Today's Politics in Minnesota "Best of the Blogs" list provoked bucksnorts at this headline from a conservative St. Cloud blogger: Why Is the DFL Hearkening Back to the 80′s?
The opening was even better
During his SOS speech, Gov. Dayton hearkened back to the Perpich administration’s golden years. I didn’t think of it at the time but this op-ed by Sen. Amy Koch and Sen. Geoff Michel triggered an original argument. Here’s what they said that triggered my question:
Raising taxes is bad business, especially when our competitor states are doing just the opposite. Our neighbors in Wisconsin are lowering taxes and aggressively competing at our border.
Because every state wants to be just like Wisconsin right now. CBS Minnesota (formerly WCCO) was even moved to ask Could Minnesota See Similar Union Fights As Wisconsin? and allow Steve Drazkowski to pit workers against workers, without fact-checking his stereotyped opinions about public workers.
But I digress. As good for laughs as the Draz is, Gross's condemnation of the state's DFLers for looking back to the 1980s for political models wins the Last Blogger Standing comedy contest. Let Freedom Ring and its fellow MOB members are only now finishing their post-coital smokes from their public Ronald Reagan 100th Birthday Orgy. Gross even used Reagan's speeches as bath water.
That baring of souls before the idol of the Great Communicator was as stylized as anything ever ripped from the creative genius of a Pasolini.
And yet-and yet--as so many have pointed out, the Reagan at whose feet Minnesota's conservatives worship is not the actual man of the 1980s, however often the MNGOP and its minions hearkened back to the 1980s this month.
And those contemporary legislative figureheads Gross quotes? Hamline political scientist David Schultz's takes a good look at Detached Reality and Altered States: The GOP Response to the Dayton Budget at Schultz's Take:
Job killing and detached from reality. This is the core argument of the GOP against the Dayton budget. Yet behind the name calling one looks in desperation for the Republican alternative and it has yet to emerge. Just last week Dayton vetoed the $1 billion in cuts the GOP had already suggested. Yet that $1 billion was more than $5 billion short of what is needed, and they GOP has yet to propose how they plan to find the additional money.
The truth is they do not have a solution. Yes they will rant and rave about tax hurting the state economy (little evidence that is true), that there is waste and fraud (little evidence that is true), and that the budget is a job killer (even less evidence that is true). However, they do not have a solution and are afraid to offer one. Why? Two reasons.
Go to Schultz's Take to learn what those two reasons are.
But enough seriousness. Yesterday, Glenn Gruenhagen sent out an email to constituents in which he wrote that reality completes escapes the governor. Considering the source, that one would make a cat giggle.
Title reference: the 1980s were a special time. Nothing illustrates the decade's exceptionalism better than this classic music video.
Geez, is the Steno Strib's Doug Tice looking to see how many politically-related story demerits he can rack up from the Columbia Journalism Review? He must get head-pats from Michael Brodkorb for each one.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Feb 18, 2011 at 01:35 PM