Posted on 10/09/2013 10:36:54 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
ST. PAUL, Minn. Former U.S. senator Rod Grams, a popular TV anchorman who went on to become the most conservative politician ever elected to statewide office in Minnesota, has died. He was 65. Grams died late Tuesday night at his home in the east-central Minnesota town of Crown, said Kent Kaiser, a longtime GOP activist and spokesman for the Grams family. Grams had been diagnosed with cancer in April 2012. After nearly a decade as lead news anchor at KMSP-TV in the Twin Cities, Grams launched his political career in 1992 by running for Congress and ousting the Democratic incumbent. The small-business owner then won an open U.S. Senate seat two years later, but he only held the post for one term. He lost his re-election bid to Democrat Mark Dayton, who is now Minnesota's governor.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
A TRUE conservative.
We’ll miss you Rod.
Very sorry to hear this.
Sorry the man died, particularly from the ravages of cancer, but he's no "TRUE conservative."
RIP.
Very sad. Best Senator MN has had since, I don’t know when, ever?
Um he was politically conservative, genius.
You aren’t his judge for his extremely common personal failings which have nothing to do with being “conservative” or not.
Minnesota has had more than its fair share of moonbats and RINO flakes. Unquestionably, Grams was the best voting Senator in the past 7 decades from MN. Coleman probably placed second. Boschwitz was about 3rd. Durenberger was a DIABLO and a crook (he left the GOP and endorsed or voted for Kerry & Zero).
Before those two were Joseph Ball & Ed Thye, both Stassenites. Ball went total flake and endorsed FDR in 1944 (and promptly lost to Hubert Humphrey in 1948, so much for RINO bipartisanship being rewarded). Thye was marginally better, but tried to play both sides when Joe McCarthy was ascendant (”for” him when he was popular, “against” him when he was vilified). He lost to the “other” McCarthy, Gene, in 1958, as part of the mass GOP casualties of that horrible election.
Ironically, Gene McCarthy would go on to endorse Reagan for President, albeit 9 years after he voluntarily retired from the Senate in 1971 (whether he’d have done it had he remained in the Senate is another story). I have a higher opinion of Gene McCarthy than I do of Durenberger. Even Humphrey, as liberal as he was, wasn’t evil like the two cretins sitting in the MN seats today.
I didn’t know that about Ball (the he endorsed FDR) or that Gene McC endorsed Reagan.
Was the base being POed at Ball part of the reason he lost by such a big margin? Truman also whooped Dewey in the state. Was the farm recession the main reason?
Ironically Reagan stumped for HHH against Ball back in his democrat days. Meanwhile Dewey of course loyally campaigned on Ball’s behalf. Too funny, all of it.
According to OurCampaigns, Humphrey endorsed Ball in the 1942 race (!) This was only months before Hump first ran for Minneapolis Mayor, losing to the Republican incumbent (he’d go on to win in 1945, defeating the same man).
I’ll go into why Ball lost by such an embarrassingly wide margin below. Recall, though, he had won by a less-than-47% plurality in 1942 in a 4-man race, so one could say that in a 2-man race with the right candidate, he was vulnerable.
The Democrat Party in MN up until that time had been a very weak, almost desultory party (the Dem in the race came in dead last with 10%). So weak that they hadn’t won the Governorship since 1914 (and the incumbent died shortly after and replaced with the GOP Lt Governor — and they wouldn’t win it again until 1954 with Humphrey disciple Orville Freeman, who later was Sec of Agriculture when HHH was VP). From 1914 until 1944, only 3 Democrats had managed to win Congressional seats. Not that Minnesota was one-party Republican, there was an opposition, and that was the Farmer-Laborite Party, which became a serious force in the early to mid 1920s, and managed to win a respectable number of offices.
I believe it was Humphrey and a number of others that realized that if they could merge the weak Democrats and the FL’ers, they could pose a substantive threat to the GOP. Ironically, two of the FL’ers most prominent members both bolted for the Republicans before the merger (Sen. Henrik Shipstead, who ran outright for the GOP in 1940, preceding Ed Thye, and he was a very strident isolationist, and Congressman Harold Hagen, who jumped with the 1944 elections, when the DFL sent their first two members (of which one would die, and the other would lose in ‘46)).
I was looking about and came across this book, and it more succinctly explains Humphrey’s ambitions and gameplans and his race against the erratic Ball in 1948: (specifically pages 124 onward, “Victory Over Ball”).
http://books.google.com/books?id=wzGabQcvDvcC&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=%22joseph+ball%22+%22hubert+humphrey%22&source=bl&ots=vVJ_Ecx1pp&sig=oklfPoqhq7tf8ZOzACHxk-tTgBg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0XFWUvL1K5La9ASA2IHQBg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22joseph%20ball%22%20%22hubert%20humphrey%22&f=false
It’s pretty clear that Humphrey was very masterful as a strategist, indeed. He was also quite terrified at the prospect of facing liberal Republican Gov. Luther Youngdahl in 1954, that he managed to get President Truman to appoint him to the federal judiciary in 1952 (Truman certainly owed HHH, as he helped pull his bacon out of the fire in ‘48). He drew State Treasurer Val Björnson as an opponent instead, and Björnson ended up performing better than Ball did in 1948, though still lost by 14%.
