Emmer: ‘My son made a serious mistake’ in underage drinking

Emmer: ““It was a mistake which many Minnesota families are all too familiar with.”

Really?

Many Minnesota families are “familiar with” their son drawing penises on presumably passed out women?

Where’s Emmer’s apology to the girl and her family with the penises drawn on her, while she was presumably passed out drunk?

So, just to be clear. It is okay to use your family in campaign ads–sort of a “vote for me because I am a family man” approach. I suppose the idea is that you support “family values”–whatever they are. But, when the kids are exposed as, well, having less than ideal family values; one must distance oneself and call it the kid’s “mistake”. What about the parents? Did poor parenting (or roll modeling) result in poor values? Of course, this situation also applies to Ms. Palin.

What we now know is not only was Emmer’s kid used in campaign ads, he was paid from campaign funds as an employee. On the date of the Underage Consumption charge, Tom Emmer was doing his “I’m a waiter for a day!” in Roseville ( http://www.emmerforgovernor.com/news/2010/07/ ) but the kid was busted in Douglas County.

Was Tripp doing campaign work on the day he was busted? That we don’t know.

But we do know that last cycle, GOPers went after Ashwin Madia’s staffers.

So, since Emmer’s kid is prominently featured in campaign ads, is a paid staffer, and Brodkorb himself took going after staffers as an acceptable tactic last cycle, I can see why some people will think going after Emmer’s kid as a legitimate target.

And speaking of “target”, I wonder how the executives will view funding Emmer now?

So even though Emmer seems to be running more as Dad of Minnesota than Governor he is an atrocious Father. Seems to me that it is time for Tom Emmer to resign his candadicy and try to heal the damaged members within his own family. Certainly he needs to pay attention to a son following his father’s footsteps to drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Isn’t family more important than politics?

Like father like son. What a couple of clowns. If Tom Emmer can’t even control his screw up son, how can we expect him to be Governor of our state?

Emmer is clearly a horrible parent.

Well at least we know he’s a heterosexual.

Tom, How do we know M. Dayton won’t run for the hills when the next tough time strikes or ice himself due to depression? We don’t, that’s a part of life.

Rob C. Does that also apply to as why black children have such a high dropout and incarceration rate? You painted the picture and opened the door to that rationale. I personally, and I’m sure my brothers would find that offensive. You see, parents can only do so much in regards to their childrens actions.

Tommy, that’s the kind of dumb stuff kids do vs raping them, or would you have preferred that? I’m guessing you would have since you could pin it on Emmer.

Once again the democrats who have no successful policies to run on must resort to personal attacks on candidates and their family members.

Emmer’s claims to business expertise are rather like his pretensions to wholesome family life: http://phoenixwoman.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/tom-emmer-bad-for-business/

Notice how the folks of the Emmer campaign — as well as their apologists in the media and in the chat rooms and message threads — are trying to pretend that their fellow co-worker Tripp is guilty only of underage drinking, and ignore the photo of Tripp with the unconscious young woman on whose face and body a whole bunch of defamatory graphic pictures of spurting penises were drawn in what looks like laundry marker? http://thecuckingstool.blogspot.com/2010/09/tripped-up.html

The hell with the underage drinking — this looks like evidence of assault. Here’s one of the statutes that likely applies — and Lord help them if they gave her roofies: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?year=2009&id=609.235#stat.609.235

Once again the republicans who have no successful policies to run on must resort to personal attacks on candidates and their family members.

/there, I fixed it for you.

Why would anyone want to vote for this man as Governor? I know I will be criticized for “butting in” but my first college party I sat and cried because all the guys were drinking and passing out. But, this seems to be a “family value” that is supported by the Emmer family? I have spent over 30 years going to ACOA and ALANON to undo the life long , debilitating consequences of growing up in a home with alcoholic parent. Yes, most can leave these behaviors behind at age 28 but why parade the behaviors on ads when you are running for governor and use your kids as props? My social security is only$300 a month and the people running this campaign would like to take that away from me?
So criticize me all you want in your rebuttals to my “butting in”. Attention must be paid to the fact of running a campaign with ads using kids as props for family values and then stripping out all social supports for budgets that would provide social services. That is like the anti-abortion people running on “family values” who want to provide absolutely no budget dollars for education of special education children (where I have spent 40 years trying to provide services on low budgets in schools).

My guess is the young woman trusted her situation and the people she was with. Bad choice.

It was an inexcusible breach of trust to have marked her up that way.

Yet it did not stop there. Young Emmer thought it fine and macho and whatever to further humiliate the woman by posting the photo on his Facebook page.

That is coarse.

Old Emmer knew it was NOT fine, macho who knows what his opinion was, but the fact is the Emmer campaign scrubbed that website and also pulled Drew Emmer’s ultra right wing blog posts offline. The only explanations seems that the kid’s stuff was recognized as wrong and the Drew Emmer stuff got in the way of trying to rewrite who the old man was and what the family stood for politically.

That means conscious steps were taken to disavow truth.

Then, putting the kid on the payroll. What does that say about Tom Emmer’s judgment?

Using him as an advertising prop while knowing he was damaged goods; what does that say.

To me it is unwise hubris to an insulting and very troubling degree. “I can get away with it,” proved wrong, and it proves the individual thinking that way is unreliable – as a fact that would be true whether or not he in fact did get away with it.

There is something disdainful toward voters in all this. Or I see it there.

Does anyone else see it as parallel to getting tanked up and then going on the road that way driving in a manner that attracts police attention vs. trying to avoid it and hoping to get home safely without incident.

Getting caught means getting aggressive or such when tanked up and out of control, vs becoming more cautious to not be a problem or hazard to others.

There is a personality thing at play in all this with father and son that I do not like and would not feel comfortable voting for regardless of political party.

Think of it this way, for example – One simply could not even conceive of a Wellstone son ever coming close to putting himself and his father in such a bind. The Wellstones were not that kind of family, Paul Wellstone was not that kind of a father. If you disagreed with Wellstone’s politics you could not criticize his child-rearing decisions.

The kid’s spoiled brat appearance and looking like one born on third base thinking he hit a triple, that raises the question of who spoiled him that way.

Here, we see Tripp’s situation happened under the circumstances of – on the payroll taking out donor cash, paraded as an ad fixture on TV even after the campaign people had been scrubbing the web of embarrassment for what it was recognized to be.

All the troublesome facts suggest someone running who is unfit for the responsibility and sagacity requirements of being governor.

Should you not like Dayton or not like the DFL, the message in all this is vote Horner.

I guess we can remove Tripp as a character reference for daddy.

An instance of underage drinking I could overlook, but the rest does not reflect the family values of any family I know.

Drawing penises on an unconscious woman is an act of degradation. Posting it online for fun is even worse.

And this hot on the heels of the SD56 GOP scandal demonstrates an ongoing absence of respect by conservatives for women in general.

Eric is right, this should be a two-horse race between Dayton and Horner.

[...] the midst of this firestorm, Tom Emmer released the following statement today: “My son made a serious mistake and has paid the consequences,” the statement said. “It [...]