Posted on 01/10/2009 9:33:20 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
With only a longshot court appeal standing in the way of Democrat Al Franken’s election to the Senate, Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them.
While Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has filed suit to contest the results of a disputed recount process that turned his narrow lead into a 225-vote deficit, his likely defeat stands to turn Franken, the polarizing former “Saturday Night Live” writer, into the senator who launched a thousand direct mail fundraising appeals.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever had an opponent who is so disliked by Republicans as Al Franken,” said Minnesota Republican Party Chair Ron Carey, who cautioned that Coleman’s election challenge could still turn the results back his way. “It’s one thing to lose to an honorable opponent, but Al Franken is not considered an honorable opponent by Minnesota Republicans.”
Marty Seifert, the Republican leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives, said Franken’s long record of antagonizing conservatives would make it difficult for him to connect with voters who supported Coleman.
“It’s going to be hard for Franken to be very effective with any Republicans, in terms of having any credibility with us, just because he’s been so nasty in the past,” Seifert said. “He certainly has callous and very partisan behavior in the past that is beyond the pale.”
According to Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier, Franken’s record as a “flamboyant and aggressive partisan” would make him ripe for criticism back home.
“I think it’s impossible to overstate the hostility Minnesota Republicans feel toward Al Franken,” Schier said. “He will be a very useful fundraising tool.”
Republicans outside Minnesota are equally apoplectic when it comes to Franken. Prominent conservative Rush Limbaugh, who Franken mocked in the title of one of his books, has already jabbed Franken on his radio show, telling listeners in December that Franken “won’t quit [the Senate race] because he doesn’t know how to get a real job…He’s a pathetic figure.”
Democrats are hopeful that the resentment Franken faces from Republicans both within and outside of his home state will not impede his ability to win over his constituents – and his fellow members of the U.S. Senate. They believe that by leaving behind his past as a bomb-throwing entertainer and focusing on issues, he will earn the respect of colleagues and can build on the 42 percent of the vote he won in November.
“Every freshman senator will have a problem fitting in with that crew, but his will be a little more difficult,” said former Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch, who was the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s nominee for governor in 2006.
Hatch, who served as attorney general during the gubernatorial term of former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, said celebrity candidates can’t take the habits of their old jobs with them into office.
“There is this instinct and discipline of 20 or 30 years in the entertainment business…to draw attention,” Hatch said. “He has to have a filter.”
Polling results this week confirmed Franken's precarious position: more Minnesotans have a negative impression of him than a positive one, by a 45 percent to 37 percent margin. Those would be dismal numbers under any circumstances, but for a newly-elected senator they would be particularly alarming.
Matt Entenza, the former DFL Party leader in the Minnesota House, said Franken had defied expectations in the Senate race by restraining his sense of humor and campaigning as a sober workhorse.
“The struggle for the campaign was always trying to communicate that he was a serious guy, and in some ways I think they toned him down almost too much, tried to be almost too serious,” he explained. “You would see local TV anchors giving him questions that were designed to give him an opportunity for a humorous response. He would give a very serious, wonkish policy response.”
Former DFL Sen. Mark Dayton agreed: “He had to show people that he was really serious about issues, that he had a depth of policy understanding.”
It’s not just Democrats who expect Franken, the author of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” will chart a different course in the Senate.
Tim Penny, a former DFL congressman who joined the Minnesota Independence Party to run for governor in 2002, said he expected Franken to be hyper-cautious about reviving concerns about his past career as a comedian and political provocateur.
“I expect that on Capitol Hill he will be a very serious legislator – almost to the extreme,” Penny said.
“I think he’s very determined to separate himself from that image of being nothing but a comedian,” he continued. “I doubt he’ll be accepting very many speaking engagements around the country, and to the extent that he does, I don’t think they’ll get the comedian they’re expecting.”
While Franken’s allies in Minnesota are optimistic about his ability to temper his style to one that is more suited to the Senate, Republicans say self-restraint may not come so easily to such an experienced performer.
“If he was in the U.S. Senate, would there be any professional decorum he could exhibit?” asked Carey, the GOP chairman. “Would he be able to control himself?”
