Minnesota’s Republicans are gathering this weekend in our fair city by Lake Superior. Welcome to you all and thank you for contributing to our tourist sales taxes.
I remember the 1994 State Republican Convention I attended as a delegate to support our Governor, Arne Carlson, for re-nomination. I remember seeing Tim Pawlenty at the Convention supporting his former Republican leader in the House of Representatives fight off a challenge from a Anti-abortion zealot Allen Quist. Quist won the endorsement over the seated Governor Carlson who then won in the primary because lots of Democrats were scared wittless about Quist voted in the Republican primary, not to screw up the Republicans, but to insure that Carlson would be on the ballot for the General election. They gladly helped reelect our sensible, fiscally conservative, but moderate Republican candidate. 1994 was my best year as a Republican narrowly edging out the Republican’s “Minnesota Massacre” election of 1978.
This weekend it is Tim Pawlenty who is giving the Party the cold shoulder. Like Donald Trump who called for Korean Talks and then pulled out of them, Pawlenty is sending the world a message……one that harks back to the 1994 State Republican Convention.
By the way, I recently reread one of my columns on abortion from the Duluth Reader published back in 2004. Where have all the Fetuses Gone? Its still a pretty concise explanation of my thinking.
As for my relations with the folks who took my old party away from me. I’m still smarting from the time they told me that I was a worse mass murderer than Mao tse-tung, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler put together.
