Posted on 11/20/2002 7:23:37 AM PST by Valin
On Norm: Norm Coleman won Minnesota because he was well financed and well packaged. Norm is a slick retail campaigner, the grabbiest and touchingest and feelingest politician in Minnesota history, a hugger and baby-kisser, and he's a genuine boomer candidate who reinvents himself at will.
The guy is a Brooklyn boy who became a left-wing student radical at Hofstra University with hair down to his shoulders, organized antiwar marches, said vile things about Richard Nixon, etc. Then he came west, went to law school, changed his look, went to work in the attorney general's office in Minnesota. Was elected mayor of St. Paul as a moderate Democrat, then swung comfortably over to the Republican side. There was no dazzling light on the road to Damascus, no soul-searching: Norm switched parties as you'd change sport coats.
On the Colemans: All you had to do was look at Coleman's face, that weird smile, the pleading eyes, the anger in the forehead. Or see how poorly his L.A. wife played the part of Mrs. Coleman, posing for pictures with him, standing apart, stiff, angry. Or listen to his artful dodging on the stump, his mastery of that old Republican dance, of employing some Everyguy gestures in the drive to make the world safe for the privileged. What a contrivance this guy is.
Norm and the press: Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president.
On GOP values: The old GOP of fiscal responsibility and principled conservatism and bedrock Main Street values is gone, my dear, and something cynical has taken its place. Thus the use of Iraq as an election ploy, openly, brazenly, from the president and Karl Rove all the way down to Norman Coleman, who came within an inch of accusing Wellstone of being an agent of al-Qaida.
On 9/11: The Republican exploitation of 9/11 for political gain is the sort of foulness that turns young people against the whole business, and for good reason. All sorts of people went down in the World Trade Center, execs and secretaries and bond traders and also the dishwashers in Windows on the World and secretaries and cleaning ladies... . For a cynic like Norman Coleman to hitch his trailer to that tragedy is evil — call it by the right name. To exploit 9/11 and the deaths of those innocent people on that beautiful day in Manhattan — to appropriate that day and infer so clearly that there is a Republican and a Democratic side to it, is offensive to our national memory and obscenely evil, and it was rewarded by the voters of Minnesota.
On Wellstone's plane crash: I personally don't believe he (Coleman) had anything to do with the crash of Paul's plane. Plenty of people suspect he did. I don't. But I do think he is a cynical politician who should make himself scarce for the next few years until people start to forget his campaign.
On Coleman supporters: I know those people. To my own shame, I know them. I'm ashamed of Minnesota for electing this cheap fraud, and I'm ashamed of myself for sitting on my hands, tending to my hoop-stitching, confident that Wellstone would win and that Coleman would wind up with an undersecretaryship in the Commerce Department.
To choose Coleman over Walter Mondale is one of those dumb low-rent mistakes, like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich.
But I don't envy someone who's sold his soul. He's condemned to a life of small arrangements. There will be no passion, no joy, no heroism, for him. He is a hollow man. The next six years are not going to be kind to Norm.
Regards, Ivan
Your feeling is, as usual, reliable. Minnesota, like the rest of the Midwest, has been trending rightward for years. And this is not the first fit of Garrison Keillor pique. He was apoplectic about the 2000 election, working a multitude of shrill, snide comments into his Guy Noir schtick. And before that, during the HillaryCare attempt to nationalize the American health system, he went into a 'Danish' phase where he took every opportunity to unfavorably compare the US with Denmark, of all places.
Oh well, time to again remind NPR that although I listen to their classical music programs, I won't send them a red cent until they cease being a taxpayer funded shill for the left wing of the Democratic party.
So British, yet so wise.
He had the right, of course, but when an entertainer kills the magic, it's pretty hard to get it back.
The short answer to the question posed by the article is: Yes he has always had a mean streak.
Time to defund MPR.
If Norm had stayed a Democrat, would the Repukes have accused Norm of being a "little light in the loafers"?
Just asking.
And it was the RAT party that accused a GOP candidate of being gay for the sole purpose of defeating him at the polls. Remember their "hair dresser" ad?
He never ate a powder-milk biscuit in his life.
He's an old fem who won't come out of the closet. JMHO.
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