Persons interested in the snake pit that is Minnesota Republican politics are well advised to put Sally Jo Sorensen’s Bluestem Prairie into their RSS feeds. Brilliant writing, coupled with rock-solid knowledge: Always a winning combination.
One target she has filleted on multiple occasions (much like Frankie the Fish) is the supremely creepy Allen Quist. (And when I say “creepy”, I mean it.) Now that Quist is competing with Mike Parry for the right to lose to Tim Walz in MN-01 next year, he’s been amping up the stupidity — which gives Sorensen the opening to delineate it.
Today’s episode focused on Quist’s attempt to demagogue Representative Walz’ use of the franking system. As Sorensen points out, he does this without bothering to note that every single member of the Minnesota Republican Congressional delegation (including the one, Michele Bachmann, who employs Quist’s wife Julie) individually spent at least an order of magnitude more on franking than did Walz. In fact, all but one of the Republicans spent more on franking than did the entire Democratic caucus combined; the only one to come up short, as it were, was Chip Cravaack, who merely spent around 90% as much as did the entire Democratic caucus combined. (To paraphrase Sorensen, if Quist really wanted to reform the franking system he would be better off primarying John Kline — or as I now call him, Frankenkline — who has spent $7 on franking for every buck Walz has spent.)
But you must go read the whole thing. Unlike Allen Quist, it is a work of beauty.