Indeed, at the height of the campaign, even as he was locked in the political equivalent of mortal combat with Coleman, Franken couldn’t quite resist the comedic impulse, consulting on a “Saturday Night Live” skit mocking Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in late September.
“I think that he’ll have a constant battle between the desire for – how shall I put it? – comedic satisfaction and a senatorial image,” said Schier. “Can he help himself? Can he prevent himself from trying to be funny in a controversial way?”
And though Franken may have tried to project a serious image on the campaign trail, he struggled to escape his record as a performer, and some of his more off-color writings wound up in Republican press releases and advertisements.
In May, the Minnesota Republican Party drew attention to an article Franken wrote for Playboy in 2000, titled “Porn-o-Rama!”, charging that it represented “the disrespectful writings of a nearly 50-year-old man who seems to think that women’s bodies are the domain of a man who just wants to have a good time.”
Later in the race, a Coleman ad criticized Franken for writing “tasteless, sexist jokes,” “juicy porn” and “foul-mouthed attacks on anyone he disagrees with.”
The attacks apparently stuck, at least with Republicans. Republican activist Joe Repya, a retired military officer who considered running against Coleman in the GOP primary, said Franken is “viewed by both sides as a mean-spirited, carpet-bagging, foul-mouthed sexist supported by Hollywood money.”
“Franken, to his credit, was able to make enough people believe that he was only a comedian and that his skits and writings didn’t really show his real self,” Repya said.
In addition to his background as a comedian, Penny said Franken could turn out to be a senator whose voting record proves out of the Minnesota political mainstream.
“He will be a very reliable, 90-plus percent vote for the Democratic leadership,” Penny said, suggesting Franken would be “down the line, in synch with the Democratic interest groups.”
With heated criticism likely to come Franken’s way throughout a term in the Senate, Dayton suggested one way Franken’s former career could come in handy.
“I hope he retains a sense of humor,” Dayton said. “A sense of humor is a valuable asset in politics in general, and in the Senate.”
He quickly added: “In the right context.”
If this clown gets seated, the pubs should boycott the senate. Or at the least get up and walk out any time he seats stating that they will not listen to the illegal senator from Minn.
Please note that I said CONSERVATIVES. ;-)
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Your post is spot-on.
Below is a post that I made to a local Minnesota blog regarding the Coleman-Franken race. You may find yourself identifying with my comments as well...
MplsSteve Says:
January 7th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I think that both D and JohnA made valid points about Coleman’s campaign.
There’s absolutely no way in hell that Coleman should have lost to a spectacularly unfunny and unqualified individual like Al Franken. If I were Coleman, I’d be deeply and horrifically embarrassed.
I was a volunteer for Coleman back in ‘02 and have been a small financial contributor for years. But I have said it on other web sites and I’ll say it again here…
Not many Minnesotans can tell you about one thing that Norm Coleman accomplished in his six years in the Senate. Coleman loved to play inside ball while there, something that most Minnesotans (of all political stripes) find infuriating.
Norm Coleman was (and remains) pure vanilla pablum in words and deeds. Now, I certainly didn’t expect him to be a firebrand or an agitator in the Senate. That’s not his type of personality. But I did expect more than what I saw. Even in his apearances on 1280 The Patriot, his words and comments were always vacuous and empty. So much so that they were the words of a man who was afraid to take a stand on anything for fear of upsetting someone.
His campaign was poorly run. His TV ads were empty. He had nothing to run on other than “Hi, I’m Norm Coleman and I’m running for re-election”. He looked like a tired punching bag in his debates with Franken and Barkley. I’d find myself saying to the TV set “Damnit, Coleman! Fight back! Stand up for yourself!”
In Coleman’s defense, there was nothing he could do about the large influx of useful idiots (aka young voters) who went to the polls telling their friends “Oh Dude, wouldn’t if be freaking cool to have a comedian in the Senate?” Those voters, already having been suckered in by Obama’s promises of Change, IOW, a free handout, willingly voted for Franken too.
