Rep. Ron Paul. Photo: Zuma Press

The news that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had won the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll — beating Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who only garnered six percent of the vote — was leaked early, to soften the blow. Before GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio had even begun to click through a Powerpoint presentation that shared the results, reporters were informed of Paul’s easy, 31 percent victory over nine Republicans tipped as serious 2012 contenders. Those reporters started to write stories on Paul’s surprise win, waiting for the official announcement — and an explosion of jeering and booing in the main ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Sighing with relief, press aides for the annual conservative conference made sure that the on-site media had heard that reaction.

Just as relieved were mainstream GOP activists and traditional conservative thinkers who were pondering ways to make the party electable again. “I think Mitt Romney’s 22 percent was impressive,” said Rob Willington, a Massachusetts Republican strategist who’d designed GOTV technology for now-Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). He was reflecting on the poll — not too significant, he said — in Murphy’s, a bar a few blocks from the hotel, late Saturday. Romney’s forces, he said, hadn’t lifted a finger; Paul’s had campaigned for the prize.

In another corner of the bar, conservative author David Frum, editor of Frum Forum (formerly New Majority), brushed off the result. “The Paul people all voted and the others didn’t,” said Frum. “I’m hoping it’s a matter of self-selection.”

The importance of minimizing Paul’s win united conservative activists like almost nothing else that came from the three-day conference. Even Brad Dayspring — who, as a spokesman for GOP whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), counts on Paul for “no” votes — fired off two tweets dismissing the result. But the 2,395 ballots cast were a CPAC record, up from the 1,757 cast in 2009, when Mitt Romney scored his third conservative win. And moments after the Paul results were booed, the crowd gave a roaring ovation to radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck, who rewarded it with a 56-minute lecture on “progressivism’s” war on American values with historical lessons — the evil of the Federal Reserve, the destructiveness of Woodrow Wilson, the folly of “spreading democracy” — that had featured prominently in Paul’s speech, too.

For as little attention as it got — for the first time in anyone’s memory, the news cycle-driving Drudge Report did not even run with the news — Paul’s victory in an unscientific straw poll revealed plenty about the state of conservatism. Narrowly,  More broadly, it provided a look at the ideological hardening going on within the conservative movement as it girds for the 2010 elections. According to some polls, the Republican Party is on track to recover control of Congress and have a voice again in how America is governed. At CPAC, there was far less attention on how the party would govern America than on the need to disavow its past, popular embraces of “big government” — and on the need to embrace a hardcore libertarian philosophy that views environmentalism and the progressive movement as fatal threats to freedom.

Paul’s youthful crusade of hopeful libertarians — its size and its enthusiasm — was one of the real surprises of the conference. Paul-inspired or affiliated groups occupied five booths in the event’s exhibit hall; the Campaign for Liberty (the organization he launched after folding his 2008 presidential bid), Young Americans for Liberty (the student group launched at the same time), Students for Liberty, the Ladies of Liberty Alliance, and the Future of Freedom Foundation. Libertarian CPAC attendees packed room after room for lectures by the likes of Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano and likely 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico. They passed out a documentary about the Paul campaign, “For Liberty,” and copies of “Young American Revolution,” a magazine for college students with contributions ranging from an essay on economics by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to a Wake Forest University student’s tipsheet on how she organized a blockbuster speech by Paul on her campus.

The Paul-inspired groups were responsible for one of the pivotal moments of the three-day conference. On Friday, Students for Liberty president Alexander McCobin used his speech in the rapid-fire “Two-Minute Activist” line-up to “commend CPAC for inviting GOProud,” a gay Republican group. That got a rise out of Ryan Sobra, an anti-gay activist who followed McCobin and condemned the conference for inviting the group. When he was booed, Sobra confusingly attacked Jeff Frazee — the head of Young Americans for Liberty. But he was onto something — it was the presence of Paul fans, who had crowded into the room for his upcoming speech, that meant Sobra would get more boos than cheers.

