Bluestem had grown concerned that the race for the Republican endorsement in Minnesota's First Congressional District would lose its characteristic nutball charm, but the presence of 2010 candidate Jim "Mr. Conservative" Hagedorn at the Mower County Lincoln-Reagan Picnic on Wednesday night means the district's oddball drought has broken.
The Austin Daily Herald reports in GOP faithful brave heat for picnic:
Three candidates are now campaigning to challenge U.S. Congressman Tim Walz in 2014: Mike Benson — a college professor and current Minnesota House member from the Rochester area, Jim Hagedorn — businessman from Blue Earth, and Aaron Miller — military veteran and businessman from Byron.
State representative Mike Bensen and biopharmaceutical salesman/veteran Aaron Miller seem earnest enough, but neither man captures the imagination like Hagedorn. In 2009, he dazzled us with his now-scrubbed blog, as we noted in Rightwing values and performance art in MN-01: Mr. Quist and "Mr. Conservative" and The acorn that stuck close to the tree; or a first glance at Hagedorn family values.
At Firedoglake, Phoenix Woman noted:
The aforementioned nervousness over Quist may also well be why Jim Hagedorn, the son of former Minnesota congressman Tom Hagedorn and a Washington, DC resident and insider for 25-odd years, has now decided to move back to Minnesota and compete with Quist for the right to challenge Tim Walz.
But if anyone thinks that Hagedorn is an improvement over Quist in terms of Clown Car Syndrome, they might want to think again. As Paul Schmelzer reports for the Minnesota Independent:
As mentioned earlier, GOP candidate Jim Hagedorn removed posts from his “Mr. Conservative” blog prior to announcing his bid this morning for U.S. Rep. Tim Walz’s seat, but a review of scrubbed posts reveals a brand of humor that might not sell well in southern Minnesota, including jokes about the death of Northfield-professor-turned-U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone just 11 days earlier.
[...]
He concluded the section with a prediction — a Walter Mondale win in the Senate race that Norm Coleman eventually won: “Goofdale will win, something like 50 – 46 with the independent parties taking the remainder.”As mentioned earlier, the post also includes an analysis of the 2002 race in South Dakota, in which Hagedorn wrote of voter registration irregularities on Native American reservations:
Voter backlash against the Democrat’s (typical) election-stealing maneuvers will be the margin of victory for Thune. Leave it to liberals to ruin John Wayne’s wisdom of the only good Indian being a dead Indian.
BSP’s Sorensen also notes a few more of the now-scrubbed bons mots by Mr. Conservative, such as this musing on the failed nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court:
The nomination of White House legal hack Harriet Miers to fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor simply enhances the bush-league legacy of a family that time and again proves the Peter Principle applies to elective politics.
Yes, kids: Hagedorn is one of those conservatives who thinks the Bushes are too liberal. Plus, he’s prone to bouts of racist, sexist tastelessness that aren’t even close to being funny. No wonder he — or whoever is advising him — had his site scrubbed.
Hagedorn's return to the clown car should shake up this sleeper.
Photo: Hagedorn's bid assured that there's another Republican clown-car cycle in Minnesota's Fighting First.
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