True North

Dave Mindeman writes the leftybot blog MNpACT!. And he - like Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman - misses the good ol’ days, when “Republicans” were nothing but Tics with better haircuts.

He’d also seem to have bought, whole hog, into the Barack Obama-via-Daily-Kos school of political rhetoric, in a post that combines Obama’s substance-free noodling with the Kossack penchant for broad insults.

Rep. Kathy Tingelstad, R-Andover has committed the ultimate crime against the Minnesota conservative base. She has rational thoughts.

Some background for political non-junkies in the audience; Kathy Tingelstad was one of the Republicans who voted for the DFL’s 6-plus billion dollar Mass Transit Subsidy “Transportation” bill. She is also one of the two that is reputed to be pondering working with the DFL to try to override the Governor’s veto of this pork-barrel monstrosity.

In retaliation, her district’s Republican convention declined to endorse her at their convention this past weekend. The District 49B Republican Party - acting in their capacity as the people who decide who will represent the party and its’ interests in the November election, committed the radical act of wanting Republicans to act like Republicans.

One presumes that Mr. Mindeman, having declared “support for the pork-barrel bill” to be “rational thought”, will eventually tell us how opposing the bill is “irrational”.

To fail to do so would be Obama-esque. Or Kos-like. One of the two.

She has the audacity to look for solutions.

Or was it “The audacity of hope?” Or some similar meaningless catch phrase?

To feel that her district needs actual help and not more delays. She has the unmitigated gall to vote as an individual and not as a collective, mindless, partisan gang of naysayers.

Score one for “meaningless catch phrase”.

The nerve.

With reasoning skills like this, it’s not hard to see why Minnesota’s left-of-center bloggers, as a community, are a national laughingstock.

Tingelstad voted - which is what she was free to do.

Her district GOP convention responded - as they are free to do as well. As, indeed, is the purpose of party conventions! To do party business!

It is obvious that she needs to be punished. District 49B activists are willing to oblige. No endorsement for you, until you repent!

Maybe the GOP in District 49B has some unusual insight into the voters of their district.

Being as they are, to a person, voters in District 49B, that might actually stand to reason!

Obviously, it is a different reading than Rep. Tingelstad has been getting.

Here’s Mindeman’s problem - and to be fair to him, it’s the same problem that everyone in the DFL from Brian Melendez to Lori Sturdevant has; they want Republicans to do the DFL’s work for them. To magically deduce the “will of the district’s voters” first and foremost, before (or instead of) actually acting like a political party…

…and act on that bit of clairvoyance. So the DFL doesn’t have to.

Of course, I’ve not noticed the DFL doing the same; although most Minnesotans oppose unrestricted abortion, for example, we’ve not seen the DFL do what Melendez/Sturdevant/Mindeman would have the GOP do - forget that they’re a political party!

Because in the special little world of the likes of Sturdevant and Nick Coleman and Dave Mindeman, only the DFL gets to act like out of partisan interest!

When she announced her re-election bid in 2006, it stated:

However, what she’s best known for is being the leading advocate in the Legislature for the Northstar Commuter Rail project. This year, the legislature approved $60 million for Northstar, the final state contribution to the rail project, which will begin service through Coon Rapids in 2009.

Heretic!

She actually wants to bring District 49B into the 21st Century.

How can the GOP stand for such forward thinking, rational ideas?

They can’t.

DISCLOSURE: I don’t necessarily actually oppose the Northstar, either.

But if the threshold for “21st Century Rationality” is “unblinking, unquestioning support for a 19th century transportation system that systematically shorts our road and bridge infrastructure”, I think I’m starting to understand where Mindeman’s myopia Obama-esque paucity of actual substance comes from; it’s only in the absence of actual thought that it makes any sense.

What is the threshold to be considered “rational”? In Dave Mindeman’s world, it’d seem to be “following the DFL line, even if you’re a Republican. Nya nya nya”, and not a whole lot more. To be fair to Mindeman, there could be more to his point of view. To be realistic, there’s no evidence of it in this post.

I add emphasis in this next bit:

So, they must punish this problem solver. They must set an example, so that any other rational and clear headed thinkers can be chastised back into the program, and become the partisan automatons they were endorsed to be.

“Partisan” and “Party” come from the same root! It was a party convention!

The voters of District 49B be damned.

Pardon me. I need to take an ibuprofin.

One wonders why Mindeman wrote that last line.

Does he really not understand the function of political parties? I suppose if your entire point of view is based on having always been the party in power - in conflating the party and the state in ones’ cognitive model of government - which is common in places like China and the USSR and Minneapolis - it’s understandable (albeit kinda disturbing).

Does he merely assume his readers don’t know any better? I suppose if Dave Mindeman’s only goal is to push DFL orthodoxy, it’d be a convenient assumption.

Or, either way, does he just not know that the voters have their say?

In November?

Not March?

* Pardon the Kos-like “Stupid Headline” (Copyright 2001 Daily Kos Internationale). It seemed appropriate. And I’m all about priopriety.

Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark.