Last November’s election was, in many parts of Minnesota, like a drunken night out when you’ve been having a rough time with your significant other.<\/p>\n
You’re out on the town. You’ve had a bit too much to drink. You’re feeling sorry for yourself. Along comes a flashy, attractive (after enough drinks) stranger who talks a great game, and seems totally <\/em>unlike that rat-bastard or cold-hearted wench you’ve been seeing.<\/p>\n Mistakes, as they say, were made.<\/p>\n Now it’s the morning after. You don’t remember much about the night before, except that you hit your ATM for a hell <\/em>of a lot of money.<\/p>\n And through the hangover, you’re wondering if you are going to need to chew your arm off to get out of his\/her place without waking him\/her up.<\/p>\n Lori Sturdevant, loyal By the numbers, state Rep. Sandy Wollschlager ought to be one nervous DFL freshman about now.<\/p>\n There’s 28A, her Republican-leaning district in Goodhue and Wabasha counties, bordering beautiful Lake Pepin. Three, the number of times she had to run before finally winning her seat last fall. 51.36 percent, her skinny majority in the 2006 election.<\/p>\n To those scene-setters, add these: 10 cents, the per-gallon gas tax increase she voted for on March 24. 0.375 percent, the proposed bump in sales tax for natural resource preservation that she supports. And $433 million, the additional income tax the House proposes to collect from affluent Minnesotans in the next two years, and redistribute as property tax relief.<\/p>\n Wollschlager acknowledges she’s already hearing about it at her Rotary Club: All those tax increases!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read: A district is realizing they hooked up with Coyote Ugly. They are putting tabasco sauce on their shoulder.<\/p>\n Sturdevant polishes the turd:<\/p>\n She demonstrated a body-language metaphor for risk-taking that she was planning for a presentation to a group of sixth-grade girls. She stood evenly on one foot, while playfully twirling the other. Standing on two feet would be more secure, but immobilizing. Elevating both feet simultaneously would be gravitationally ill advised. A one-footed stance nicely balances security and risk. That’s key to success, she said, in politics and in life.<\/p>\n Governing a state well requires a similar balancing act. Finding a defensible balance on taxing and spending seemed last week to be a theme for House DFLers…They showed no inclination to rush as they looked for positions to assume in the middle, between the Senate and the governor, where they believe their 29 first-term members can stand on at least one political leg.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One wonders if even Sturdevant believes this BS. I mean, she’s just pointed out that Wollschlager is taking flak from Mainstreet.<\/p>\n I suppose “finding a defensible balance” is the new “circling the wagons against an electorate that is gushing blood from its gnawed biceps”<\/p>\n She’s well aware that veto threats hang over the bills she’s supporting, and that she may come home with little to show for her political risks. But she’d rather keep twirling one foot than standing pat. “Part of being a politician is you have to be optimistic,” she said. That’s part of being a good one, anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Where “Good” equals ensuring that government – every wasteful, cash-guzzling nook and cranny in it – is fed, first and best.<\/p>\n Look for more careful spin-doctoring from Sturdevant, as the electorate in many of these right-leaning districts (you hear me, all of you who voted Phil Krinkie out of office?) silently wonder if they have a bone saw in their wadded underwear…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last November’s election was, in many parts of Minnesota, like a drunken night out when you’ve been having a rough time with your significant other. You’re out on the town. You’ve had a bit too much to drink. You’re feeling sorry for yourself. Along comes a flashy, attractive (after enough drinks) stranger who talks a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","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=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}enabler<\/strike> DFL shill that she is, tries to explain away the drunken mistake of one Republican-leaning district<\/p>\n