Finally the DFL has won the governorship and both houses. We should be replacing the Republicans at every level of government as soon as we can. We know the governance of Republicans is bad to fulfill their own preconceptions. Then why is Republican high-donor Dennis Nguyen even being considered for the Board of Regents?
Open Secrets has Dennis Nguyen contributing $15,000 to Republicans. More than I could ever afford.
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Brace yourselves for the GET OFF MY LAWN rebranding
As everyone knows, the Republican Party (aka the Party Of No, aka The Tea Party, aka Party of Legitimate Rape, aka The Birthers, aka the Climate Change Deniers, aka the Ignorance Caucus) has image problems.
So who better to call upon than the grumpy, out-of-touch Rep. John Kline (R-MN). Kline is going to help improve the GOP’s image on education.
Seriously … don’t laugh.
Rep. John Kline will land in the national spotlight this month as he leads a congressional hearing on school violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that left 26 people dead in Connecticut.It’s the first hint of the pivotal role Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, will play in the Republican Party’s effort to redefine itself after the electoral losses of 2012.
Since the start of President Obama’s second term, influential Republicans have been crafting an education- and jobs-centered agenda they hope will help win over a broader base of Americans.
Besides school safety, Kline also will lead the GOP push on issues party leaders hope will make them more relevant to minority and middle-class voters: private-school vouchers for children from lower-income families, college affordability and workforce training tailored to in-demand jobs.
Kline knows as much about education as I know about astrophysics. But the former Marine knows what his donors want him to say. Yes, that’s the for-profit colleges and the banks that rip off far too many people seeking higher education.
As for image, Kline’s staff calls the cops any time a Democrat shows up his offices. In other words, he’s the prototypical Get Off My Lawn Republican.
The staffers he hires are notoriously rude. Campaign Manager Mike Osskopp went to a DFL event and yelled racist insults at DFLers as they arrived.
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… and all but guarantees the DFL keeps this seat
Allen Quist won the Minnesota Republican Party endorsement in the 19A special election. He beat Jim Gohlgart and Joel Brinker. This special election was called because DFLer Terry Morrow resigned to take a job in Chicago.
The Unintentional Master of Unintentional Comedy beat out to relative unknown candidates and will face a yet-to-be-determined DFLer in the February 12 special election.
When the first round of ballots was counted, there was no contest, the Mankato Free Press and New Ulm Journal report. Allen Quist, who last held public office in the 1980s, was endorsed by the scant dozens of delegates who turned up last night in an abandoned movie theater in Mankato.
(Bluestem Prairie)
Quist will now be able to unleash the Lion of Free Enterprise upon the unsuspecting voters of northern Mankato and St. Peter.
Quist cited his campaign orgnization and fundraising ability as reasons the dozens of delegates ought to endorse him. There’s only one problem with this claim. He isn’t very good at either.
He mostly self-funded his failed run for Congress and:
As his epic fail of a campaign totters towards its inevitable conclusion, the unintentional master of unintentional humor strikes again.Allen Quist held a campaign event in Worthington, MN yesterday. He’s the Republican endorsed candidate challenging Rep. Tim Walz (DFL) to represent Minnesota’s First Congressional District. This event exemplifies why Quist is failing as a candidate and will lose (and probably pretty badly) to Walz.
- Quist, who owns and operates an 800-acre farm in Nicollet County and is a former professor at Bethany Lutheran College, is also a former three-term state legislator. He is challenging current 1st District U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, a Democrat who is seeking his fourth term in Washington.
Speaking before a group of five people – not counting two representatives from the media and his wife, Julie – Quist described himself as a man who knows how to run successful business and how to help get Washington on the right track.
[my emphasis]
(Worthington Daily Globe)
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Please please please please please please please?
Former Rep. Keith Downey threw his hat into the ring to replace Pat “Enron Accounting” Shortridge as the Chair of the Minnesota Republican Party.
I whole-heartedly endorse Downey. He lost his bid to move up from the House to the Senate in 2012 plus he was the chair of Kurt “Mister Bills” Bills disastrously-run Senate campaign against Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
The first reason I think Downey would make a great MNGOP Chair is his lack of political acuity and strategic thinking is what passes as “great thinking” in the modern Republican party. The “brain donors trust” over at the local conservative blog Let Freedom Ring think he’s great:
It’s bound to sound corny that Rep. Downey is one of the great thinkers of the GOP and the conservative movement. If Rep. Downey is elected to be the next chairman of the Minnesota GOP, the GOP’s message discipline would significantly improve. Keith Downey is a great conservative who knows why he believes what he believes.
But Amy Koch’s lover, Michael Brodkorb, provides the best reason why Downey really ought to be the next MNGOP Chair:
It’s widely accepted that Downey has his eyes on higher office – he didn’t rule out running for governor in 2014, while he was campaigning for the state senate in 2012. Becoming chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota is not stepping stone to run for higher office and based on the “strategery” Downey provided to Bills’ campaign, it’s clear Republicans in Minnesota haven’t learned many lessons from the 2012 elections. For Republicans who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for 2014 to be a great year, Downey becoming chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota isn’t a good start.Republicans have seen Downey’s leadership and political judgement at the helm of a statewide campaign and it was a disaster. Turning the keys to a major political party to him is allowing history to be repeated.