“I was thanking my lucky stars that the Ron Paul fans were there,” said Jimmy LaSalva, the executive director of GOProud, in a Saturday interview with The Independent. “The Campaign for Liberty deserves a lot of credit for setting that tone.”

Paul’s influence surfaced in other ways that were less helpful for CPAC’s optics. The far-right John Birch Society, of which Paul has been a longtime supporter, made a showy return to the mainstream conservative fold with a co-sponsorship and booth at CPAC; because the organization helpfully offered free, spacious merchandise bags, plenty of CPAC attendees walked around sporting JBS logos. Oath Keepers, a year-old coalition of right-wing military veterans, helped distribute copies of the Paul documentary — a favor to Paul activist Michael Moresco, who had won the organization’s “citizen activist of the year” award for biking from the Statue of Liberty to Alcatraz Prison. “It’s the direction I think this country’s headed,” said Moresco — from freedom to imprisonment.

But far from being controversial, Paul’s critique of conservatism — that the GOP lost its way by growing government and must promise to slash and abolish as much as possible if it wins again — was a constant theme. It was present on Saturday when Ann Coulter, a CPAC star for whom the ballroom filled up an hour before her speech began, argued that conservatives needed to abolish the IRS and the CIA. When she ran out of jokes about John Edwards’s sexuality and Ted Kennedy’s drinking, she suggested that the GOP needed a no-to-everything philosophy similar to Paul’s. She paused and mugged when that inspired a chant of “End the Fed” — a Paul-divined slogan.

“I’m curious about this movement over there for eliminating the Fed,” said Coulter. “Yes, End the Fed.” She answered a Paul fan’s question by admitting that “if Ron Paul supports it and it’s not about foreign policy, I’m for it.”

On the surface, rhetoric like that contradicted a much-noticed CPAC theme — praise for George W. Bush. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told The Independent that Bush boosterism was a friendly show of support for “our guy” after eight years of drubbing by liberals. And that was it.

“For seven years he didn’t speak at CPAC,” said Norquist. “The eighth year we didn’t want him and he showed up because CPAC was one of the only places he could speak to without being booed. Here was a man who deliberately divorced himself from the movement.” Medicare Part D, the Department of Homeland Security, and all the rest of it hadn’t been forgotten.

Outside of the conference, some critics accused activists of a kind of nihilism that wouldn’t be productive for Republicans. “CPAC has becoming increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years,” grumbled Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show, “one of the reasons I didn’t go this year.”

Huckabee would only allow that the Paul win reflected “the anger and the mood” that was fueling Tea Party protests and Democratic losses in some key elections. In a separate straw poll question on activists’ opinions of conservative leaders, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) was found to be the most popular figure in Republican politics– 71 percent said they liked him. In the Senate, DeMint has worked to block and filibuster as many Democratic initiatives as possible while proposing government-slashing, entitlement-cutting, brazen bills of the kind Paul’s long discussed. At CPAC, he said he’d rather have a Senate with “30 Marco Rubios” — the Florida candidate for Senate who keynoted the conference — than “60 Arlen Specters.” When asked how that made sense in the era of constant filibusters, DeMint said a crisis would lead the way to more pure policy.

“In the short term, we can’t expect to get any of our ideas through,” DeMint told The Independent. “But at some point, we’re going to be forced to do something. It’s not going to be so much a matter of political philosophy if we can’t pay our debts and we’re facing default. At that point I think you’re going to see even liberals realize we don’t have any choice. We just need to be in a position where we have enough conservatives to come up with some functional policies to get us out of this.” DeMint shook his head. “I hope it won’t take a complete breakdown for us to come together.”

Paul wasn’t around to enjoy his triumph. On Saturday morning, he returned to his east Texas district to debate three opponents in his early March Republican primary. But before leaving on Friday night, he reflected on how and why his constant refrain for fiscal austerity and abolishing most 20th century government expansion had become Republican dogma.

