It's mid-February in Minnesota, we're in the middle of a tardy thaw, barred owls are whooping it up in the woodlots, and Tom Emmer has a new job.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports in Emmer to lobby for effort he opposed:
Two years ago, then-state Rep. Tom Emmer made a fervent appeal on the House floor to lift a moratorium on new cancer radiation clinics not attached to hospitals.
In a spirited debate, the Republican from Delano called the ban "patently unfair" and "micromanaging in its worst form." He pleaded with legislators to let "market forces return."
Earlier this month, the unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate registered as a lobbyist. His only client: Minneapolis Radiation Oncology Physicians, the outfit that wants to extend the moratorium. . . .
. . .He said that if the state were to rip open the marketplace now, "it could be very dangerous. ... I don't want to destroy what we have."
Oh dear. What would Joseph Schumpeter say?
Speaking of Schumpeter, it's the final day of the traditional festival of Lupercalia, and Emmer's return to the headlines has notable Minnesota conservatives out conducting a contemporary hybrid of purification ritual and creative destruction.
Take John Gilmore, @Shabbosgoy on twitter and a blogger at Minnesota Conservatives. He's launched a hashtag game, #WhyEmmerShouldBeOnTheRNC. In addition of measuring how much the lobbying market will bear, the unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate seeks to become an Republican National Committeeman.
Good times, as an anti-purity guy whips the Republican purity folks. Perhaps more entertaining, though, was an earlier exchange between Gilmore and Bridget Sutton, Baja Sol burrito cryptkeeper and spouse of Republican Party chair and frequent Bluestem guest star Tony Sutton. Sutton twot that "'Purity' and 'politics' should never appear in the same sentence." (Screenshot)
The wellspring for all of the mirth: the legacy of Suttonian purity campaigns in the MNGOP. Take, for instance, last fall's purge of 18 prominent Republicans--including a basketful of former governors--who endorsed former Republican Tom Horner's bid for governor. Or the multiple times during the campaign when Republicans praised Emmer as a principled conservative.
And to think that that "true" conservative nature was the factor that led the Republican state convention to endorse Emmer over former minority leader Marty Seifert, who was seen as too compromised by legislative dealmaking.
Of course, the irony of Republican self-flagellation may be overshadowed by today's new behemoth of GOP hypocrisy risen from the melting drifts. In a glinting example of glass casas, Bridget's husband, failed businessman, deposed Taco King and inept former MNGOP treasurer Tony Sutton lectures Governor Dayton on budgets.
And in the latter man, Minnesota may find its last, best hope of recovering our state's old stoic virtues from the current decadence sweeping the Republican Party and the state legislature in which it conducts its axe-swinging orgies. The state's Republicans act recklessly, to protect those who need no protection, sacrificing the vulnerable and the middle class, as if in a fight to keep Caligula supplied with virgins and wine.
Not so with Dayton. He writes dispassionately today about governing, in the Star Tribune. To see what real leadership looks like, instead of an imperial Ronald Reagan LARP, go read Gov. Mark Dayton: Not a battle, not a game, but a budget.
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