by Dan Burns

Nov 29, 2021, 7:30 AM

I was wrong about MN Senate Republicans

A while back I posted here about the possibility that members of the slim Party of Trump majority in the Minnesota Senate had decided to start being more, in a word, sane. As it turns out, nope. No way.

Minnesota Republicans are reigniting debate over the emergency powers used by DFL Gov. Tim Walz during the first 15 months of the pandemic, citing “mandate fatigue” from constituents frustrated by vaccine requirements for state workers and from the federal government.

Walz used the emergency powers to take sweeping action to slow the spread of the virus, from closing down schools and some businesses to instituting a mask mandate. He struck a deal with the Legislature in July to end those powers, but Republicans want permanent changes on how they can be used in any future crisis, linking the debate to the potential rejection of Walz’s health commissioner…

It’s part of an ongoing push from conservatives in states across the country to dramatically scale back the powers of governors and public health departments during an emergency, as well as limit vaccine requirements for residents. But Democrats and some public health experts have pushed back as the pandemic continues to rage in Minnesota and elsewhere.
(Star Tribune)

Republicans don’t actually have the power to do much of anything on this, at least not in Minnesota. It’s just more grandstanding for the base. But it is a good indication of where their collective head is still at.

The pandemic still going hard means more preventable suffering and death. And MN legislative GOPers don’t think a governor should be able to promptly do things to try to prevent that? Yes, many really are so far gone in stupid, deranged cognitive rigidity that they truly, honestly just do not know any better. But does that go for all of them? I don’t know.

I need to make what I think is a relevant point well beyond just the context of this issue. Right-wingers in the general population have to keep a grip on reality, much of the time, in order to do their jobs, deal with their kids, and so forth. Those who spend a lot more time in the Trumper bubble – legislators, media people, those on the wingnut welfare circuit in general – live the insanity to a much greater extent. And it shows. Does it ever.

If I could change one thing about people overall, it would be to make them a lot less gullible. (I certainly don’t claim to have never been gullible, myself. Far from it.) I don’t believe that Party of Trump electeds in Minnesota, or anywhere else, are really just A-OK with the idea of people dying in substantial numbers, if it will help them keep power and/or gain more of it. Rather, they’ve convinced themselves that they really are heroically defending “freedom,” fighting back vs. “liberal tyranny,” that the severity of COVID is mostly “liberal media” hype, and so on. It’s very unfortunate, for all of us, how far from reality people’s motivated reasoning can take them.