“When I went back to Congress in 1996, Tom DeLay came out to a function in my district,” Paul told The Independent. “He came out of it and he said, ‘You know what? Ron said that 20 years ago! Now it’s the same message and 20 more years.’” Paul turned and stopped to talk with a gushing middle-aged fan, then turned back to The Independent.

“And with more credibility on the economics!”

Pawlenty’s PAC, Freedom First, and its website are barely three months old. But a makeover by Terra Eclipse suggests Paul-sized ambitions or better. At The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder writes:

Pawlenty advisers have promised to build a top-notch Internet-based campaign infrastructure. What Pawlenty needs now are supporters to harness, and, with solid social conservative credentials in hand, he’s making a play for the anti-tax, Club for Growth types.

The old site took hits for lack of subtlety (the news feed carried headlines that outed T-Paw as a presidential candidate, a topic he still dances around) and a mountainous landscape that didn’t say “Minnesota.”

The new sites puts its average-Joe testimonials about freedom into an interactive Google Maps format, enlarges and renames the “Freedom Feed,” foregrounds Facebook (15,000 fans), and tacks on other clickable doodads. (The mountains are gone, replaced with a more appropriately horizontal field.)

The new site isn’t static: the main banner rotates between a pitch to help Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate bid in Massachusetts, a stop-spending slogan, and the freedom-quotes map.

It will be interesting to see whether Minnesota realities intrude on Freedom First’s corner of the Internet. Notes Ambinder:

The new website will highlight Pawlenty’s national theme for the first half of 2010: fiscal responsibility and stewardship.  His state needs stewardship: it faces a $1.2 billion budget shortfall and is dealing with a court order to that could turn out his unilateral reallocation of about  $1.8 billion in education funding, forcing school districts to borrow the money.

[Via Polinaut]

Adam Kokesh at an antiwar rally in September 2007. Photo: Flickr user ragessos

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had barely begun to give his acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention when a clamor went up in the upper levels of St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center. Adam Kokesh, a Marine who had become a leader of Iraq Veterans Against the War, stood up and unfurled a banner with two sides. On the first side: “YOU CAN’T WIN AN OCCUPATION.” On the other side: “MCCAIN VOTES AGAINST VETS.”

Security guards went into action and dealt with Kokesh’s banner; an irritated crowd of Republicans chanted “USA” until the banner was removed. McCain moved right on, but Kokesh hadn’t finished yet.

“I’m grateful to the president of the United States for leading us in these dark days following the worst attack in American history,” said McCain.

“Ask McCain why he votes against veterans!” shouted Kokesh.

He didn’t get another chance to rain on McCain’s parade, but Kokesh remained proud of what he did. A video that cut together the interruption with jokes, subtitles, and a pounding soundtrack went up on Kokesh’s YouTube account. It’s still there, even though Kokesh’s relationship to the Republican Party is very different now. He’s a candidate for Congress in New Mexico’s 3rd district, looking like the Republican front-runner just one short year after he crashed the convention. Over the course of a year, he’s made the move from confrontation-seeking anti-war activist to clean-cut politician in the mold of the man he supported in 2008, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

“The ground has really shifted away from the neocon agenda,” Kokesh told the Washington Independent during a break in his campaign schedule. “There was no influx of young people getting into the Republican Party to support John McCain. By contrast, Ron Paul brought a huge number of young people into the Republican Party. It’s really exciting to see that happening again with my campaign.”

Kokesh’s move into electoral politics–he is 27 years old, and this is his first stab at campaigning–unifies two trends that have made the GOP that will fight the midterm elections dramatically different than the one Kokesh used to protest. The first is the rise of Ron Paul’s libertarianism. After years of obscurity, Paul came out of the 2008 elections with a national fundraising base and new respect for his ideas about war and economics among Republican activists and voters. The second trend is the Tea Party movement. After feeling ignored by George W. Bush’s Republicans, the conservative base has come together to demand commitment to the Constitution, commitment to small government values, and guarantees of national and state sovereignty.

