Moe Lane

Normally the collective scorn of the blogosphere would be focused like a laser on his… Bidenesque… statement that Senator Stuart Smalley of Minnesota* was a “leading legal scholar.”  As it is, everybody’s all Oh, yeah, Joe Biden opened his mouth and stupidity came out.  Again.  Which is not great, but it’s not actually driving the news.  On the other hand, one presumes that Vice President talks because, somewhere in the recesses of his own private universe, he clutched to belief that doing so will still help his friends?  Somehow?

On the gripping hand, this is possibly the first time in months that Al Franken was actually in the news, even in passing…

Moe Lane

*Also: Fox Nation using that picture for Al Franken was so subtly nasty that I completely missed it at first.

On a practical level, there’s not much call for Minnesota’s Seventh district to be represented by a Democrat; it trends Republican, and its current faux-moderate representative Collin Peterson is best known for sneering “Twenty-five percent of my people believe the Pentagon and Rumsfeld were responsible for taking the twin towers down… That’s why I don’t do town meetings.” Not incidentally, 2010 was also Peterson’s worse showing in an election since 1994, and state Senator Gretchen Hoffman is one of the Republicans vying to make sure that his next showing is even worse.  We talked with Gretchen this afternoon:

Gretchen’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

The word is that the Minnesota Republican party is going to approach Tim Pawlenty to challenge freshman Democrat Amy Klobuchar; which is something that Ed Morrissey of Hot Air and Erick Erickson of RedState would likely get behind.  And myself, for that matter; like Erick, I respect that Pawlenty knew when to make a clean break of things.  And I think that I am correct in thinking that Ed & Erick would agree with me that replacing Klobuchar – who, after all, supported the ‘stimulus,’ cap-and-trade*, & Obamacare – with Pawlenty would be a definite step up for both Minnesota and the nation.  I mean, I hear that Klobuchar is supposed to be personable and everything, but since when did that become an adequate substitute for voting not-stupidly?

I also note with some interest that Tim Pawlenty’s site is not yet reflecting the change in his campaign’s status; for that matter, there’s been no rumors on what’s happening to Pawlenty’s staff.  Neither is precisely predictive of everything, but there are some heavy hitters in the political world working for Pawlenty.  You’d expect to hear more about what they were planning to do, even this early.

Moe Lane

*And unlike Pawlenty, Klobuchar declines to learn better.

The formal capitulation took place yesterday, and signals an end to Gov. Dayton’s ill-conceived, ill-timed, and ill-executed attempt to dominate the Minnesota legislature in the same way that predecessor Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R, MN) did during his term in office.  The very short version, for those not following along: Minnesota Republican legislators wanted a $34 billion dollar, two-year budget with no new taxes; Dayton wanted $3 billion in business-killing tax hikes.  Republicans told him no, and sent him a budget, which Dayton vetoed.  The Minnesota government shut down – which meant, among other things, that Minnesotans were in critical danger of running out of beer and not being allowed to fish.  Faced with such proven evidence of abject incompetence and idiocy on Dayton’s part, eventually the Governor was brought to heel like a whipped dog; his formal capitulation soon followed.  Final score: $35.7 billion over two years with no tax hikes – and legislators in Minnesota have to pretend that Gov. Dayton was not savagely politically beaten.  No, seriously… apparently this is supposed to be framed as being a ‘compromise.’

Interestingly enough, post-capitulation news articles on this don’t seem to mention Pawlenty nearly as much as they did, pre-capitulation.  Although that may just be a sort of terrible pity towards Dayton, who did turn out to be a very slender, and trivial to break, reed…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

Oh, this is entertaining.  The government shutdown in Minnesota is about to end not with a bang, but a whimper:

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton sent a letter Thursday to House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, saying he “reluctantly” agrees to accept the Republican budget proposal from June 30 if it will end the government shutdown .

Hey, Dayton can be as reluctant as he wants about being brought to heel. Just as long as he’s brought to heel. (more…)

Why else lie about the Minnesota bridge collapse?

Mr. Obama noted that the United States has been given a “D” grade for its infrastructure and said U.S. roads, sewers and bridges are “all deteriorating.” He added: “We cut transportation by another third and what’s going to happen to America? We’re just going to have potholes everywhere? We’re just gonna have bridges collapsing everywhere?”

While experts say America’s aging infrastructure is a significant problem, the bridge collapse in Minnesota, which killed 13 people, was found to have been caused primarily by a design flaw.

Admittedly, that’s about the only thing that the Democrats actually have on Tim Pawlenty, so I suppose that they think that they might as well try to milk the deaths of 13 people for partisan gain.  One has to have one’s priorities in order, after all – and there’s almost nothing more important to President Obama right now than getting re-elected*.

Via Hot Air and Jim Geraghty.

Moe Lane

*I refuse to believe that he’d do anything to hurt his kids.

