Tom Horner is the Independence Party's candidate for governor in Minnesota. Horner and the GOP nominee Tom Emmer, have been at each others' throats this summer. Emmer's GOP sponsored a complaint against Horner regarding polling data but it was thrown out of court; Horner has charged Emmer's plan to nullify federal laws in Minnesota is a plan to "destroy government."
As that last remark about nullification might tell you: Emmer is a Bachmann fan Republican, the tea party sort. If Emmer wins, that's the ideology that will proceed from the highest political office in Minnesota.
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Emmer's GOP considers Horner a sell-out (i.e. moderate) Republican who joined the Independence Party in order to take moderate Republican votes away from Emmer.
Horner explains his position:
"I have been watching the Republican Party devolve with the rise of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin," Horner said. "There are issues of leadership in the willingness to pander to the extreme right wing."
Horner's not a liberal, not a progressive--just a Minnesota GOP conservative who left the party because he was appalled by trends in the leadership. And he is correct in that Bachmann's rise has led to a change in the Republican Party, nationally and locally. Post-Bachmann, statements that would have gotten politicians marginalized in 2000 are now seen as gateways to GOP nominations. The situation is very serious here in Minnesota, as local imitator politicians capitalize on the loony, conservative talk radio base that Bachmann's career helped to build.
And if you think this is just a "Minnesota nuts" thing, remember: she's a national inspiration...
From Colorado, profile of a GOP congressional candidate in CO-3, from the Durango Herald:
Bob McConnell has a gun.
In the Republican congressional candidate's most popular campaign video, he's sitting outside on a gun range on a sunny day, wearing a black Army Ranger T-shirt and talking about his love for the Second Amendment...
In the video, McConnell fires eight rounds into an Osama bin Laden-headed target with a .45 This video has had more than twenty two thousand hits as of late June, so there is support for "government by summer action movie."
...(McConnell) decided to join a tea party group in his hometown, Steamboat Springs. He found inspiration in a visit by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who is a hero to many in the tea party movement.
"Out of that audience of 200 people, she looked at me in my heart and said, if you're that angry, get involved. You've got all these talents, and your anger is being misdirected. Direct it in a positive way," McConnell said.
And so a congressional campaign was born...
...McConnell wants to return the country's financial system to its pre-1913 condition. He would go back to the gold standard (or some other asset-backed currency), terminate the Federal Reserve, which is the country's central bank and controls the money supply, and end fractional-reserve banking.
http://durangoherald.com/...
And Bachmann was in Denver the other night, appearing before an audience of conservatives to repeat charge that the president and Democratic congress are practicing "tyranny."
Bachmann: "We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves."
She reiterated her concern more forcefully toward the end of the program.
"I think this describes so well where we are right now," Bachmann said before reading an excerpt from C.S. Lewis: "‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of it victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under a robber baron than under omnipotent moral busybodies... .’"
(Editor's note: the irony here is that if Michele Bachmann's mentors ran America, we'd be living under both...)
Bachmann urged the room to not only vote in constitutional conservatives like herself but also to make certain to implore their congressional delegation to vote them into leadership positions.
And if you want to know what agenda Michele Bachmann has for the United States, read the full article, she mentions some specifics that you won't like...
http://coloradoindependent.com/...