“He never had an official role in the campaign, but we could count on him to energize people,” said Jesse Benton, Paul’s spokesman. Kokesh was a late edition to Paul’s 2008 “Rally for the Republic,” an event meant to “bring the Republican Party back to its roots” held in Minneapolis before McCain’s address to the RNC in 2008.

“I’d like to think that this symbolizes some good old-fashioned traditional conservatism making a comeback in the GOP,” said Benton. “Republicans have seen that running as the ‘war party’ is a loser for them.”

Today, Kokesh argues that the efforts of Paul supporters look more or less successful. Bush-era “neocons” are out of the political mainstream, replaced by people like him. “Our nation is drifting dangerously from freedom to fascism,” Kokesh said at a July 2008 rally for Paul in Washington, D.C.; at a 2007 Senate hearing, he was photographed holding up a tally of how many times then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had said “I don’t recall.” But rhetoric that sounded out of the mainstream that year sounds perfectly in line with the comments of Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) or Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and criticism of the GOP or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are no longer controversial in the party’s grassroots.

“If you want to compare to Washington, yes, I’m a radical extremist,” Kokesh said. “If you want to compare me to normal American values, I’m right in the middle of the road. I’m finding out that the grassroots of both parties are so grossly misrepresented by their representatives in Washington that we have more in common with each other.”

Depending on who’s analyzing the race, New Mexico’s third district is either an ideal or a poorly chosen battlefield for a candidate like Kokesh. It’s the most Democratic-leaning district in the state, having given 61 percent of the vote to the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), the freshman that Kokesh wants to challenge, won his election by 27 points, spending $1.5 million to fend off a Republican who spent only $190,000. One Democratic insider labeled Kokesh as an interesting candidate with an interesting strategy and no chance to win.

“There is almost zero chance this seat will change hands,” said David Wasserman, House race editor of the Cook Political Report, which ranks NM-3 the 133rd bluest seat in America. “It is just too Democratic.”

Still, Democrats and Republicans in the district, with the election 11 months away, expressed some respect for a first-time campaigner (Kokesh is 27 years old) who cleaned up for politics in a hurry. His connections to Ron Paul’s movement have allowed him to raise near $150,000 in a few months since entering the campaign in August.

“He’s an interesting candidate,” said Richard Ellenberg, chairman of the Santa Fe County Democratic Party. “There are some people who surprise me with–I almost want to call it their ’star-struck’ approach to this campaign. They were star-struck by Obama and they’re star-struck by Kokesh.”

A spokeswoman for the New Mexico Republican Party told the Washington Independent that the presence of another candidate in the Republican primary–Tom Mullins, another first-time politician–prevents the party from saying anything more than how its members are “excited to have strong candidates in this district.” But John Otter, a founder of the Green Party of the United States who is the party’s treasurer in Santa Fe, said that Kokesh had a shot at winning over anti-war liberals.

“Personally, I’d vote for him,” said Otter. “I’d be be attracted to someone with a position against the war. Lujan was elected with liberal votes, and he’s just gone with the flow.”

Kokesh’s appeal has a lot to do with the hard-edged activism that launched his career. He has traded in military fatigues for suits and plaid shirts. “I think people have told him that the one-fisted Black Panther salute might not sell anymore,” said Jesse Benton. His message, however, is the same anti-war libertarian populism that used to get him kicked out of buildings.

“You can’t just start chanting ‘End the Fed’ at a GOP county meeting,” said Kokesh. “You have to take a step back and explain this perspective on monetary policy. But what’s so exciting now, in terms of the opportunity presented by this horrible economic situation is that you can start teaching these Austrian economic principles, and all of a sudden they don’t seem so abstract because you can connect them to what’s happening in real life.”

Mullins, who entered the race in October and is running a more traditional Republican campaign, has not chosen to make an issue out of Kokesh’s anti-war activism or argue that his opponent is out of the party mainstream. “I disagree with his characterization of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as ‘occupations,’” said Mullins. “I think the president made the right decision, and we should finish the job, but to be honest the war doesn’t come up much right now.”

