{"id":88046,"date":"2024-08-06T11:44:32","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T16:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=88046"},"modified":"2024-08-06T12:34:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T17:34:54","slug":"88046","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=88046","title":{"rendered":"Pouncing On Governor Klink"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Barack Oba&#8230;er, Kamala Harris has picked Governor Klink to complete her ticket. The precedent was clear to anyone paying attention &#8211; Walz was governor because he&#8217;d made his deal with the devil.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Part of the deal appeared to be &#8220;making Flanagan appear to be a co-governor&#8221;; her name appeared below Walz&#8217;s on most campaign literature &#8211; but was longer, and usually colored such that her name &#8220;popped&#8221; harder than Walz&#8217;s.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>You can hear the Twin Cities media going <em>Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <\/em>all the way to Chicago. Those of us who live here and pay attention &#8211; a painfully small Venn diagram, as the 2022 election showed us &#8211; know that, as Scott Johnson says,\u00a0 Walz &#8220;casts the pale shadow of a man incapable of embarrassment and presents as an example of life imitating art, in this case the advertising art that created <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/-o8DSxl4oic\">Joe Isuzu<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Joe Isuzu Trust Me\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-o8DSxl4oic?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>For those of you in my audience who aren&#8217;t from MInnesota, let&#8217;s go through a little of Tim Walz&#8217;s political record.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Congress<\/strong>:\u00a0 Walz spent six terms as a US House rep from the 1st District &#8211; the largely rural southern tier of counties, at the time.\u00a0 He ran to the commonsensical center to defeat the <em>very <\/em>moderate Gil Gutknecht; like Colllin Peterson, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad and Earl Pomeroy, he made moderate noises for his rural base.\u00a0 He was a-rated by the NRA.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p>And when Governor Dayton ran up to his term (and, likely, health) limit in 2018, Walz took that record &#8211; sans his NRA rating, which he dumped like it was a &#8220;3&#8221; when a &#8220;5&#8221; was batting her eyes at him:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/img_2007.jpg\" width=\"1242\" height=\"2208\" \/><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>Emerging As A Puppet:\u00a0<\/strong>Tossing aside the NRA endorsement wasn&#8217;t enough to impress the DFL&#8217;s newly surgent &#8220;Progressive&#8221; wing, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=67013\">which pushed the overtly extreme Erin Murphy<\/a>, backed with the equally gleeful extremist Erin Maye Quade at a convention where even <em>Keith Ellison was too moderate<\/em> (they endorsed fire-breathing socialist Matt Pelikan over the, I say again, <em>too moderate <\/em>Keith Ellison.<\/p>\n<p>Not even picking Peggy Flanagan &#8211; literally the most extreme leftist in the Minnesota House <em>at that time <\/em>&#8211; was enough to slow the prog wave, although it was a start:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Becker-Finn-on-Walz-300x289.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"289\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Of course, DFL chair Ken Martin knew the electorate wasn&#8217;t quite as demented as the DFL activist base &#8211; outside the metro, anyway &#8211; and put his foot down, He pulled his backroom deals, put the DFL&#8217;s money behind Walz\/Flanagan, and dragged them over the line for a win in the 2018 DFL primary<strong>. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The precedent was clear to anyone paying attention &#8211; Walz was governor because he&#8217;d made his deal with the devil.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Part of the deal appeared to be &#8220;making Flanagan appear to be a co-governor&#8221;; her name appeared below Walz&#8217;s on most campaign literature &#8211; but was longer, and usually colored such that her name &#8220;popped&#8221; harder than Walz&#8217;s.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unremarkable:\u00a0 <\/strong>During those years, Walz&#8217;s most extreme urges were stymied by the GOP&#8217;s slim, often one-vote, majority in the Minnesota Senate.\u00a0 Not that he didn&#8217;t try &#8211; but the worst instincts of his &#8220;progressive&#8221; regime got tempered by Paul Gazelka&#8217;s canny politicking &#8211; one might call it &#8220;rear guard action&#8221;, either in the military sense, or (to some) the &#8220;covering one&#8217;s ass&#8221; sense.\u00a0 Take your pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Deluge:\u00a0 <\/strong>And then came Covid.<\/p>\n<p>Walz declared emergency power on Saint Patrick&#8217;s Day, 2020.\u00a0\u00a0 In an infamous press conference, he said Minnesota would have a bare minimum of 20,000 dead by July, <em>if everything went perfectly<\/em> &#8211; with 70,000 much more likely.\u00a0 He seized emergency power, and shut down schools, churches, most businesses&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;but\u00a0<em>not <\/em>big box stores, liquor stores, or &#8220;The World&#8217;s Largest Candy Store&#8221;, in Jordan, run by a major campaign contributor.\u00a0\u00a0 He declared broad swathes of Minnesota&#8217;s labor force &#8220;non-essential&#8221;.\u00a0 He instituted a &#8220;snitch line&#8221;, which countless &#8220;Karens&#8221; used to report their neighbors for offenses against the Covid regime.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He also repeated Andrew Cuomo&#8217;s catastrophic errors in handling long-term care of the elder;ly; the carnage in Minnesota&#8217;s nursing homes was epic, and inexcusable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the death toll lagged his predictions &#8211; by about an order of magnitude.\u00a0 And for a brief, weird moment, the media did the unthinkable &#8211; they <em>asked questions <\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Including at a presser on May 11 &#8211; where a reporter asked if the Department of Health department would release the code for the model that had made the initial, alarming preductions .<\/p>\n<p>And Walz&#8217;s spokesperson replied &#8220;No &#8211; because people might use it to get different results than we did&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Which, for those of us who passed ninth-grade science class, is <em>the opposite of science<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He held emergency power for seventeen months, for an emergency that in effect ended in the summer of 2020.