As most of Minnesota knows by now, the Minnesota 7th Congressional District Republican Party's Facebook page has been scrubbed of a Facebook post that was thoroughly offensive about Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison.
But as Bluestem readers know, the offensive clodhopping rhetoric wasn't the first time Seventh District Republicans were deservedly scolded for oafish racism and religious smears.
Moreover, a couple of other recent digs at Representative Collin Peterson have been wiped from the page.
CD7's most recent "uffda" moment
At the Star Tribune, Pat Pheifer reports in GOP, DFL rebuke racist Facebook post about Ellison:
The Facebook page from Minnesota’s Seventh Congressional District Republican Party on Monday night featured a post with racist and derogatory language superimposed on a photo of U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D.-Minn.
It was swiftly rebuked by DFL and GOP leaders.
Republican Party of Minnesota Chair Jennifer Carnahan issued a statement saying she had asked for the “immediate resignation” of the person responsible for the post.
In a phone interview a short time later, she would not identify the person who posted the anti-Ellison photo and words on Facebook but said that person “has been identified ... and they no longer represent our party. They resigned immediately.”
The post was up for several hours on Monday night. It has been taken down, but screen shots of it were posted on Twitter and other social media sites. . . .
It featured an image of Ellison, dressed in camouflage hunting gear and posing with a wild turkey he apparently had shot. The post writer also derided U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., saying “Peterson has been sliding [sic] up to head Muslim [expletive] Keith Ellison. Heck, they’re now hunting buddies. Does that mean Muslim refugees coming to western Minnesota?”
Those who need that expletive can turn to City Pages. Mike Mullen has more fun in Minnesota Republicans call Keith Ellison 'Muslim Goat Humper':
Never underestimate the 7th Congressional District Republicans. On Monday, a post on the official Facebook page of that unit of the Republican Party of Minnesota tried going after DFL U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, who represents the area, by connecting him to DFL U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, who represents Minneapolis.
By Monday night, the newly elected Republican Party of Minnesota chairwoman, Jennifer Carnahan, was forced to call out the hateful chuckleheads on her side, calling the post "repugnant hate speech," and saying whoever published it should resign immediately.
Only a couple weeks ago, conservative activists in the 7th CD held a "celebrate President Trump" rally, where more than one speaker -- including Rep. Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, a challenger for Peterson's seat -- said they were engaged in "war" with the other side. This offensive Facebook post credits conservative provocateur asshole (and recent Minnesota-visitor) David Horowitz for saying we are "in a war." . . .
And in the Pioneer Press, Rachel Stassen-Berger reported Facebook post about Keith Ellison is ‘repugnant hate speech,’ new MN GOP chair says.
Our back pages: Bluestem exposes Jack Whitley's murderous thought about Muslims
On November 19, Bluestem broke the story about Big Stone County GOP chair's post in In Facebook status, Big Stone Co GOP chair calls Muslims "parasites," writes "frag em" at Mecca:
A status posted today on the personal Facebook page of the Big Stone County Republican chair Jack Whitley suggests that an understanding of the Minority Liberty Alliance's message of inclusion hasn't quite taken hold among conservative leadership living beside Minnesota's western boundary waters.
On Wednesday, November 19, 2014, Whitley shared this status:
I am opposed to waterboarding muslim terrorists, but probably not why you think.
I am opposed to waterboarding muslim terrorists because it is a waste of resources.
They are muslims, they are terrorist, we know where they are from, we know where their buddies are, we know where thier mosque's are, we know millions of these parasites travel to Mecca every year and when...FRAG 'EM!
Simplicity. I love when it all comes together!
The post was picked up by Jennifer Brooks at the Star Tribune, who gave the hat tip to Bluestem, and Whitley was soon history.
More CD7 GOP Facebook page awfulness
Whitley's posts are being cited as earlier evidence of a lack of boundary limits by CD7 Republicans, but the district's social media rudeness on its twitter and Facebook accounts caught heck before Carnahan needed to spank the admin, with an earlier anonymous offender also removed. In November 2015, Talking Point Memo's Sara Jerde summed it up in Minnesota GOPers Get Heat For Posting About Democrats’ ‘Negro Problem’:
The chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party was forced to apologize Tuesday after a local GOP branch posted about state Democrats’ “#Negroproblem” on social media.
The 7th Congressional District GOP borrowed the term from a blog post they shared on Facebook and Twitter on Sunday, according to the alternative weekly Minneapolis City Pages. The blog post, written on the website Our Black News, was about the state’s Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, which the author wrote had called for a “special session” to address the “Negro problem in Minnesota.”
“MN DFL now propose a ‘special session’ to deal with their self-created ‘#Negroproblem,” the posts read, according to City Pages.
The DFL party quickly put the The 7th Congressional District GOP on blast.
“You don’t have to look far to find ignorant hate speech masquerading as acceptable party messaging,” DFL state Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement, according to the report. “However, this is not the first time the Minnesota Republican Party and their affiliates have posted racially insensitive material.” . . .
In response to the criticism, state Republican Party Chairman Ken Downey tweeted that the person in charge of the local party’s social media accounts was “relieved of duties” . . .
The local party’s posts, which have since been removed, were posted a day before white supremacists allegedly shot and injured five Black Lives Matter protestors in Minneapolis.
The page also offended Minnesota's Jewish community, as Bluestem reported in #MN07 GOP Party Facebook page deletes post calling George Soros a "Nazi National Socialist"; as former state representative Jeremy Kalin noted, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas stepped in after learning of the post via twitter.
You get the picture.
Recent anti-Peterson post scrubbed
For the moment at least, two remarkable anti-Peterson posts we captured via screengrab are missing from the page. There's this image about "Milk Dairys" leaving Minnesota:
Given that First District Cooperative processing recently expanded in Litchfield, while Riverview Dairies, based in Morris, is building several new dairies in Minnesota with thousands of cows each, we suspect it's not just the grammar that got that meme yanked.
And there's this Bernie meme--created by an individual who apparently didn't know Peterson had endorsed Senator Sanders' presidential bid:
But perhaps the semi-literate meme was pulled for another reason. According to the filing at the Federal Election Commission, Prinsburg Republican state representative Tim Miller is going national with his congressional committee in his bid to unseat Peterson. His treasurer is Romney Republican and political operative Bradley T. Crate of Beverly, MA, while Miller is stashing his campaign cash in Chain Bridge Bank in McLean, VA.
Bloomberg Politics explored the latter in Where Candidates Stash Their Cash:
. . .Founded in 2007, Chain Bridge served John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 and Mitt Romney’s in 2012. House Speaker John Boehner keeps fundraising accounts there; so does the Republican National Committee. It’s also served political action committees for Altria Group, the National Association of Convenience Stores, and the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. “The largest issue that we would always have with people is that they’d be like, ‘Why would we use this Podunk little bank in McLean, Virginia?’ ” says Bradley Crate, Romney’s 2012 chief financial officer. He routinely refers clients of his consulting firm Red Curve Solutions to the bank, including both Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Trump. Chain Bridge offers services tailored to the idiosyncrasies of campaigns, which deposit and then spend enormous sums quickly, with no credit history to lean on. “I know I can call my contacts at Chain Bridge Bank and have an account open in like 15 minutes,” Crate says. “If you go to a much larger bank, you have a bureaucracy you have to deal with.” . . .
Of course, one might not have to deal with a larger bank's bureaucracy had Miller chosen a financial institution in CD7 run by conservatives. We suspect such creatures exist.
Top image: Screenshot of the Facebook post from the 7th District Republicans (Micheal Brodkorb screenshot) via the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
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