Not For Turning
By Mitch Berg
If you’re a conservative in Minnesota, you’ve got friends moving elsewhere. I personally have friends, including some of the regulars here, who’ve moved or are planning to move to any of the less-insane states; the Dakotas, Tennessee, Texas, Republican northwest Wisconsin, and of course Florida – a state where expats from Minnesota are almost as big a cliche as New Yorkers.
Not me.
And not John Phelan of the Center of the American Experiment.
Phelan gives his three reasons. I agree with ’em all – and I’ve got one of my own to add:
I’m going to start at the end of the list:
Finally, and most importantly, Minnesota is still a wonderful place to live. Its scenery is beautiful, its weather varied (or challenging, depending on your view), and its people decent, none of which, of course, depends on high taxes. When you have something good it is worth fighting for even when you feel the odds are against you. Perhaps especially then.
I’m from North Dakota. The weather in southern Minnesota is like a 12 month vacation (at least since I got AC in my car and bedroom).
The larger point? I was here first.
Second, even while its economy splutters, crime rises, test scores fall, the lights go out, and residents flee in numbers not seen in at least three decades, Minnesota’s government is being lauded as an example by progressives around the country. NBC News, the Daily Beast, and the New York Times have all run pieces lately praising the state government and Gov. Walz in particular. It matters to the entire country that the sad truth about Minnesota gets out.
Because whether you live in Orono or Orlando, they are coming for you, like it or not. Might be next election cycle, it might be when your grandkids are married and having kids of their own, but they’re playiing the long game.
And here’s the big one (I’m adding emphasis):
First, the liberal grip on Minnesota is not as tight as it seems. In 2022, the DFL’s party unit took in nearly $24 million from all sources while the state Republican Party took in a paltry $1.3 million. Even so, and with the built-in advantage of a friendly media, the DFL took the state Senate by just one seat and that by just 321 votes. The DFL is governing like a party that just scored 60 percent of the vote, not because they did, but precisely because they didn’t, and they want to ram their agenda through before Minnesotans cotton on to what they’re up to.
Minnesota has eight congressional districts (for nine more years, anyway).
- Two (4 and 5) will be hard blue until some future apocalypse makes everyone a conservative.
- One (3) appears to have slid off the rais.
- Two (6 and 7) will never vote DFL again.
- Two (1 and 8) are getting redder by the year. If you’d told me 15 years ago I’d never say that about CD8, I’d have said you were nuts).
- One (CD2) might be redeemable.
That’s 4-4 – and with the right candidate in the right year, 5-3.
Yes, the DFL balllot-harvesting machine gives the DFL a huge lift with the metro vote – but if the legislature stays in play, that gives us gridlock. Not the eternal blue nightmare. And given how many Republicans stayed home last year, and how close the GOP candidates came in the Attorney General and State Auditor races, despair is premature.
They can’t overturn Roe again, after all.
And the DFL knows it.
The DFL’s awareness of this weakness is evident, too, in its attack on democracy by making it practically impossible for third parties to get on the ballot in Minnesota. Not a single reporter asked a single legislator a single question about this.
Last week, President Obama tweeted, “If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.” He is exactly right. Our state is about to move from the “fool around” to the “find out” stage of voting for ever higher taxes, ever higher government spending, and ever bigger government. Minnesota needs its conservatives now more than ever.
Which brings us to Reason #4. The fight is worth fighting.
My ancestry is half Viking and 1/4 lowland Scots white trash. We fight just to stay awake, ffs.
What the hell is there to do in this life but fight?
I was here first. I’m not going anywhere.
June 8th, 2023 at 11:55 am
they are coming for you
Exactly. Just look at that MinnPost article about some clueless DemoCommie moving out from Mpls to a suburb because the crime is so bad. DemoCommies hate taxes too, why wouldn’t they want to move from MN or NY to FL or TX; and bring their voting patterns with them?