…I can’t begin to imagine what it could possibly be.

Seriously, at this point in the game Governor Pawlenty’s my first choice: he’s got the right credentials (two-term Republican governor in a Blue State), there’s no scandal attached to him, his major problem policy-wise (cap-and-trade) is not really a game-breaker for me*, and he lacks drama.  I am done with drama, thank you.  I’m putting this in RedState’s diary section because the site itself is not endorsing a Tim Pawlenty run, of course; it’s far too early for that and we haven’t really made up our own minds, yet.

At any rate, the announcement will be at 3 PM EST, on Facebook.  Friend Tim Pawlenty to see it.  And I suspect that this site will be getting a major update soon.

(more…)

The Protestant being Dan Hall, who is a candidate for Minnesota State Senate – and as far as I can tell, an Evangelical pastor. Which is not the same as a Roman Catholic priest. This is kind of important, as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota apparently thinks that all Christian clergy look alike to them. The short version is that the below ad was mailed out to attack Hall, and in a fashion that completely misrepresents both Dan Hall and the Roman Catholic Church. the National Catholic Register calls this “The Most Anti-Catholic Political Ad You’ll Ever See,” and it’s hard to argue with that:

(more…)

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: Joel Demos has, by his own admission, a monster of a job ahead of him with regard to MN-05 (Keith Ellison’s district). We talked about his race today.

Joel’s site is here: and let me talk a bit tactically for a moment. The peculiarity of the MN-05 seat is that while Keith Ellison gets a lot of money for it, he also passes out that money to other Democrats as quickly as it comes in. There is nothing wrong with that, and I don’t want to even imply that there would be anything wrong with that; but Ellison had only 209K CoH at the end of the 2nd quarter of this year. He’s that low because he doesn’t expect to have to spend more than that; and Joel getting to even a significant portion of that kind of money will throw Ellison’s campaign off stride. That’s why I personally threw in twenty bucks from my own discretionary income, which is something that I never do idly. Sometimes you have to pony up, and this is I think one of those times.

So go for it.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, this is gratifyingly not 2012-related:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will miss a major Republican gathering next month of possible 2012 GOP presidential contenders and instead will attend a welcome home ceremony for troops returning from Iraq, a Pawlenty spokesman tells CNN.

The two-term Minnesota governor, who is considering a bid for his party’s presidential nomination in the next election, was scheduled to attend the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans.

[snip]

Instead of going to New Orleans, Pawlenty will appear at the April 10 welcome home ceremony for the Minnesota National Guard’s 34th Red Bull Infantry Division. The approximate 1,200 troops are finishing a long deployment to Iraq. Pawlenty was also at the unit’s sendoff.

I was contemplating going to SRLC myself, but my excuse for not going is much more prosaic: I can’t afford to. Which is life.

Anyway, as you may remember, I had a chance to utterly ignore time limits and ask him a couple of questions at CPAC; he’s stereotypically Minnesota Nice.  It’s also gratifying for this story about him picking greeting his state’s troops over a political meet-and-greeting to be not put out as a partisan political issue.

After all, that’s my job.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota was swinging through Bloggers’ Row there, so of course we had to chat. Nice guy; very centered.

I was trying to think of some way of saying that I’m sorry that my little bit of extra monopolization of the Governor’s time was an inconvenience to a couple of staffers (I know some of those people, after all) without saying I’m sorry for the monopolization itself (because I’m, well, not); but then I realized that all I had to do was just write that out. As a writing strategy, it seems… remarkably straightforward. I should try it more often.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

So much for ‘Minnesota Nice.’

…apparently, the negative fallout from going after actual Republican Senators was a bit much for the man, and of course he can’t just act like a mature federal legislator.  Al Franken, remember?

Anyway, via Drudge here’s the latest loss-of-control:

Franken invited [Sen. Bob] Corker to his office to discuss an op-ed that Corker penned in a Tennessee newspaper opposing an amendment Franken offered to a defense bill. The measure gave the employees of defense contractors who suffer rape or sexual assault at the workplace the right to sue in court.

The meeting quickly deteriorated when Franken began berating one of Corker’s aides, according to GOP aides familiar with the incident. Franken’s sally was so harsh that Corker told Franken to lay off his aide and direct the comments at him instead.

Franken’s tough approach came as a surprise because Corker scheduled the meeting to mend fences after Franken confronted him about the op-ed during an angry exchange on the Senate floor.

Franken also went out after another GOP staffer – female, of course – for the supposed crimes of Republican Senators. You almost have to feel bad for the decidedly junior Senator from Minnesota: after all, it’s been an entire year since the election, and he’s still just Al Franken.  And he’s starting to subconsciously grasp that putting the title ‘Senator’ in front of his name won’t change that.

Moe Lane

PS: In the unlikely chance that he ever reads this: make me respect you, Senator Smalley.

Crossposted to RedState.