If you believe the words of the guys at the Powerline blog, they seem to believe that the Coleman Team’s approach to the recount has not been too dis-similiar to the way Coleman conducted himself in the Senate and on the campaign trail - ambiguous and unmotivated.
I believe that if Franken does survive the court challenge, it won’t be long before a large chunk of Minnesota begins to have buyers’ remorse - the type of buyers remorse that occurred back in 2000 after listening to a bloviating ex-wrestler who just happened to be our Governor.
Minnesota, will you ever learn?
***it won’t be long before a large chunk of Minnesota begins to have buyers’ remorse - the type of buyers remorse that occurred back in 2000 after listening to a bloviating ex-wrestler who just happened to be our Governor.***
If MN folks began to have buyer’s remorse over Franken, then could Coleman run for Governor in 2010, assuming Pawlenty doesn’t go for a 3rd term?
Excellent question. There’s actually been talk of a situation like that.
But many people think Pawlenty will go for a third term. He wants to maintain national exposure in case he decides to run for President in 2012 or at the minimum, is a VP pick.
I think the problem is the media, hollywood and academia telling people how to vote. It takes real courage to be a conservative because we have to think for ourselves. Most people would rather not.
Well will the wussy party stand up to this?
Dino Rossi should have led a mob to occupy the State Capitol back in 2005. The GOP Majority should have sent Loretta Sanchez and Mary Landrieu packing in 1997.
Why doesn’t the worthless Supreme Court step in, we have Bush V Gore president.
Al Franken should have rotten tomatoes thrown at him every time he’s in public until HE concedes.
You can thank Bush’s new tone. We have become punching bags. I miss the old days when we did fight back. Case in point, Jerry Weller lost a state rep race in the 1980’s in a recount. For the next 2 years, he whined about being cheated and he won the seat two years later. We need to start acting like homosexual activists. They complain aobut everything and work 24/7 to promote their agenda. We need to do the same.
Sorry, dude. I'm not going out in the street wearing a thong and a feather boa, and I'm not gonna pack another fella's fudge.
It doesn't help that a large chuck of conservative activists refuse to stand up and go after the RAT party's criminal activities in Minnesota because they're mad at "RINO" Norm Coleman for voting against one of their little pet issues. Nevermind the fact Al Franken is totally unfit to hold elective office and would be 10X worse. Talk about cutting off your nose to spit in your face. I fail to see their logic... Norm Coleman only agrees with us 70% of the time, so let's sit back and let a guy who agrees with us 5% of the time and is a drug addled, mentally unhinged psychopath with a disasterious personal financial history steal a Senate seat. Sure, whatever. Maybe they'll feel better having a marxist in office because they "punished" Norm Coleman.
Norm Coleman has actually done a lot of good things to earn the support of conservatives for re-election, like being THE leader in exposing the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, so by not supporting him they're actually doing exactly what they accuse Coleman of doing -- stabbing people in the back who have fought for conservative principles. He's not perfect and he's way too cozy with the RATs on some issues but he's still miles ahead of a true RINO douchebag that does nothing for conservatives (see Mark Kirk)
I'm thinking of posting a full list of "RINO" Norm Coleman's record in the Senate so freepers can take a long hard look at what they'll be losing if they allow Al Franken to steal this election.
If you really can't tell the difference between someone who agrees with you 70% of the time and someone who agrees with you 5% of the time, you probably shouldn't be voting. There's probably over a dozen issues of major importance to conservatives where Coleman and Franken are on opposite sides. Try looking at their positions on abortion, gun rights, traditional marriage, Iraq, Iran, Bush tax cuts, the UN, building a border fence, and Gitmo for starters.
It might not be dead but no elections on that platform will be won at this moment in time. That is not the where the country is at this time.
I certainly do identify with your comments. Very nice. I particularly like the part about being vanilla pablum in words and deeds. That seems to be the RP model these days, fit to a tee.
I disagree and one of the reasons that this election was lost is that people did not have a viable candidate that was fully conservative.
If you look at Franken’s donor list there are so many Hollywood donors...to me it looks like CA gained another senator.
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