Do dead Republican campaigns ever really die? Two walking dead Republican candidates have once more prompted observers to wonder just what might we need to deliver the double-tap necessary to stop these wretched committees in their tracks.
Despite gaining no ground in the just-finished recount--called for former Senator Mark Dayton in Democrat Dayton wins Minnesota Gov. recount-- Tom Emmer's gubernatorial aspirations continue. to haunt the living.
Editors are taking their shots. Reprinted in the Star Tribune, the moderate conservatives at The Economist write:
Minnesota's last recount, which began in 2008, was truly epic. Al Franken became the state's junior senator in July 2009, an extraordinary eight months after election day. This year's recount will determine who will be Minnesota's next governor. Whereas only a few hundred votes separated Franken and his rival, Norm Coleman, this year Mark Dayton is ahead of Tom Emmer by almost 9,000 votes. No sensible observer thinks that Emmer will win. But why let that get in the way of a good recount? . . .
Closer to home, Joe Spear at the Mankato Free Press muses in Recount fact and opinion:
All in all, I don't see the Emmer campaign getting much upside from all of this. They clearly angered at least one of the judges in this, when average citizens see the ballots that were challenged all over the state by the Emmer campaign (many not even close to being unclear who people were voting for and in some cases, a write vote was suggested as a way that a voter would be indentified), most people will not be happy taxpayer money was spent on these frivolous challenges.
Emmer did continue to reiterate his intention is not to delay the seating of the new government.
My experience in public relations is the more you insist you're not trying to do something, the less people believe you.
Stay tuned.
The dead, but still walking Emmer campaign isn't the only scary zombie-like hope moving around out there. Allen Quist has been spotted wandering across the prairies in Nicollet County.
Veteran zombieologists also have raised the question after seeing Quist post an entry to his campaign website, Tim Walz Supports Income Transfers from the U.S. to Other Countries.
An ultra-conservative who last held office in the early 1980s, Quist lost the Republican endorsement for the First Congressional District to Randy Demmer, who lost to Congressman Tim Walz in November. The post itself is clear evidence that Quist is looking for brains; it links legislation passed by the House in 2007 to statements about a United Nations conference now underway in Cancun.
This is not the bill Walz voted for. To prove that somehow the cap-and-trade bill would cost American families money, Quist cites a highly ideological source's analysis of the legislation:
The Heritage Foundation calculated that the Cap and Trade bill would cost the average U.S. family of four $6,800 per year in added energy costs while any positive effect on the environment would be barely measurable at best.
This is pure malarky. Polifacts notes that the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation's estimate comes not for energy costs, but from its estimation of the cost to the economy of the legislation. The non-partisan CBO's study found the cost to be much lower--and that many consumers could actually save energy costs.
But Quist doesn't let those details stop him from calling the conservative outlier estimate a "tax" and linking it to federal legislation that's not what the United Nations' official is talking about.
He needs brains. Really, he does.
And his second wife is Michele Bachmann's district director. Says all you need to know right there.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Dec 07, 2010 at 11:48 AM