Looks Like They’re Gonna Need Another Powerful Liberal Sugardaddy
By Mitch Berg
It looks like it’ll be official: North Dakota governor John Hoeven is going to announce his candidacy to replace Byron Dorgan in about an hour.
Listen to the press conference at 6PM Central time here.
Ed and I interviewed Rob Port, who is the foremost political blogger in North Dakota, who correctly noted a nuance that escapes a lot of outside observers; while North Dakota is famously Republican, the state also has a mixed traditi0n in terms of spending; it has the nation’s only successful state bank and state mill; there’s a long prairie populist tradition, as well as some of the Scandinavian communitarian traditions that the state shares with Minnesota, that means the state government is a little more activist than many other Western states. As such, Hoeven is a more “Moderate” Republican on spending than some of his GOP counterparts. It’d be a mistake to call him a RINO; he’s probably slightly to the right of Norm Coleman and John McCain, and if elected he’ll be a big improvement over Dorgan, and vastly better than either of Minnesota’s senators.
Tune in!
January 11th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Not sure if this is a valid comparison or not, but liberal scandinavians in Minnesota have moved from communitarian to statists. While in North Dakota they haven’t gone that far. One feels they (individual citizens) should do things for the better good together. The other feels the state should do things for society.