by Jeff Wilfahrt
Aug 23, 2014, 10:32 AM

The Gated Communities – GOP and DFL in Minnesota

Watching the childish drama of Michelle MacDonald at the State Fair it appears a parallel exist between the GOP and DFL.

Back in the ’70s the National Lampoon Radio Hour ran a piece about suburbia, “where armed debutants kept the middle classes at bay” and “trust was just a name on a bank.”

Those with less look to gated communities and wonder is the fence to keep us out or pen them within.

And so the apparent moral of the MacDonald dust up is that our two dominant parties both practice a form of gating unique to the party. Everything, save her own aggrandizing website, reeks of an irrational stance. But the GOP is anything but a big tent party.

It doesn’t stop with her. There’s Scott Newman who wants to be our Attorney General. Having personally testified before a committee that man chaired as stand in for the greater prevaricator, Warren Limmer, back in 2012 he’s about as unfit as MacDonald. Newman is running for political cover now.

The testimony given had to do with a military death. Newman never once looked me in the eye. He fidgeted with papers, look askance right and left at the other seated Senators, anything but pay attention to the testimony being given, at least until the clergy bolstered his position.

And it was Newman who pushed the PhotoID. Yup, the ultimate gating. Now he wants to influence us from the Attorney General’s position. Can’t imagine a more biased and callous individual for that position. Well, okay, maybe MacDonald would excel over him at gating and what’s more scary is she was after the Supreme Court of MN.

The DFL’s hands aren’t clean either. They gate in their own way. A post on that subject with the proverbial concrete example appeared here on LeftMN some months back.

Let’s press the matter a little further. Remember MNUnited? On eye witness account an attempt to garner financial support out in DC for the seat here SD 57B got torpedoed by no less than over adulated Richard Carlbom. Gating, gating, gating. Make no mistake, he did a good job. But the fire was lit long before he got to the scene.

Anybody out there ever wonder how it is Kriesel came to have that soldier’s picture? You think that was done by Carlbom? It wasn’t him who started bringing national attention to what was transpiring in MN. Not hardly. Without a focus group to find the gating fence line he’d have been lost.

Both the DFL and GOP are having real issues about their respective relevancy. Progressives, particularly the young are not flocking in droves to the DFL. Aside from the evangelicals, the ammosexuals and the die hard Replication party members the GOP is no better off.

It’s another election cycle.

On the political lot this year we’re getting the gated choices from both the GOP and the DFL.

Phil Ochs the folk singer summed it up pretty well way back in the ’60s with this line, “It’s a used car dealers election, and the choice is rather small.”

Probably take the DFL car up and down the ticket this fall. Couple nice things on the lot, Dayton, Simon, Otto and Swanson on the high end, moving down ticket things get more questionable. Your best bet is to do some tire kicking.

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