The MN GOP Running Scared

Has anyone been reading MDE today or following the press releases coming out of the MN GOP headquarters?  Okay, you’re right, doing either is a masochistic excursion, but today was worth it because boy oh boy is it funny.

The MN GOP and their operative, Michael Brodkorb, are desperately trying to turn Ellison’s defeat into a victory.  Why?  They’re scared, really, really scared.  Look below the fold to see why.

See, the GOP knows that most of their candidates can’t win on the issues so they’re turning to dirt-digging, to personal attacks.  Hell, the RNC even admitted that it’s their stated plan of attack:

Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads. [WashPo, 9/10/06]

Yeah, disgusting, I know, but you’re probably still asking how that relates to Keith.  Well, the GOP put all they could into personal attacks on Keith Ellison (as groundless as they all turned out to be) and these attacks actually got a lot of traction in the MSM.  Yet despite all this, Keith still won yesterday and that scared the MN GOP because if they can’t count on the effectiveness of personal attacks, they can’t count on much this cycle.

Moreover, the GOP is actually going to try to recycle their debunked personal attacks on Ellison against every other DFLer this cycle.  How does that work?  Just watch, they’ll try to associate Keith with anyone else that’s a Democrat even though Keith is a candidate in a race that only 1/8 of Minnesotans can vote in. Laughable, desperate, misleading, distracting, disgusting?  It’s all of those things, but most of all it’s foolish.

See, Minnesotans aren’t that stupid.  They’ll see these lame attacks as just another attempt to skirt the issues and while their devoting all their time and resources to attacking, we’ll be talking about solutions. 

The people of Minnesota are ready for a change.  A change from blind, rhetorical allegiance to thought-out and reasoned issue stances.  A change from fear mongering to actual security policy.  A change from mis-guided exclusion to respectful inclusion.  And a change from hatred and attacks to cooperation and collaboration.  We’ll be more than happy to provide Minnesotans with an option for change while the GOP devotes itself to groundless attacks.