June 8th, 2023 at 11:56 am
I’m one of the recent new Floridians that refers to themselves as a refugee from Minnesota. Blood pressure is down 150% since the move. Not paying the punitive MN tax is a big bonus. I admire your willingness to put up a fight, but I think it will be pointless. Watching MN from afar it seems that the crazy and stupid have been dramatically amplified. I have a feeling that those that stay will go down like Braveheart.
June 8th, 2023 at 12:04 pm
I’m not from Minnesota, and other than my M/C brothers I never really had any great friends there so when the smell of ass in the air became pervasive it was natural to move to be with my people. Also, I’d seen this movie 20 years before in Cali; it doesn’t end well. I won’t even travel to that fucking cesspool to visit my sisters.
But everyone needs a hill to die on, and it’s true the fight is nationwide. But for me, the most oppressive aspect of living up there was not the winter, not even the taxes; it was living among people I loathe. We lived in Oak Grove, St. Paul and finally Mendota Heights/W. St. Paul. And, as time went by I found myself growingly aware that I wouldn’t piss on most of the people I mingled with day to day, if they were on fire.
Sure, my taxes went down by more than 50% when I left, and yeah, I can ride my MC all year round here, but what makes us so happy is the people we meet every day. They’re our people. This is my state. This is our home. This is the hill we will quite literally fight and die on.
June 8th, 2023 at 12:19 pm
Understandable, Blade. I’d have the same problem with Oak Grove or Mendota Heights too. Once you get out of the metro area, it’s different.
June 8th, 2023 at 1:04 pm
Mendota is a shit hole, too. So is W. St Paul.
Oak Grove? Dunno, but the cornfields that surrounded my little hobby farm up there are now filled with shitty split level houses, and no trees.
We used to hunt pheasants and geese there. Sons learned to shoot there. All fucking gone.
June 8th, 2023 at 1:45 pm
We get it Mitch, you would rather fight on your knees than live on your feet. To each his own. Just yet another reminder, by staying and paying ever higher taxes, you are enabling DFL machine to tighten the noose around your neck. And if you think DFL will allow any district to turn, you are more of a Pollyanna than I thought and you must believe last election was the most fair and ethical, ever™!
June 8th, 2023 at 1:53 pm
jpa is right. They own the field, and will never, ever let it go. It’s not like you don’t have Colorado, Oregon, Washington state, California to use as educational models.
You 👏🏻cannot👏🏻 vote 👏🏻your 👏🏻way 👏🏻out👏🏻 of 👏🏻this. Period.
We’ll do better if our people gather together in states that are defensible.
June 8th, 2023 at 1:57 pm
you would rather fight on your knees than live on your feet
Sorry, but that doesn’t even make sense.
June 8th, 2023 at 2:06 pm
If the clan chieftains were inclined to fight to win, I might stay with them. I am not convinced they want to win bad enough.
I’m not interested in reading white papers issued by think tanks. I don’t need the problems explained, I understand the problems.
I’m not interested in rallying my neighbors to stand in line to vote, when I know the DFL will dump fake ballots wherever they need them to win and my side will shrug, telling me to vote harder next time.
I respect your principles, Mitch, but too many of your compatriots are willing to go along to get along, possibly write stern letters to the editor which will never get printed, and raise mild concerns in interviews as long as no one gets offended. That’s not going to win the state back.
June 8th, 2023 at 2:30 pm
The Scots lose all of their important battles, usually because they are betrayed by their leaders.
June 8th, 2023 at 3:36 pm
It strikes me that when I was young, the southern states were reliable Democratic votes, and California and Illinois had strong Republican parties. Now part of the change is, to be sure, generational change and demographic change, but another part of it is that people can indeed be persuaded that what they have is not what they actually want.
We do, per what Mr. Jones notes, need to communicate with voters in ways that the mass media would prefer we don’t–they’d like to be the only conduit for us and shut that conduit down–but I think it is yet possible.