[my emphasis]
2012 was great for the DFL and I’d like it to happen again.
ENDORSE DOWNEY!
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| David Hann | Kurt Daudt |
Can we have more please?
In the fallout to the resounding electoral defeat, the Minnesota Republican Party is in shambles.
They’re nearly bankrupt and donors haven’t been giving. The brains that won them majorities in both legislative houses was ousted over a sex scandal. The Photo ID and Marriage Amendments that were supposed to excite the base and protect their majorities, failed utterly. The amendments galvanized the left and ensured the MNGOP’s electoral demise.
You would think the MNGOP leadership would do some soul-searching, reevaluate and come back with a new plan and stream-lined messaging. If you thought that, you’d be wrong.
Thankfully, it’ll just be more of the same:
Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, incoming Senate minority leader, said that while they lost the election, “philosophically, we don’t think our ideas are wrong.” Republicans’ task, he said, is doing “a better job of communicating those ideas.”That includes holding down taxes and spending, promoting free-market solutions in health care and other areas, making the state more business-friendly and retaining the traditional legal definition of marriage.
Sen. Hann is going to be the gift that keeps on giving. Unless he joins Steve Gottwalt and resigns over his conflict of interest scandal.
“We like the opportunities that we’re going to have to point out the differences,” said Rep. Kurt Daudt, the incoming House Republican leader, who lives in rural Isanti County. “We think you’re going to see stark contrasts between what liberal Democrats believe and what conservatives believe.”
Yup. Daudt wants to explain how all the policies that got us into our current mess are better for Minnesota than responsible governing.
With leadership like this, the 2014 elections should be good for the DFL.
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| Allen Quist | Jim Golgart | Joel Brinker |
The Unintentional Master of Unintentional Comedy, Allen Quist, will not have an easy path back into politics. I assumed Quist would ride of into the political sunset after his embarrassing campaign for Congress. But Quist is a perennial, sprouting anew every political season to run for something.
Quist sees DFLer Terry Morrow’s resigning from the legislature to take a job in Chicago as a great opportunity to finally win a race.
Two other Republicans have the temerity to challenge The Master for the 19A MNGOP endorsement. The nerve. The gall.
Jim Golgart, of St. Peter, a veteran and officer with the Veterans Affairs Office, announced Thursday he would seek the Republican endorsement. He is the first Republican candidate to officially enter the race. The other potential candidate is Allen Quist who unsuccessfully ran for Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District in 2012.Golgart said his platform would focus demanding the completion of a four-lane expansion of Highway 14 and working to increase the number of jobs in Minnesota, with a special focus on improving employment opportunities for veterans.
He said he has no interest in running on any social issues for the special election nor pushing any if elected.
(New Ulm Journal)
What? The Unintentional Master of Unintentional Comedy will not let such moderation pass. Plus, I’m sure the delegates at the convention won’t either.
Then there’s Joel Brinker. He’s a former St. Peter City Council Member (1999-2006).
His interest in politics started in 1992 with the Perot Campaign. From there, seeing that the only way to make a difference was to get involved, he started looking for opportunities to serve. Constituents have a high priority for Brinker sometimes over party.Brinker also believes that the best ideas come from talking things out. Communications should always be first and foremost in decision-making, especially when the lives and livelihoods of others are involved.
(Bluestem Prairie)
These two sound awfully moderate compared to Quist. Will the delegates overlook Quist anti-charisma and glaring inability to win any races since he lost to Arne Carlson in 1994? Will they prefer his extremist right wing agenda over two moderates?
We’ll find out this Thursday when they hold their special election MNGOP convention.
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To unsuccessfully distract Minnesota voters from their dastardly vote suppression plans, Minnesota Republicans shrieked about the threat of vote fraud. Of course, they couldn’t point to any but the theoretical possibility sure frightened them.
Well, here are two examples you may not want to cite.
There were two cases of vote fraud that occurred during the 2012 election. And they’ll be charged with a felony.
But here’s the kicker: They both had valid Minnesota identification! Voter ID wouldn’t have prevented their crime.
Two permanent resident, non-citizens registered to vote and voted. And they got busted.
The articles spurred a couple of questions. What were the “Minnesota identification cards” the brothers held? Who checks the registration forms? Finally, if the brothers had not checked the box indicating that they weren’t citizens, would they have been caught? Would those people registering before elections have their status reviewed?Bluestem obtained copies of the criminal complaints from the Mower County Courthouse. Both complaints (50-CR-12-2859 and 50-CR-12-2860) included Defendant Fact Sheets listing the men’s “Minnesota identification cards.” After some checking, we confirmed that these are valid drivers’ licenses, legally obtained (lawful permanent residents, while not citizens, can obtain licenses).
Note that while non-citizens, the men are authorized to live and work in the United States, not the undocumented resident that Minnesota Majority’s Dan McGrath represented in a cartoon person in a mariachi costume in order to frighten the base.
