In the 2000 Presidential election, it’s entirely possible that George W. Bush was put into office by Ralph Nader, who stole just enough votes from the radical fringe of the left to make it close enough for the freakish electoral college result we got.
And it’s very likely that we dodged the spectre of “Governor Hatch” because mushy liberal Dean Barkley squatted on enough moderate-left votes to keep Governor Pawlenty in office. Thank God.
The Dems would very much like to repay the favor. The Indyparty candidate this year, Tom Horner, is a former Republican – in the same way that Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger were Republicans.
Only worse.
And while the media has been strongly hinting to undecided conservative voters that “Horner is the moderate Republican”, Derek “Chief” Brigham at Freedom Dogs has been following the Horner candidacy with a two-part series (One and Two) running down Horner’s supporters.
Hint: with his years as a “PR consultant”, it’s mostly big-government special interests, including the MN Vikings (although as the Strib noted in an editorial last weekend, we dont’ knwo for sure – Horner’s firm “Himle and Horner” won’t release a client list), and big-government “Republicans” like Carlson. And the DFL, naturally.
Which means Horner is not only no more “conservative” or “fiscally responsible” than the most crack-whore-with-a-stolen-Gold-cardish DFLer, it also means Horner is a raft of conflicts of interests.
“But wait a minute, Berg – Emmer’s a lawyer! He might have represented people who might give him a conflict of interest if he’s elected!” Well, no – there are fairly strict rules for lawyers when it comes to conflict of interest; the rules are a lot less clear-cut for PR flaks.
And it doesn’t matter. Horner will get three percent of the vote, and the Independence Party will likely lose major-party status this year. The DFL and Media’s (ptr) only interest in the subject is to make sure that those three percent come more from Emmer than from one of the Three Stooges.
Flash over on his Centrisity blog did an interesting piece this morning about the rankings of Emmer versus the dems……and he was trailing behind all three and not that far ahead of the independent.
From the perspective of that poll, Emmer has more to worry about than the indy candidate.
While I wish you were right, I don’t think Horner will have trouble getting five percent given this year’s anti-establishment trend. I’d love to be rid of the IP, but I don’t see it happening.
Mitch that would be Peter Hutchinson, not Dean Barkley.
Jeff. Horner is the quintessential Establishment figure. The only way he could be seen as counter-establishment is either through ignorance (“he’s with Ventura’s party, duuuuude”) or disinformation (the media chanting that he’s “a moderate conservative”, which is palpable balderdash).
Er, yeah, DG – but you obviosly never read beneath the surface numbers, here or there.
Flash is using this exact poll – which is done by people allied with Horner and sympathetic as well to the DFL.
Other, more reputable, less-disputable polls have shown Emmer either within the margin of error or ahead of the DFLers.
And as I noted above, the poll oversampled Democrats pretty seriously.
When choosing between Flash (or any other leftyblog) and the info from conservative bloggers, always, always, always choose the conservatives.
It’ll be number one, Mitch. He’s “anti-establishment” in that he’s not with the DFL or GOP, and that alone will get him his five percent this year.
Horner Emmer Horner Emmer
Names sound similar enough for many of Horner’s 20% to have been mistaken Emmer support. I’d imagine if Emmer had as many commercials as Entenza the numbers would be much different.
The IP candidate will end up with over 5%. I agree with Jeff here that people fed up with both parties, mostly Democrats who just can’t pull the lever for a Republican will vote IP.
So far having the IP around though hasn’t hurt the GOP. We have three (s)ocialist parties the Green Party, The DFL, and the IP. All they do is split the socialist vote. To win the Republicans need to be clearly different and with the selection of Pawlenty and now Emmer they have been.
“Jeff Rosenberg Says: It’ll be number one, Mitch. He’s “anti-establishment” in that he’s not with the DFL or GOP, and that alone will get him his five percent this year.”
Not without the help of Mark Ritchie!
Good ol’ Flash…still in his knees for that first Soroscheque™.
Ha, ha, you know it’s hard to take your confidence in a decisive Emmer victory seriously when you guys have pretty much been shitting yourselves 3 times a day over Tom Horner. Have GOP voters realized they nominated the candidate of birthers and homo-killin’ Christian rock bands? (Answer: Yes) Also: citing a 6 week old poll taken in the afterglow of a post-convention bounce doesn’t strengthen your case.
Again with the really, really stupid lefty meme of calling every form of communicaiton “fear”.
As to the other tripe – I pretty well shredded that last week.
The poll about voter ID is about two weeks old.
homo-killin’ Christian rock bands
Meme in StP is assisting the rest of the MN leftists in Goebbelsing that one to death.
New verbs are kewl.