Kokesh agreed with Mullins, after smiling at how his opponent had tried to publicize his own libertarian credentials. (”He’s holding a copy of The Road to Serfdom on his website,” said Kokesh. “Of course, he’s also holding up a copy of Going Rogue.”) Anti-war activists are key to the Kokesh campaign. He received an attention-getting endorsement from former Sen. Mike Gravel, and he’s publicized his support from Tina Richards, a “marine mom” who gained notoriety after a heated 2007 confrontation with Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wisc.) over why Democrats refused to cut off funding for the Iraq War. But the issue that got him to confront John McCain isn’t motivating voters in New Mexico.

“Most of them don’t care, and that’s really sad,” said Kokesh. “It’s not just Republicans, but all voters. The Obama administration is keeping up the Bush policy of keeping Americans isolated from the war.”

But Democrats, even as they write off his chances at a win, say Kokesh’s transition from the anti-war movement to anti-Fed, libertarian populism is coming at a perfect time.

“I think he’s trying to pick up a national mantle, as a national personality in the Ron Paul mode,” said Ellenberg. “I think he’s been successful so far.”

Lynne Torgerson charts her own course, telling the Minnesota Independent in an interview that she considers herself almost “apolitical.”

The Minneapolis criminal-defense attorney unsuccessfully sought election as an independent to the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 59A last year. Republican Party delegates endorsed Felix Montez over Torgerson in that race, and the Independence Party candidate, David DeGrio, says he ran in part to keep her views out of the IP. Incumbent DFLer Diane Loeffler won re-election with 13,785 votes (75 percent), to Montez’s 2,530, Torgerson’s 1,238 and DeGrio’s 723.

Torgerson said she won’t seek endorsement by a political party this time around. (Barb Davis White, who challenged Ellison last year as the Republican endorsee, will again attempt to unseat him next year.) That’s partly why she describes herself as a “stateswoman,” rather than as a “politician” — the kind of candidate who she says too often toes a party line rather than stands for deeply held principles.

Her views on Islam dominate the “Issues” page at her new campaign website, but they weren’t what Republican and Independence party officials remembered about her when MnIndy asked.

Carleton Crawford, who chairs the Republican Party of Minnesota’s Fifth District committee, told MnIndy by email that Torgerson failed to get the GOP endorsement in 2008 because delegates sought someone more in line with U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy.

“Felix Montez associated his campaign with the Ron Paul movement. I don’t think Ms. Torgerson’s defeat had much to do with the strengths or weaknesses of her campaign (or for that matter of Mr. Montez). She simply was not part of the movement that happened to be steering local Republican politics at the time.”

The IP’s DeGrio told MnIndy that a meeting he had with Torgerson about IP backing led him to seek (and win) the endorsement himself. “I had many reasons for running but one of them was to keep Lynne Torgerson from poisoning the IP brand,” DeGrio wrote in an email.

He explained: “When I told her that a winning campaign would need to incorporate a platform of equality and inclusion she told me, to the effect, ‘Well I don’t support those ideas.’ When I pressed her further for a little more understanding of her position she told me that her views were ‘consistent with the Catholic Church.’ She used that answer quite often when discussing issues such as GLBT equality, a woman’s right to choose, etc.”

Torgerson told MnIndy she is a Christian but not a Catholic. She said she points out when her own views align with Catholic doctrine as a convenient way to communicate to voters her approach on some issues.

Torgerson counts herself among “people who say where they stand rather than deceive people” — – even if that means offending some, for which she apologizes in advance at her website. She offers an extensive 18-topic platform on the “Issues” page at her campaign website.

Torgerson would oppose bills that support abortion or research with embryonic stem cells. She is for animal rights and against cloned beef cattle and genetically modified agriculture. She favors health care reform with a public option and wants credit card companies reined in. She advocates substantial tax credits for alternative energy. She would ban or restrict American companies from outsourcing jobs beyond America’s borders. She decries the auto bailout, which she sees as payback to labor unions who funded President Obama’s campaign.