Thus, this wasn’t a case that requiring a state-issued photo ID to vote would have solved, unless the election officials paid more attention than they did under current law to both the registration form–and the licenses’ status information. The men had valid, legal, state-issued photo id–what they didn’t have in order to be eligible to vote was citizen status.
(Bluestem Prairie)
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Republicans had a nationwide effort to make it more difficult to vote. Their belief is that when fewer people turn out to vote, Republican candidates do better.
In the aftermath of the election, Republican operatives in Florida are speaking out.
A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.
Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.
“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”
(Palm Beach Post)
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Some of you may recall that Sen. David Thompson (R-Lakeville) worked for the Republican Party of Minnesota while he ran for office. The DFL filed an ethics complaint. It turns out it is legal to run for office in Minnesota while getting paid by a political party.
Of course, the only time the MNGOP is concerned with ethics is if they think they’ve busted the DFL for doing something untoward. Ethics for Thee, but not for Me could be their motto.
The reason I bring this up is that Thompson still hasn’t been paid for running for office.
Over at LeftMN, Steve Timmer writes about the decision of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board on a complaint Common Cause of Minnesota filed against the Republican Party and state senator Dave Thompson. From LeftMN:
- This is, of course, a problem, not only for regulators and law enforcement, but also for members and contributors to the MNGOP. Well, and to anybody else concerned about what the MNGOP was buying with its money – if, indeed, anything. Among those who might be concerned are probably the fifteen counties, four law firms, a printing company and a couple of PR firms that the MNGOP stiffed in 2010 (scroll down to the very last page of the fourth restatement of the 2010 report to the CFB dated July 25, 2012).
But Tony Sutton was able to find the money to pay Dave. [emphasis added]
Sadly, no. Thompson’s fees are listed as debts on federal reports at the close of 2010 and beyond, though not state reports to which Timmer directs his readers (which was rather one of the points of the Common Cause complaint after all).
(Bluestem Prairie)
But here’s the deal. Shouldn’t the two filings match? Why is there a discrepancy? Is it because the MNGOP’s campaign filings are an utter disaster?
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Remember how Republican candidates this past election lauded the Real Americans they’d meet in some podunk Republican stronghold? Remember how this implied that all of us Americans who live on the West Coast or in cities or in the North East of the US weren’t Real Americans?
I found this tweet from Minnesotans for Marriage campaign manager Andy Parrish interesting:
#voteyes for marriage won in 74/87 counties in Minnesota #StribPol #mnleg
— Andy Parrish (@AndyParrishMN) November 9, 2012
This fits the Fox News Republican Tea Party narrative that only the God-fearing, immigrant hating, gay hating, Obama haters are real Americans. The demographic problem with this narrative is a majority of Americans now live in metropolitan areas.
But I think Parrish’s quip get to something deeper. The racist, hate-filled right wing vision of his America was mostly destroyed last Tuesday. Gay Marriage is the law in 3 more states. Obama won despite a weak economy and the bazillions of dollars spent by SuperPACs to buy this election for Mitt Romney. A diarist at Daily Kos nailed it>:
Let me share this brief back and forth I had today in one of the forums I frequent, with a severely conservative, Christian man I assume from the context of previous postings, to be in the 50-60 year old range. Let’s call him Bob and it all started with this question:
- Bob – Is it America voting for President, or immigrants? Are immigrants really American, or just trying to be American?
Vent – America is immigrants. Without immigrants, there is no America, there are no Founding Fathers, there is no Constitution. Nuff said!
Bob – Obviously the exemplary argument.
Vent – Sorry if you hate what America is but those are the facts. The only “real” American’s are Native Americans. Everyone else is either an immigrant, a descendent of immigrants or a descendent of slavery.
Bob – It looks like you are the one that hates America for what it is, or was, or whatever. There is evidence that white people were in America prior to the “Native” Americans. The cave in Utah had tall red headed people in them, killed by “Natives”. The magical land bridge the “Natives” crossed from Russia, into Alaska, and etc….
At this point I realized we’d run out of tin foil on aisle 4 and as I walked away from the computer I laughed thinking, “this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” But then my laughter turned to confusion and then sadness as I began to process what he was really trying to say to me. I obviously understood he was in mourning over the loss but as I dwelled on this brief exchange, I began to realize that it’s about much more than his candidate simply not winning and far beyond any political party. This was much deeper than all of that.
What Bob had really lost in this election was his vision of America. The vision that had been preserved since before he was born and the vision he grew up fighting to preserve. Now, we’re not talking about a “Romney” vision of America where it’s about making the rich, richer with more trickle down economics. No, he was talking about an America of, by and for white people. With the re-election of Barack Obama, he saw his vision of America crumble for good and it’s the same vision that all of conservatism saw crumble.
The depths of depression and soul searching going on in the GOP is rooted in that thinking. For them it’s the same. It’s not just losing an election. This election was special. This election was for all the marbles but not because they want to cut spending or balance the budget for fear of rising debt. No, that’s just a smoke screen for the agenda that has survived for way to long.
[my emphasis]
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