A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of working with King, Rep. Laura Brod and Rep. Matt Dean on what essentially is a vision statement for Minnesota. The central theme to that document was essentially to get government out of the way so that Minnesota\u2019s entrepreneurs would unleash their creativity in creating a more prosperous Minnesota.<\/p>\n
That meant lowering taxes, shrinking the regulatory burden Minnesota puts on small businesses and keeping unfunded mandates to a minimum.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve known King long enough to know that he\u2019s a man of gravitas and a great public policymaker. When I look at Rep. Haws\u2019s record, what I see is a man who is a reactionary and a man who votes too often for status quo policies.<\/p>\n
Central Minnesota needs a visionary leader. The only man fitting that description is King Banaian. That\u2019s why we must elect King this November to represent the residents of HD-15B in the Minnesota legislature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is, obviously, a major initiative among conservative bloggers.\u00a0 Knocking off an incumbent gravy-monger, even in a year that should have a big conservative tailwind, is never easy.\u00a0 We have to all pitch in and help out any way we can.<\/p>\n
In the interest of helping, I’m going to present King with ten bits of campaign advice that should, with any luck, smooth his path to Saint Paul:<\/p>\n
10. Find a winning message, repeat it relentlessly to every voter in Saint Cloud.\u00a0 <\/strong>That’s the easy part.\u00a0 Heck, every <\/em>blogger’s got a winning message for their candidate, right?<\/p>\n9. Easy on the Radiohead.<\/strong>\u00a0 Seriously.<\/p>\n8. Find a snappier way to explain “The Austrian School” to the layperson.<\/strong>\u00a0 Perhaps given you’re in Saint Cloud, “The Oktoberfest<\/em> School” would be a good start.<\/p>\n7<\/strong>. Get a couple of barrels of that Armenian brandy, and apply, er, liberally throughout the district.<\/strong>\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Yummy.\u00a0 That was some good breakfast brandy.<\/p>\n6. Carry the NARN tradition of the Speed Round to candidate debates.<\/strong>\u00a0 Hilarity will ensue. Hilarity means votes.\u00a0 Maybe.<\/p>\n5.\u00a0Don’t even think about using Joy Division to intro your stump speeches.<\/strong>\u00a0 Dude.<\/p>\n4. Go for the gutter.<\/strong>\u00a0 Counterintuitive?\u00a0 Work with me, here.\u00a0 You know how one classic bit of Radio 101 advice is “smile as you talk – it helps your voice?”\u00a0 Same deal here.\u00a0 Most politicians are frighteningly uninformed and inarticulate. You have to drag <\/em>them into some semblance of sounding literate.\u00a0 That’s never been KB’s problem.\u00a0 Quite the opposite; he can actually explain <\/em>how fed policy works.\u00a0 And if he doesn’t work to pull his level of discourse toward a more general audience level, he’s going to get 100% turnout among wonks.\u00a0 Between the economic-wonk base of knowledge and the mental pull toward the ‘Bottom”, everything should even out about right.<\/p>\n3.\u00a0<\/strong> Ixnay on the Oxsay.<\/strong>\u00a0 This is Twins country. Just saying.\u00a0<\/p>\n2. Think of a snappy name for your lit drop.<\/strong>\u00a0 I’m thinking “The Caucusus Caucus”.\u00a0 You’re welcome.<\/p>\n1.<\/strong> Enlist a couple of liberal whackadoodles to start the “Dump Banaian” blog.<\/strong>\u00a0 We all know that it was the doop-di-doos that gave Michele Bachmann her margin of victory in 2008.\u00a0 Every point counts.\u00a0 You’re an economist with Eastern European ties; perhaps you could pull some surreptitious strings and get George Soros to pony up for it.<\/p>\nThere y’go, KB.\u00a0 Go to it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The big news among conservative bloggers in Minnesota this past week is that one of our own, my NARN colleague and longtime friend King Banaian, is running for the Minnesota House in District 15B.\u00a0 Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring compares Haws’ record with Banaian’s game: A couple of years ago, I had the privilege […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,2,72,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-minnesota-politics","category-mngop","category-narn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9382","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=9382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9384,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9382\/revisions\/9384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}