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Floyd Riots<\/strong>:\u00a0 Walz&#8217;s performance during the George Floyd riots was perhaps more controversial &#8211; mostly notably when Mayor Frey of Minneapolis asked where the National Guard was, after 2-3 days of rioting, and the Governor, essentially, asked why the Mayor hadn&#8217;t put a cover sheet on his TPS report.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some in emergency management said he followed the plan (although the response was botched at many levels).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking as someone who lives in a neighborhood hit hard by the riots, I didn&#8217;t care then, and I don&#8217;t care now.\u00a0\u00a0 The Guard appeared in token numbers on the Friday after the riots came to Saint Paul &#8211; four days into the violence &#8211; and didn&#8217;t appear in numbers sufficient to tip the balance until Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Governor may have done his job &#8211; maybe.\u00a0 But he did it to the absolute bureaucratic minimum standard.\u00a0 The only two leaders in the whole affair were Chief Axtell, and then-president Trump, whose threat to send the 82nd Airborne may or may not have spurred actual action, but certainly seemed to, whether coincidentally or not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Flood:\u00a0 <\/strong>And then came the 2022 elections.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The DFL did what it does best &#8211; scare suburban women into thinking abortion (protected in the MN Constitution for years, now) was in imminent danger.\u00a0\u00a0 They rode that to seizing the &#8220;Trifecta&#8221; &#8211; control of both chambers of the Legislature.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It was a close fight &#8211; Keith Ellison and Julie Blaha nearly lost.\u00a0\u00a0 1,000 votes would have swung the Senate to the GOP; about 4,000 more, the House.\u00a0 Scott Jensen was a weak GOP candidate at the head of a decreasingly potent state GOP &#8211; but Walz only won by 8 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the DFL governed like they&#8217;d had a California-style mandate.<\/p>\n<p>And the results have been wretched.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll just brain-dump them here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He and the DFL squandered a $19 billion surplus.\u00a0 The &#8220;surplus&#8221; was structurally down to $2B as of the last forecast, but it&#8217;s going to be a deficit &#8211; <em>right after the election.\u00a0 <\/em>The money went to buying votes (&#8220;Feeding kids!&#8221;) and frau\/ \/<\/li>\n<li>The Metro DFL is a fraud machine, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars through the HHS and Education Departments.\u00a0 Faced with the news, Walz said &#8220;it&#8217;s not my job, man&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Much of the surplus also went to &#8220;fully funding education&#8221;.\u00a0 But school districts are still complaining about money, teachers are striking all over the place, and reading and math scores are still falling.\u00a0 Graduation rates improved, briefly &#8211; when they state removed most standards.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>While Minnesota&#8217;s population is said to be holding steady, it&#8217;s mostly because of immigration.\u00a0 Minnesotans in their productive years, or with fungible capital, are leaving and taking their businesses and their money.<\/li>\n<li>College students and young people are leaving Minnesota.\u00a0 That the reverse of the trend that obtained for decades before, when generations of young people &#8211; myself included &#8211; saw Minnesota as a destination.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>While he prattles about &#8220;One Minnesota&#8221;, he has &#8220;sorted&#8221; Minnesotans pretty relentlessly.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>He made MN a sanctuary State<\/li>\n<li>He pushed drivers licenses for illegals<\/li>\n<li>He drove making Minnesota a &#8220;trans refuge&#8221; &#8211; signing a law that mandated disregarding of child support decrees for children brought to the state by noncustodial parents to seek chemical and surgical neutering (alone among all causes).<\/li>\n<li>Crime in the metro is about double what it was ten years ago &#8211; and while it&#8217;s down a skosh from 2021, it&#8217;s waaaay ahead of pre-pandemic levels.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When they think they&#8217;re among friends, the left <a href=\"_wp_link_placeholder\" data-wplink-edit=\"true\">proudly recognizes Walz as one of their own<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Rule Of The Brittle:\u00a0 <\/strong>Walz succeeded Mark Dayton &#8211; who was a fairly opaque governor, largely because his health was so atrocious his rarely went to the office (unreported by the state&#8217;s compliant media)<\/p>\n<p>Walz is healthier &#8211; but far more opaque.\u00a0 Other than the stage-managed pressers during Covid, his only real communication is via his very active Twitter feed, which provides a constant deluge of photos of him cavorting about the state, usually in his &#8220;regular Joe&#8221; costume of a seed cap and overstretched T-shirt.\u00a0\u00a0 State Fair time is usually high season &#8211; as he and his entourage waddle about the fair, sucking down corn dogs as the cameras roll.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Which is probably a good thing &#8211; because he doesn&#8217;t handle questioning well.\u00a0\u00a0 And he appears to know it &#8211; the only debate in the 2022 cycle was on a feeble TV station in Rochester.\u00a0 And Scott Jensen got under his skin &#8211; which isn&#8217;t hard to do.\u00a0\u00a0 He has a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83123\">long record of losing his cool when people actually question him<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So his handlers allow none of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of questions:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why Walz?\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>I think most national GOP strategists thought Josh Shapiro would be the prime choice.\u00a0\u00a0 Pennsylvania may be the swingiest of the swing states; some day it&#8217;s the hinge pin of this election.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While Minnesota is a 50-50 state (four DFL and four GOP reps in Congress), the DFL turnout machine dominates state races against a MN GOP that makes the Vikings look like overachievers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>if the state is in play then things are very bad for the Democrat indeed.\u00a0 This doesn&#8217;t seem to track the situation.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll entertain thoughts in the comments.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[425,2,320],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-24","category-minnesota-politics","category-mndfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88046","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=88046"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88051,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88046\/revisions\/88051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}