{"id":25892,"date":"2018-08-11T22:36:15","date_gmt":"2018-08-12T03:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=25892"},"modified":"2018-08-12T16:41:09","modified_gmt":"2018-08-12T21:41:09","slug":"25892","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=25892","title":{"rendered":"Gone fishin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/1\/849\/43269737554_6329f66c38_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Over the past nine weeks I&#8217;ve made my case for a return to the GOP&#8217;s better angels. It cost me $300.00 to file for office and given my antipathy for President Trump&#8217;s misanthropy it was a bargain. In a couple days the folks voting in Minnesota&#8217;s 8th Congressional District will have a choice between me and one of Donald Trump&#8217;s minions, Pete Stauber. I&#8217;ve already noted Pete&#8217;s pulling back a little in the Trump department with the Duluth Tribune&#8217;s editorial endorsement in which he stressed his independence. Yeah sure. No Republican with a spark of independence has survived Trump&#8217;s scorn over the last year. They are all weak sisters and Pete Stauber is no exception.<\/p>\n<p>How will I do on Tuesday? <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I expect to get no more than ten percent of the vote although I might do that well in Duluth where I am better known than Pete after a quarter century of running for the School Board and making snow sculptures. But a lot of my potential supporters are either independents or Democrats who will vote in the much hotter DFL primary.<\/p>\n<p>As for Republicans. The hotest Trump supporters are also the voters who are hardest to coax out to vote in a primary let alone  an off year primary. As for folks who have been Republicans since before Trump, most can be expected to vote for the official Republican nominee. That&#8217;s Pete. If they are rabid pro-lifers they will certainly vote for Pete although just how pro-life Pete is, based on his campaign website&#8217;s mild official statement, is debateable:<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;I support life from conception to natural death and will always be a strong and constant voice for the right to life.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But there are dozens of questions this bland statement doesn&#8217;t address: Would Pete make morning after pills illegal? They cause &#8220;abortions&#8221; from the moment after conception. Would he opt to save a fetus rather than a gravely ill mother? Does he want Roe vs. Wade overturned? For years &#8220;pro-life&#8221; politicians have also expressed a desire to abide by the Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling. Maybe that would include Pete. Maybe not. Nevertheless, Pete will win the pro-life vote in the primary and it will be a significant share of that vote, probably at least 60% of it.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who looks regularly at my blog knows I see the world as a complicated place. Anyone who looks at Pete Stauber&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/petestauberforcongress.com\/issues\/\">issues page<\/a> can see that Pete is not running on issues with anything approaching nuance. There is no Lincoln\/Douglass debate here. Its all Fox Newsworthy one liners.<\/p>\n<p>I know what Pete will be doing for the next two years should he be elected. He&#8217;ll be hoping a praying that Trump doesn&#8217;t explode and spending all his waking hours phoning big contributors looking for cash to see him through his 2020 election all the while being a useful tool for Donald Trump. <\/p>\n<p>Like I said, it was worth the $300 filing fee to point out the emptiness of Stauber&#8217;s candidacy. I wouldn&#8217;t have been able to sleep at night if I&#8217;d let him go unchallenged.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I&#8217;ve stayed true to my plans from the moment I filed. I&#8217;ve spent time with my family. Yesterday I had a great day fishing on Lake Superior with my St. Louis based Brother and his family. Next week, after the election, I&#8217;m going out on a pontoon to do the same with my brother-in-law down in Carlton County. I&#8217;ve continued studying French everyday to prepare for my visit to the World War One trenches where my Grandfather fought. I&#8217;ll be there one hundred years after he was shot to hell. And I&#8217;ve kept my perspective and sense of humor which weren&#8217;t part of any plan but are very much a part of my personality. I haven&#8217;t had to grovel at an oxymoron&#8217;s feet to win an election.<\/p>\n<p>By the Way, if you want to catch some big fish hire Kent Paulsen of <a href=\"https:\/\/fishnorthmn.com\/\">FishNorth<\/a>. We came home with 35 pounds of Lake Trout even after tossing back a 15 pounder to help keep Superior&#8217;s fish stock healthy. Kent&#8217;s a funny guy. He told me he thought about naming his newest boat (we were only the second party to ride on it with him) the <strong>&#8220;Red Plan.&#8221;<\/strong> He also told me that he had to cancel his first two parties the day before we came on board because the Secret Service didn&#8217;t want any boats scurrying about during Vice President Pence&#8217;s visit to Duluth. At least I didn&#8217;t cost Kent any income.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past nine weeks I&#8217;ve made my case for a return to the GOP&#8217;s better angels. It cost me $300.00 to file for&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,47,21,4,133,127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25892"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25899,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25892\/revisions\/25899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}