On gay marriage, Torgerson states on her campaign website: “I would uphold laws instituting one (1) man one (1) woman marriage. Marriage was actually created by God, and God created it between a man and a woman. Thus, anything else is actually not marriage, even though some would try to call it that.”

That’s all she writes on the issue at her website; in person she adds only that she wants to be upfront with how she would vote.

Torgerson’s views on Islam make up a third of the text on her “Issues” page, falling mainly under a single heading: “Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion.”

A sample:

And, what do I know of Islam? Well, I know of 911. Nineteen (19) men from Saudi Arabia, all Muslim, hi-jacked planes, and flew into the two (2) World Trade Towers murdering thousands of people, and tried to fly into our Pentagon, and some believe they also tried to fly an airplane into our White House. From this, what I perceive is Islam conducting an act of war against my country.

People say that we can’t include the moderate, peace loving Muslims. Well, I agree.  But, who are they?  They need to stand up and identify themselves loudly and clearly say that they oppose Jihad and terrorism, etc. Who are these people? I cannot tell.  It is not for me to go and try and find them. Rather, it is their duty to stand up and identify themselves, if there are any.

Torgerson told the Minnesota Independent that for this, her second run at elective office, she set her sights on Congress because she has “an interest at the national level.” She also said inspiration to run came from constitutional issues she deals with in defending the accused in criminal courts — including a current case in which she accomplished the rare feat of convincing a federal circuit court to reverse a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling on habeus corpus grounds. (The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering an appeal by the State of Minnesota.)

Indeed she frames several of her objections to Islam in terms of the U.S. Constitution. Islamic teachings advocate murder of non-Muslims, she charges, putting the religion at least partly outside the protection of the First Amendment, which is also contravened by Islam’s goal to “Islamize the entire world,” as she puts it. Islam’s oppression of women, she contends, violates the Constitution’s equal-protection clause.

On her website and in person, Torgerson stresses that she doesn’t mean to hurt or offend anyone. Rather her intention, she writes, is “to advance the protection of freedom of speech and religion in America.”

“I think we as Americans are very tolerant. I’m very tolerant,” Torgerson told MnIndy. “There’s a problem of a good number of Muslims being intolerant. … They need to become tolerant of us.”

She cited examples such as the uproar in 2005 and 2006 over the publication of editorial cartoons depicting Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. Criticism of Islam “is pure speech,” she said. “It’s protected. Nobody gets to riot because of it. Nobody gets to kill people because of it.”

Torgerson cites as well the 2004 assassination of Dutch director Theo Van Gogh for making a short film based on Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book “Infidel.”

Muslims “have teachings that are essentially criminal,” Torgerson said. She didn’t have a ready citation from the Quran but followed up by email to MnIndy:

“Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush.” (Sura 9:5)

Idolaters are anyone who is not Muslim. Slay means to kill. Therefore, the Quran says to kill anyone who is not a Muslim. Simple.

In America, the recent decision by Yale University Press not to include the cartoons in a book about the controversy is evidence of Islam’s threat to American liberties, in Torgerson’s view.

“I don’t want other cultures coming into the United States and chilling our freedoms,” she said, adding that it offends her to see Muslim couples downtown walking with the man several paces ahead of the woman.

Under Islam “women aren’t treated very well,” Torgerson says. “I don’t want that influence on my life. It concerns me.”

“We went too far with Keith Ellison”

None of her objections to Islam, Torgerson said, amounts to any kind of “personal animosity” towards Ellison, who she used to see in courthouse hallways when he, too, was a practicing criminal defense attorney.

Nevertheless she doesn’t like Ellison’s links to leaders of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which also drew fire from Ellison’s opponents during the 2006 campaign for Congress. “A United States legislator shouldn’t be cozying up with people … that are friendly to terrorists,” she says, referencing charges that CAIR supports Hamas.

