I kid Iweejuns. I kid. I love you. Even though your state is flat, your peculiar odor can be smelled in Chicago, and like Minnesota you are one of the last bastions of absurdly complicated organizing: the caucus.
In today’s Washington Post, there is a great article about the people hired by Presidential campaigns to oversee their Iowa operations.
This sums up the process:
“Of the state’s 2 million registered voters, a hard-fought battle in either party typically brings out no more than 125,000 participants, who must show up at a specific time on a midwinter Monday evening and are expected to stay at least two hours. The process can drag on even longer, particularly on the Democratic side, where voters must disclose their candidate preference publicly and where complex rules for apportioning delegates can result in revotes.”
It is a really great article and is worth your time. And I promise there will be Minnesota content later today.
(
If you haven’t read it, see our first post on this) It’s the Republican party, they take their bloodsport seriously, this has to be juicier than just allegations in the Strib. For all of their misty-eyed commitment to Ronald Reagan they never pay attention to his commandment, nobody turns on a Republican faster than a Republican scorned.
ROUND 1
Evie “Ax-handle” Axdahl vs. Andy “Apple of My Mother’s Eye” Aplikowski
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When I read the awfully innocuous title “
Internal Complaints Roil State GOP Office”, I imagined reading the heartwarming story of
Mark Drake complaining to Ron Carey…
“Rooooooooooooooooon, Eric stole my piggybank again!”
Just your usual Leave It To Beaver hijinks.
It was way juicier.
Keep reading for all of the scandal, bickering, and fraud that you can handle on a Monday afternoon. More »« Less
Al Franken wrote a
guest piece for the Huffington Post this morning where he calls for the public financing of elections.
Let me select a totally random example: Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman (R-PHARMA). In the first fundraising quarter this year, he raised around $1.5 million. About a third of that came from PACs — tobacco, coal, insurance, etc. Over the course of his career, he’s taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Oil and Big Pharma. And, of course, he voted in favor of that horrible drug bill and that horrible energy bill…
But the sad truth is, if you can’t raise the money, you can’t make your case. That’s why I keep Kris [ed: his call enforcer, read the article] around. But forcing candidates to spend their time and energy dialing for dollars instead of engaging with citizens cheats candidates and voters alike.”
His point is well taken. With a net worth of +/- 5M dollars, Franken couldn’t even self finance a competitive House race (it feels kind of absurd to write that) let alone a Senate race that will see the candidates spend somewhere north of 20M dollars, not counting the GDP sized fortunes interest groups and the national parties will sink into the race.
The preeminent influence that money has in campaigns is a bipartisan problem, and any solutions that could help reinvigorate our Democracy should get an honest and fair shake by Republicans and Democrats.
One of the oft-repeated myths of the 2008 election cycle is Nahm Coleman’s ‘moderation.’ All you hear from the Republican echo-chamber in Minnesota is that he is a
moderate Republican. Not one of those scary Republicans.
The WaPo points out though that’s not really the case.
Fresh off winning election to the Senate in the fall of 2002, Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) entered the chamber as a staunch conservative, voting with a majority of his GOP colleagues nearly 94 percent of the time in the 108th Congress.
In 2005 and 2006, Coleman sided with a majority of Republicans on less than 85 percent of the votes he cast in the 109th Congress. Now, facing re-election in 2008 in a state that’s grown increasingly hostile to Republicans, Coleman is voting with his GOP colleagues just 79 percent of the time so far this year. (emphasis mine)
When Nahm Coleman tells you he’s a moderate it’s only when he’s trying to get re-elected. And you can’t even say he’s rallied around the standard when his team was down. Instead as fortunes have gotten worse for Republicans, Norm has run away screaming from the party. Minnesota doesn’t need to be represented by a quick change artist in the Senate. We need to be represented by someone who stands up for what they believe in.
I kid Iweejuns. I kid. I love you. Even though your state is flat, your peculiar odor can be smelled in Chicago, and like Minnesota you are one of the last bastions of absurdly complicated organizing: the caucus.
People Are Shouting
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