Today's Morning Take provided an assessment of this weekend's Republican state convention endorsement contest for the United States Senate seat now held by Amy Klobuchar:
According to numerous sources, Rep. Kurt Bills has a lead in delegates going into the convention. The surprise is that most people predict that fmr. state Rep. Dan Severson is in second, and war veteran Pete Hegseth is in third. The estimated percentages compiled from GOP insiders are 35-38 Bills, 30- 32 Severson, 15-20 Hegseth and 15 uncommitted. ENDORSEMENT: One possibility like 2002, is a long drawn out endorsement fight. The difference is that unlike 2002 when fmr. Gov. Tim Pawlenty battled businessman Brian Sullivan, is that most GOPers don’t think they can defeat Klobuchar. The Governor’s seat was open in 2002. WATCH: If Hegseth is knocked out early, he is more likely to consider a primary run, if he hangs on for a few hours of balloting, he may try to block an endorsement so that he can go to a primary.
Already, the race is taking on Parry-Quist levels of nastiness on twitter.
But another matter entirely makes Bluestem laugh: a post of a Hegseth email at Residual Forces under the headline: Actual Momentum. A name(emphasis added) made familiar in the 2008 CD1 congressional race reappears:
| Elected officials and Party leaders | ||
| Sen. Gretchen Hoffman | Rep. Larry Howes | Randy Gilbert |
| Bev Aplikowski (CD 4 Chair, former) | Mark Westpfahl (CD 2 Chair) | Diane Johnson (CD8 Vice Chair) |
| Brian Davis |
Brian Davis, who now faithfully serves the Republican Party as a member of the finance committee for the Olmsted County BPOU, brought back memories of freshman Tim Walz's re-election with 62.50% of the vote to Davis's 32.93*% (IP candidate Greg Mikkelson snagged 4.48% of the votes cast).
His influence continues. Davis urged Allen Quist to enter the race against Walz in 2010; Quist conceded to Demmer after the eighth ballot. Davis gave $250.00 to Parry in mid December 2011, but told Politics in Minnesota's Briana Bierschbach a few weeks before that "he would be 'delighted' with either Quist or Parry as a candidate." With the CD1 endorsing convention deadlock, he got his wish.
The recognition of Brian Davis as an "Elected official and party leader" says a great deal about the state of the Republican Party of Minnesota, not to mention Hegseth's strength. (We leave the presence of smiling RINO Larry Howes on the list for the consideration of conblogger Gary Gross, who is in far better a position to define the term than the dirty hippies on the Bluestem Prairie are able).
Rather, the evocation of Davis's name and leadership recalls great poetry for us:
Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal, these words appear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Who can deny that they don't make leadership like that--and write poetry like that--any longer?
Image: Republican elected official and party leader Brian Davis. Look on his works, ye elephants, and despair!
*Correction: An alert reader pointed out that the vote for Davis was incorrect on an earlier version of this post. We have posted the correct figure.
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