That leads her to this conclusion on her campaign website:

Now, with all due respect, America, and its people, should be lauded for its goal of promoting to public office and other high ranks, people of color, African Americans, women, minorities, etc.  However, quite frankly, in our zeal, we simply went too far with Keith Ellison.  Keith Ellison simply is not a proper person to have in our federal government. … Keith Ellison has no business in our federal government.

Won’t unseating a DFL incumbent in a heavily Democratic U.S. House district be even more difficult than unseating a state House incumbent? Torgerson expressed the same determination in her chances as in her beliefs and her right to express them.

“I’m not a quitter,” Torgerson said. “I’m relentless and it’s served me well. You never know what can happen in the United States.”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

METRO AREA: Pay again to use your roads. Congestion pricing brings tolls to more highways on Wednesday. [Minnesota Public Radio]

MINNEAPOLIS: What’s bad for newspapers is good for incumbents. Braublog digs into the Star Tribune’s latest retrenchment: endorsing only in local races with open seats. [MinnPost]

MINNEAPOLIS: Show us the itinerary. The Strib’s editorial board did find time to ask Gov. Pawlenty to say more about what he’s doing with his. [Star Tribune]

MONTEVIDEO: Don’t call them sisters. Unlike sister cities Minneapolis and Najaf, Iraq, the cities of Montevideo, Minn., and Montevideo, Uraguay, have the same name, so they’re just “Partners.” [TPT's Almanac; West Central Tribune]

DULUTH: Jail for sale. Contact ReMax. [Duluth News Tribune]

ST. CLOUD: Eat against racism. A nonprofit attacks a persistent problem with food. [St. Cloud Times]

ROCHESTER: Man punches goose sculpture. It happened outside the public library after a wedding at the Mayo Clinic. [Rochester Post-Bulletin]

]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/45782/am-mn-bachmann-ron-paul-applause/feed 3 http://minnesotaindependent.com/45705/bachmann-ron-paul-fed-audit-woods http://minnesotaindependent.com/45705/bachmann-ron-paul-fed-audit-woods#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:03:21 +0000 Chris Steller http://minnesotaindependent.com/?p=45705

Photo: house.gov

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann had a chance Friday morning to question the top lawyer for the Federal Reserve Bank during hearings into an audit of the Fed proposed by Rep. Ron Paul (with whom she’ll share a stage at the University of Minnesota tonight). “The Federal Reserve seems to have the power to do anything it wants to do without any restrictions whatsoever,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann was talking about Section 13.3 of the Federal Reserve Act, under which the Fed can make discount-rate loans to, for instance, bail out Bear Stearns.

The Fed’s top lawyer, Scott Alvarez (who charmingly begins every answer with “So … “), said the Fed had used its 13.3 powers only in the 1930s and 1960s, not the 1980s as Bachmann suggested. Under later questions on the same topic, he said 13.3 could only be invoked by a supermajority of the Fed’s board and under extreme circumstances.

Alvarez is the first of two witnesses before the House Financial Services Committee today. Next up was bestselling Libertarian author Thomas Woods, whose book “Meltdown” (with a foreward by Paul) Bachmann has studied.

I lost the House video feed for most of Woods’ testimony, but it seems to have gone less well than the average book-signing for him. As the hearing broke up, Woods could be heard off-mic, grumbling: “Good grief, I don’t know why I couldn’t get across what I was trying to say.”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

WINONA: Locals aim to reinstate reciprocity. Gov. Pawlenty put the kibosh on a long-standing tax arrangement for residents of Minnesota who work in Wisconsin (and vice versa).  [Winona Daily News]

EAGAN: State senate candidate mourns T-Paw’s cancellation. David Carlson says Pawlenty will go to Atlanta instead of his Oct. 8 fundraiser. [Facebook]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Green revolutionary to be remembered. At another campus venue on Oct. 8, the U of M will honor alumnus and Nobel Prize winner Normon Borlaug. [Associated Press]

ALBERT LEA: No first lady. When Michele Obama can’t visit, she lets you know by … sending a postcard? [Albert Lea Tribune]

MINNEAPOLIS: Lutheran splinter group rethinking last month’s gay-clergy vote. What happens in Minneapolis gets reconsidered in Indianapolis. [Associated Press]

PIPESTONE: Monument vandals nabbed. Text messages like “backyard in trash can everything is there!!” led cops to objects stolen from the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition building. [Worthington Daily Globe]

Image: yaliberty.org

When we reported two weeks ago that Ron Paul will be joining U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for a town hall meeting, the date hadn’t been set. Now it has: the duo will host a forum for students at the University of Minnesota’s Northrop Auditorium on Friday, September 25.

