Today’s the big launch for True North.
We’re a blog.
Perhaps you’ve heard; there are 70 million blogs out there. You might be forgiven for asking: “Why another?”
The answer: because it’s needed.
Minnesota is a tough place to be a Republican; it’s tougher still to be a first-principles based, center-right conservative. We face a media and DFL machine that is huge, well-funded, and has insinuated over the past three or four generations into every corner of Minnesota life.
And yet for all of that, we – underfunded, working mostly as volunteers – have twice brought this state to the tipping point, from “purple” to the ragged brink of “red”. In five straight elections, from ’98 to ’06, Minnesota’s volunteers took on the paid, plutocrat-propped minions of the DFL on the streets, in the community centers, and finally at the polling places. And except for the national debacle of ’06, we gave MUCH better than we got. We turned “liberal” Minnesota into a swing state.
And it’s been a lot of work. Minnesota’s volunteers are tired. They’ve been asked a lot. But they’ve delivered.
Among those volunteers have been Minnesota’s center-right bloggers. Minnesota’s center-right has, since 2004, fostered a blog community that is the nation’s most vibrant, smart and influential.
And they’ve put in a lot of work. And they’re tired, too.
But it’s another season. And someone needs to do their bit to help focus those bloggers, that alternative media, those many many volunteers in precincts and wards across this state, to shake off the fatigue, and ride once more to the sound of the guns; like bagpiper Mike Millin leading Lord Lovat’s troops across Sword Beach on D-Day with the skirl of his highland pipes, someone’s gotta fly that flag and walk toward the fight , so that everyone else can see, grit their teeth, and follow along.
That’s why we started this blog. What makes us think that “True North” is guaranteed to succeed? Simple. It’s a blog. There are no guarantees. But we’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right people:
True North has a bunch of Minnesota’s finest center-right bloggers and other pundits. These are people who’ve waved Minnesota’s cultural barometer in the world’s face for years, now, and made the world listen. We have some people with INCREDIBLY good insights on board.We are living in a situation that is ripe for this type of blog. We face a huge-profile Senate race, one that will pit Hollywood (and Kenwood) against Main Street.
We are a Purple State with a governor that is a contender to go to Washington. We are going to be hosting a national convention (and a few thousand demonstrators in the bargain), which will put our state and our people on the world’s front pages. And the Minnesota House in the balance, as Minnesota wakes up from the ’06 election, sees what the DFL has tried to abscond with, and quietly tries to chew its arm off to avoid waking the Democrats up; we could flip the State House, and possibly the US House, back to the GOP.
The question isn’t “why do this blog”. The question is “could we do without it?” Hope you can join us. It’s going to be wildest year of our lives, so far.
(Cross-posted on True North)