I checked out the big headline on Twin Cities überleftyblog MNPublius this morning, and I started to worry:

Horner campaign gaining support of influential Republicans

…and read the lede…

Tom Horner is becoming a serious problem for Tom Emmer and the Republican party.

“Wow”, I thought.  “This could be serious business.  What “influential Republicans” have lined up behind the big-tax, big-spend, big-government Horner?

I read on, drum roll playing in my head:

•  Bryan Anderson, press secretary for former Rep. Gil Gutknecht
• Former Pawlenty communications director Dan Wolter

 To which I responded “Huh” and “Huh”?

Two press guys?  One for a Congressman who ran too far to the center and got beaten in 2006, and another that’s been out of the governor’s office for years?

Two guys who’ve never won an election?

Two guys who may have never even changed a single person in their lives to switch a vote?

One guy I’ve never, ever heard of, and another that I dealt with oh-so-briefly back during, if memory serves, George W. Bush’s first term?  Both of whom I suspect are known only to wonks and media people, are utterly unknown to anyone who doesn’t eat, drink and live politics?

It’s ludicrous, and I suspect even Jeff Rosenberg knows it. 

Here’s what’s happening:  faced with Emmer’s two-month head-start and very anti-establishment message, and knowing that at the end of that they’ll have to sell Minnesota either a national laughingstock or a woman whose entire platform is summed up “spend money like a crack whore with a stolen Platinum card”, the  entire regional Sorosphere (paid or not) is trying to repeat a couple of transparently bogus lines so many times that people start to believe them:

1. That Tom Emmer  – who is running on making government more sane and responsible and less expensive – is “extreme”.
2. That Tom Horner – big-government, big-tax, big-spending PR flak with establishment connections that’d make Chris Dodd blanche with shame, and who once slapped an “R” after his name, back when “R” in Minnesota meant “DFL with better suits – is an alternative.  But only for Republicans, mind you.
3. That the Emmer campaign is “scared” of Horner.  You see it in practically everything every leftyblogger in Minnesota writes about the subject.  What an amazing coincidence, huh?  (Aint’ so, by the way.  I am utterly unconnected with the Emmer campaign, but I know plenty of people who are.  Let’s just say they’re looking forward to the end of primaries, to say nothing of November).
4. That, indeed, every single thing that every single conservative/Republican blogger says or writes in any medium for any reason is motivated by “fear”. 

I’ll say this in their defense; if I was looking forward to having to support someone like Mark Dayton  or Margaret Anderson Kelliher against a Tom Emmer, I’d stick with repeating big lies in the hopes that gullible voters will believe it, too.   After all, it worked 18 months ago.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Campaign '10, Lefty "Alt"-Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.