in and outside the party that the GOP is a sane, sober, grown-up party that, despite the press’ giggly and untoward obsession with the Koch “scandal”, is in the business of running a solid government in pulling former minority leader Senjem off the bench.<\/li>\n
  2. Senjem – called a “pro-business conservative” by some of the leftybloggers (which means “moderate enough to not make them wet their pants with fear”), and a relative moderate by the rest of the world, is a calming, reassuring figure – partly to the caucuses (one of which he’s run before), and mostly to the rest of the world.<\/li>\n
  3. The Senate, however, has recognizes the invigorating reality that the majority Senjem leads is mostly freshmen, swept into office on a wave of Tea Party conservative fervor, and who both went there to do what they were sent there to do and who haven’t, so far, gone native. \u00a0 The assistant leaders include Roger Chamberlain, a straight-talking conservative from Lino Lakes, upperclassman Paul Gazelka of Brainerd, Ted Lillie of Lake Elmo and Claire Robling of Jordan, who may have been the architect of any non-tax “solution” we have on the Vikings stadium, among other things. \u00a0If you’re a Tea Partier, this is a pretty acceptable rounding-out of the leadership.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    That’s what I’m hoping anyway. \u00a0Sources at the Capitol tell me that the caucus was rife with conflict during the last session, as the more-conservative freshman majority within the majority struggled with the more-moderate upper class senators. \u00a0Hopefully this is a sign that the struggles have been worked out, and the Senate can get down to the business of kicking Tom Bakk and Mark Dayton Alita Messinger’s butts.<\/p>\n

    Perfect is the enemy of good enough. \u00a0I’d hoped for Dave Hann for majority leader – but I have a hunch the splatter from the Koch incident stuck to a number of the principals; of the four leaders involved in the press conference a few weeks back that announced the flap to the public, Hann, Gerlach and Michel are absent from the leadership. \u00a0It’s a shame; Hann was one of the better upperclass members of the chamber last session.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, onward and upward; it’s time to not only kick Dayton’s<\/del> the Alliance For A Better Minnesota and the SEIU’s agenda back under the bus, but defend every seat of that majority, and hopefully extend it.<\/p>\n

    More on that next week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here’s what I’m hoping happened on Tuesday: The Senate took a move to reassure people in and outside the party that the GOP is a sane, sober, grown-up party that, despite the press’ giggly and untoward obsession with the Koch “scandal”, is in the business of running a solid government in pulling former minority leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,132],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-25107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-mn-legislature","tag-abm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25107","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=25107"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47863,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25107\/revisions\/47863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}