Coleman wrote his own fundraising letter on behalf of Bachmann in September. Franken was a listed co-host for a fundraising event for Clark, a DFL Party state senator, in Minneapolis last week. Maureen Reed is also mounting a 2010 challenge to Bachmann.

Coleman’s comments Tuesday came in response to a question from his Harvard audience about whether “death bed” rhetoric and “Nazi imagery” were hurting the Republican Party. “I don’t think that the signs you mention are part of the party or central to the discussion,” Coleman countered.

In the course of his response, Coleman brought up “the Michele Bachmanns out there.” He disputed a link between extreme rhetoric and elected officials or the Tea Party movement. “Your basic notion is mistaken,” he said. “You’re taking something way out on the fringe and you’re applying it to the legitimate anger that folks have.”

But earlier, Coleman seemed ready to harness anger himself with this line in his speech: “Pity the politician who comes between a citizen and their constitutional Second Amendment rights.”

Coleman, a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, is treading on Franken’s former stomping grounds: the Minnesota funnyman-turned-statesman was a math major at Harvard.

He has cast himself as someone who can bring young people into the Republican Party, showing off his savvy by naming things like travel agents and 8-track tapes that the students in his audience don’t use. Besides, he asserted, young people don’t deal with social issues on a day-to-day basis. “Very rarely are you going to think about what’s going to happen on Roe v. Wade today,” Coleman said.

Coleman said he looks for middle ground on social issues. He advocated “doing those things that support young women so they don’t have to have an abortion.” Gay marriage is “a pretty narrow issue,” he said, citing civil unions as a possible compromise on the more contentious issue of how to define marriage.

“The philosophy of conservatives really is more in line with your generation,” Coleman said. “I just think we haven’t done a good job of articulating it.”

Coleman articulated this reason for having lost his re-election battle to Franken last year: his yes vote on bailout bills to stave off a depression in October 2008. “But for the collapse of the economy, I don’t think the race would have been close,” he said.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATEWIDE: Ask Al more. Five dollars and cab fare to New York City will get you a lunch audience with Sen. Franken. [Washington Post's In the Loop]

TWIN CITIES: Random acts of criminality on YouTube. Police are on the trail of local thugs who posted a clip showing them attacking people on bikes and on foot. [Fox 9]

PRIOR LAKE: Native Americans get ready for Copenhagen. They want a say in climate-change talks. [Associated Press]

DASSEL: Steve Dille out. The Republican state senator won’t run again; he was one of the eight GOPers who helped override Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of transportation funding in 2008. [Litchfield Independent Review; Polinaut]

PRAIRIE ISLAND: Lege has last say on nuke storage. The people’s reps at the state Capitol could reverse a regulatory OK for Xcel Energy to store more nuclear waste. [Rochester Post-Bulletin]

STATEWIDE: Or possibly universe-wide? Minnesota Public Radio’s designs on dominance in news. [Braublog]

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATE CAPITOL: House to file brief in unallotment suit. It’s a roundabout way to have their say in state’s budget after Gov. Pawlenty’s unilateral cuts. [MN Publius]

STATEWIDE: Norm Coleman is golden in guv-race poll. Smart Politics says told ya so, while candidates not named by pollster have a right to cry foul. [Politics in Minnesota; Smart Politics; Political Animal]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Scholars debate ID. The clash of ideas rang out as Minnesota’s P.Z. Myers pushed evolution and Ohio’s Jerry Bergman pushed back with intelligent design. [Minnesota Daily]

ROCHESTER: MnDOT hearts PRT. The state’s Department of Transportation hosts a symposium on personal rapid transit, the podcar system that’s been known to polarize people. [Associated Press]

MOOSE LAKE: Superintendent files suit over abuse as teen. His community houses sex offenders, now he alleges abuse at the hands of one, at a Catholic church retreat. [Star Tribune]

AVON: Trailers ‘untenable.’ A manufactured home park’s travails highlights the scarcity of low rents in rural areas. [Minnesota Public Radio]

Coming in at 12th dumbest, our Senate race (dubbed “Land of a Thousand Recounts”) is illustrated by the spoof pharmaceutical ad, which asks, “When the time comes to concede, will you be ready?”

The copy continues:

If you’ve already tried futile legal challenges and angry calls for recounts, yet continue to suffer from an inadequate vote tally, Democra-cialis may be right for you. Losing candidates who have used Democra-cialis have seen a marked reduction in electile dysfunction, leaving their opponents victorious and satisfied.

Also making the list are Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich (#15), corporate bailouts (#9), and “Angry Town Hall Meetings” (#6, “Birthers, deathers and other rightwing morons stopped any intelligent discussions about healthcare reform”).

The full ad, via NBC Chicago:

It’s not the first faux pharmaceutical ad created on behalf of Coleman. In April, Tildology came up with one for Dragra, an “oral argument for electile dysfunction.”

In a Twitter message, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

?? Dems want a health system that says when you can knee surgery, but demand abortion coverage because women should control their bodies.

While its moral logic confounds liberals at Instaputz and Wonkette, Goldberg’s tweet could supply a slogan for former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s political comeback.

