“Action For Liberty” seems to have a pretty similar business model.\u00a0 The group is a byproduct of the Tea Party, and started out as a fairly run of the mill conservative group. <\/p>\n
But somewhere along the way, it started walking, talking and quacking like Minnesota Gun Rights.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The problem with the MNGOP, according to A4L, isn’t losing elections – it was “RINOs”.\u00a0\u00a0 A Republican In Name Only – the definition of which is any Republican, elected, appointed or hired, who’s ever had to try to get anything done with Democrats.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Remember the old Reagan saying – someone who agrees with you 70% isn’t your 30% enemy?\u00a0 To A4L, being a 90% friend makes you a 100% enemy.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Because “betrayal” sells.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
This has been the top story in intraparty politics this past few weeks.\u00a0 The last MNGOP State Central meeting elected a slate of leadership that are, if not A4L sympathizers, at least very amenable to rapprochement<\/em>.\u00a0 (I just used a French word.\u00a0 Maybe that makes me a RINO?)<\/p>\n Case in point:\u00a0 over the past few weeks, A4L has been attacking Republicans for voting for the Health and Human Services Omnibus bill, which includes a contribution to Medicaid, which pays for abortions.\u00a0 Abortion is bad.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Stipulated in advance – Omnibus bills need to be banned.\u00a0\u00a0 If we ever get a GOP trifecta, in fact, we need to demand it. <\/p>\n But that’s life.\u00a0 Omnibus bills are inevitably s**t sandwiches, full of “poison pills” to be lorded over the other party in the next election.\u00a0 <\/p>\n But in the case of the HHS omnibus bill, the problem would be the same if it were a clean single-subject bill;\u00a0 court decisions hamstring the state; the Medicaid money has\u00a0<\/em>to pay for abortions.\u00a0 States have no say in the matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Action For Liberty knows as well as you do that that’s a pretty abstruse fact, and not hard at all to spin as “BETRAYAL!”.\u00a0 <\/p>\n And so we’ve been feted\u00a0<\/em>(there’s another French word.\u00a0 Maybe I’m turning into David French?) with the absurdity of A4L calling solid conservatives like Mary Franson, Walter Hudson, Jim Nash and Elliot Engen “RINOs”.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And I’m gonna guess they’re going to call Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) “PLINOs” after this broadside:<\/p>\n I try to be “Switzerland” when it comes to intra-party politics – but if someone can make a case that Action For Liberty doesn’t run off of monetizing cynicism and ignorance, I’m doing to take some convincing. <\/p>\n Have your people call my people.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years – longer than just about anyone – I’ve been writing about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, a group from Iowa whose “business” model is to raise money on ignorance about gun control legislation.\u00a0 The usual cycle is a little like this:\u00a0 They raise a hysterical alarm about some piece of legislation that may or may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,72],"tags":[475],"class_list":["post-89627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-mngop","tag-a4l"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89628,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89627\/revisions\/89628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Image\"](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/Gq8ih1FWgAA8er0?format=jpg&name=900x900\")