June 8th, 2023 at 4:05 pm
Only tangentially related, but Target telling employees to buzz off doesn’t square with the supposedly glowing jobs report it. Because the jobs report is fake and gay and a lie. Like everything liberals do.
Here’s the explanation
https://balajis.com/p/too-fake-to-tell
June 8th, 2023 at 4:31 pm
The walls are breached, and the state is as lost as the Third Precinct. I’ll withdraw to another place to defend the walls there in the time I have left.
Phelan had some good points in his article. The comments on the article were even better, though, and more realistic.
June 8th, 2023 at 4:57 pm
jdm, it makes perfect sense if you read Catch 22. Find the passage about old man.
June 8th, 2023 at 5:40 pm
Bigman is there. Welcome.
June 8th, 2023 at 5:42 pm
Mitch is putting his faith in the likes of Mark Johnson and Kurt Daudt. lol
June 8th, 2023 at 5:50 pm
BTW, I have no idea who those douchebags are, but I know they’re douchebags.
June 8th, 2023 at 6:30 pm
Imagine all the ways you can rig elections if you have the state bureaucracies, the media, academia, and the ABA on your side. all you really have to do, in a 50-50 nation, is put a thumb on the scale. Find out why your voters aren’t turning out in the numbers required & address those issues. Wisconsin has a very red state house & senate, but all the statewide offices have fallen to the D’s — except for Ron Johnson, an incumbent senator who won reelection by a hair last November, and his opponent was a woke state assemblyman whose district was a hell hole in Milwaukee.
June 9th, 2023 at 7:39 am
I had reasons to leave besides the DFL kleptocracy running Minnesota: climate and a daughter living in North Carolina. As a boomer retiree on a fixed income, the high tax/minimal benefit ration stung me. People I had been glad to call friends were unavailable for conversation or previously happy activities (the zoomers call it ghosting). It struck me that being a Minnesota resident of a conservative mind set resembled being stuck in an abusive relationship. “Yah, you bet I sure love the summers here, we’ve got the Guthrie too, don’t ya know?” The abuser could have his way with me and I’d forgive, forget, and return to my suburban refuge, now growing smaller by the year, beset by new reports of carjackings, schools being run by the worst of the worst, an economic collapse we were told was mandated by science and just shut up if you had any criticisms. I’m not looking back, except to plan an annual return to see my other children and visit the State Fair until it too collapses under the weight of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
June 9th, 2023 at 7:56 am
You know golfdoc, North Carolina had some pretty drastic restrictions during the Covid dempanic. That’s because there is a leftist nitwit in the governors office, and not enough balls to go around among the Repub majority legislature.
I love NC. My office is actually in Huntersville, although I haven’t been there in 6 months or more.
But y’all are teetering on the edge of disaster, because the tide of degenerate leftists pouring down here from the North breaks on your shores first.
We’re in danger here in SC, too. But we’re holding on pretty good, and we make it as undesirable a place for scumbags leftists as we can.
https://www.postandcourier.com/spartanburg/news/i-85-confederate-flag-back-in-spartanburg-as-property-owners-file-appeal/article_8ee887c0-69d3-11ed-bccd-b764dac4d8f7.html
June 9th, 2023 at 8:41 am
Mitch, you’re a better man than i am. My husband and i left 2 years ago. The nice thing is, we take road trips and visit MN. Yeah we pay all the gas taxes, hotel taxes and labor taxes (I understand there is a new paid leave mandate), but don’t have to pay the income and property taxes.
I don’t know why metro Repubs don’t run on school choice and crime. I believe the administrative structure of the party is moribund. Maybe our side should pick a district or precinct in one of the cities and try out a few things. Just a thought.
June 9th, 2023 at 3:47 pm
“Maybe our side should pick a district or precinct in one of the cities and try out a few things. Just a thought.”
Exactly. Pick a target; freeze it and defeat it.
Alinsky was scum, but he knew his business.
The reason the Bud light campaign worked is, they were isolated. Then we moved on to Target.
One at a time.