The event is billed by its host, Young Americans for Liberty, as a “Campus Revolution” — a moniker that seems to meld Paul’s campaign slogan with Bachmann’s March call for an “orderly revolution.” The topics considered include “President Obama’s health care proposal, bailout mania and the rapid rise of government control and spending.”

Bachmann’s popular that weekend: The following day she’ll head down to St. Louis to address the How to Take Back America conference. Sharing the spotlight with Phyllis Schlafly and Mike Huckabee WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah, Bachmann’s lunchtime address comes between “workshop sessions” on topics including “How to defend America vs. missile attack” and  “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.”

The Republican Party of Minnesota, Minneapolis City Republican Committee, College Republicans,  Students for a Conservative Voice and the Minnesota Campaign for Liberty are consponsoring the Bachmann/Paul event.

Correction: WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah, in comments, says he won’t be at the conference. He is, however, a member of the conference host committee.

Photos: bachmann.house.gov, oberstar.org

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s talk of stopping health care reform by fasting, praying and wrist-slitting has prompted not only lefty pundits but a top Democratic colleague to question what’s going on between her ears. Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, remarked Tuesday: “I don’t think God’s talking to her anymore. I think she’s hearing other voices.”

Bachmann said in 2006 that she was running for Congress on God’s recommendation (video), and last month said she would run for president if she “felt that’s what the Lord was calling me to do.”

It wasn’t a one-off gag line for Oberstar, who earlier called Bachmann “a sweet woman” but had this advice for elderly health care reform advocates in Duluth who were planning to visit her: ”Tell her that there are voices other than God that are informing her.” [Via Tom Elko]

It wasn’t immediately clear whether one of those voices is that of Rep. Ron Paul, who has Bachmann’s ear on financial policy and will appear with her at a town hall in her district this month.

Oberstar’s comments are of the sort more commonly heard from cable TV yakkers like Ed Schultz, whose show featured her “psycho talk” two days in a row, and Dan Savage, who linked God-inspired politics to hate rhetoric of the worst sort:

When you have a party that claims to speak for God or says God is on its side, the rhetoric heats up and the anger heats up, because it’s not just a battle about ideas and positions and what’s good for the country and bad for the country. It’s a battle about what God wants and what God doesn’t want. And it’s easier to demagogue about your enemies and to despise them and to dehumanize them in this really personal and vicious way. And the religious right is fomenting this kind of hatred in this country at our peril. I really do think that the Michele Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and consciously, or subconsciously, trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed. This kind of rhetoric — this paranoid style on the religious right, from Birchers to birthers — doesn’t usually end well. And somebody’s got to put the brakes on it. Unfortunately in the Republican Party, there’s no adults left in the room. There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show.

Here’s MSNBC video of Savage (via City Pages) and Schultz (via our sister site the Colorado Independent):

Photo: MnIndy

In an interview with AM 1280 on Saturday, Rep. Michele Bachmann announced that she will have Rep. Ron Paul as her guest for a September town hall forum in St. Cloud.

“I’ll be doing another town hall up in the St. Cloud area in September and we’ll do that on monetary policy. Ron Paul is going to come in and we are going to host something on monetary policy,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann is a convert to the Ron Paul movement, sometimes attending the congressman’s weekly lunches.

“I especially want to speak to the 19- to 20-year olds so they can know what there future will be under this level of debt accumulation and spending,” she added about the forum. “They need to know their future. And so I’m bringing him in so we can have a discussion on monetary policy.”