Coleman himself underwent knee surgery just last spring — at his own option and, in all likelihood, at government expense.

So the Coleman for Governor in 2010 campaign might be built around the specter of”government knee panels” or the Constitutional protections of “a man’s right to choose.”

Image: Kirsten Hartsoch

So much for states’ rights: Iowa-based American Future Fund wants the Federal Elections Commission to rule against Minnesota’s long-standing ban on robocalls in order to include Minnesota in its national robocall campaigns, the Star Tribune reports. The group, which bills itself as a “conservative and free market” operation, filed a complaint with the FEC arguing that Minnesota’s anti-robocall law did not apply to national campaigns.

AFF, which has close ties to the Swift Boat Veteran for Truth, got its start in 2008 doing advertising for former Sen. Norm Coleman’s reelection campaign and has gone after DFL Rep. Collin Peterson on health care reform.

If AFF succeeds in convincing the FEC that federal law trumps Minnesota’s, the group’s automated phone messages would be the first legal political ones in Minnesota since 1987.

But Attorney General Lori Swanson says her office will fight to keep robocalls illegal. “We do not believe Minnesota … is preempted by federal campaign finance law and expect to be submitting a letter to the FEC on Monday expressing our position,” attorney general spokesman Ben Wogsland told the Star Tribune.

The first to fall was St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. In late August he hired an impressive campaign staff vastly overqualified to help him walk to re-election. “But with a primary barely two weeks away and little buzz about the race,” Jason Hoppin wrote at The Political Animal, “there’s no doubt the team is in place to help with Coleman’s expected bid for governor.”

Then, barely six weeks later, Coleman announced he wouldn’t run for governor after all.

Next was Brian Sullivan. On Election Day, Mary LaHammer wrote on her TPT blog “There’s a lot of talk (PIM and MPR) that businessman Brian Sullivan may indeed enter the race for governor.” LaHammer’s headline: “Brian Sullivan Buzz.”

Now, seven days later, Sullivan has emphatically declined to run.

That gives a different cast to Charley Shaw’s headline at Politics in Minnesota last Friday: “Buzz about a Norm Coleman run for governor is getting louder.” To make matters worse, Shaw writes that “journalist Barry Casselman told PIM he has noticed the uptick in buzz about Coleman.”

Could a Norm Coleman non-candidacy be the next shoe to drop in the great gubernatorial buzz-kill of 2009?

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATEWIDE: Gov. Pawlenty’s 2004 pledge to end homelessness by 2010 hasn’t happened yet. Maybe he should have promised a moon shot. [Associated Press]

ST. CLOUD: Collegians study Berlin Wall. You know you’ve been put out to pasture as a historical event when you’re the subject of a two-credit class that attracts seven students. [St. Cloud Times]

SEVENTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson voted to add an abortion ban to the health bill. The amendment passed, but he voted against the bill anyway. [Smart Politics]

ST. PAUL: Easy come, easy not go. Pawlenty’s quick trade trip to Mexico planned for today got put off when President Felipe Calderon had more pressing obligations than meeting with the next president of the United States. [Star Tribune]

ALBERT LEA: Legionnaires want a digital sign. It would change every nine seconds, in a historic district. [Albert Lea Tribune]

ST. PAUL: You say your job is killing you? For Minnesotans who really did die on the job, a new memorial on the State Capitol grounds opens next year. [Associated Press]

The Minnesota Independent stopped by the PAC’s swanky reception and saw one friendly face wandering through the crowd: Tony Trimble, familiar from his months of service as recount attorney to former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Trimble cut a slightly more rumpled figure than the Freedom Firsters around him dressed mostly in crisply glamorous black attire.

Standing alone were several banks of computer monitors displaying the Freedom First web site.

Polinaut has audio of Pawlenty’s dinner speech.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATEWIDE: ‘Rithmetic favors referendums. Voters approved more than half of school districts’ requests for more money.  [Minnesota Public Radio]

DULUTH: School board seats split. Voters gave wins to two candidates who favor the “Red Plan” to close and build schools and two from the opposition, which still lacks power to stop it. [Duluth News Tribune]

STATE FAIR: “Everything is pre-existing.” That’s what one elderly fairgoer told U.S. Sen. Al Franken this year about her medical status, and he repeated the remark in a major floor speech on health care. [Political Pulse]

ST. PAUL: Sullivan sizing up GOP bid for guv. Businessman Brian Sullivan might give it another go, and Norm Coleman’s success fishing for friends on Facebook suggests he might too. [TPT Almanac: At the Capitol]

STATEWIDE: Warren Buffett buys BNSF railroad … for $200. Investor types will now drive out to Big Lake to ride the Northstar Commuter Rail line back in, simply for the privilege of traveling on track owned by the Oracle of Omaha. [Star Tribune; Parker Brothers]

PROCTOR: Renegade recliner re-dubbed “DWI Chair” on eBay. Police bent over backwards to please La-Z-Boy lawyers who wanted them to change the name under which they are auctioning off the souped-up chair they confiscated after a drunk “driver” crashed it. But the change will cost them bids from states where they say “DUI.” [Duluth News Tribune]