What was the deal with Martin Nelson, the indie candidate in 1942?
HHH, a master, who knew? I thought he was just your average machine democrat. Sounds like he built the machine.
It took North Dakota democrats 12 years to copy MN with the NPL-rat merger. I’m surprised it took either state so long.
From what I gathered, Nelson (at the time of his earlier runs) was considered part of the “Old Guard” in MN GOP politics. He had been the Republican standard bearer for Governor in the dark days of the ‘30s, but lost twice to the successful Farmer-Laborite candidate.
By 1938, on his 3rd run, he felt that he would likely succeed in taking down the F-L ticket because of the political climate and indeed, received the party convention nod. However, he lost in the succeeding primary to the hard-charging liberal Harold Stassen (who would go on to win the general in that pro-GOP year) and lost again when he challenged Stassen for a 3rd term in 1942.
In between, he also challenged the venerable Sen. Henrik Shipstead after he switched from Farmer-Laborite to GOP in 1940. Oddly, after losing to Stassen for the Gubernatorial primary nod in 1942 was when he shifted to the Senate race (perhaps to try to cripple Stassen’s then-protégé, Joseph Ball, which didn’t materialize).
But, his career finally took off when he was later appointed to the State Supreme Court and would remain there until 1972.
You were right that one reason Ball lost to HHH in ‘48 was that Stassen was REALLY cold to his former protégé.
Indeed, you can see why HHH is so revered in Minnesota by the DFL, since without his leadership and vision in merging the parties, it’s likely the GOP would’ve continued to dominate (a la Wisconsin or North Dakota). Of course, what passed for GOP leadership in the state, especially as embodied by many of the Governors from Stassen onwards, was almost ideologically indistinguishable from the DFL. As squishy and disappointing as Tim Pawlenty was, he was probably the most Conservative GOP Governor since before Stassen.
I mentioned Gov. Luther Youngdahl, the opponent HHH feared the most, he was exceptionally left-wing. I don’t know how much you read that book in the link I gave, but Truman also favored rewarding him with a federal judgeship because he was apparently the ONLY Governor in the United States who had written to Truman after he fired Gen. MacArthur and praised his decision(!) He also dismissed charges against notorious Communist Owen Lattimore while on the bench (though not claiming as such, no doubt there was a political aspect to it — as such would be a thumb in the eye to Sen. Joe McCarthy). Demonstrating what I’ve always maintained, that leftist RINOs are more of an insidious threat and cancer than open leftist Democrats.
Uh, no - he was a lightweight moral scumbag. And I sure as Hell can judge his “extremely common” personal failings. He was supposed to be a leader, not a skirt chasing moral degenerate.
You on the other hand are a “true conservative” for trashing a dead man who was on our side. To the devil with you.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s a bit classless to trash a man in an obituary thread.
Stop being preening morons and listen to someone who happens to know more about the man than either of you. While it is too bad that he died a horrible death, he does not deserve to be lionized.
Look, first of all, I don’t appreciate the personal attack. “Moron” ? I didn’t insult you. I chided you for classless attacks, and now your post goes full-throttle below-the-belt crude and nasty. You don’t like the man ? Fine. I pointed out that his voting record placed him as the best voting member from Minnesota in 6 decades and preceded to outline my case for that. A “moron” wouldn’t know who the Senators from Minnesota were in 1948 or 1968.
Secondly, your indictment of him on how he failed to do this or that is also disingenuous. He defeated a troubled 5 term incumbent in 1992, Democrat Gerry Sikorski, with 44% in a Dem-leaning seat in a multi-candidate field. He was going to have a potentially difficult time since the Democrats pushed new lines for 1994. It was certainly not Grams’s fault that the 6th voted for Democrat Bill Luther over Tad Jude by a narrow margin (no more than it was Rick Santorum’s fault in Pennsylvania when he moved up to the Senate in that same election from the House, and his district elected a Democrat to replace him).
BTW, Colin Peterson is in the Northwest MN 7th district, as he has since 1991, not the 6th (a shocking gaffe for someone accusing others of being a “preening moron”). Rejiggered somewhat, this is now Michele Bachmann’s district.
As for claiming he “let” Dayton beat him in 2000, I might remind you again that Grams won his Senate race in 1994 with 49%, in a pro-GOP year, which meant he was going to have a difficult time regardless. He was constantly and viciously attacked in the media from Jump Street, especially by the Red Star. Dayton merely had to use his limitless fortune to buy the office, which he’s spent his career doing (and as he did in 2010 for the Governorship). Grams couldn’t point a gun at the state electorate in 2000 and “demand” they reelect him. I might remind you again that we lost a number of GOP Senators in 2000, not just Grams.
You are a terrible person. I hope you felt real superior trashing a dead guy who was on our side on his obit thread. Happy trails.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.