Polinaut: March 27, 2006 Archive

Briefing - Monday March 27, 2006

Posted at 8:10 AM on March 27, 2006 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

City Hall Scoop talks to Jay Benanav about his political plans. He’s thinking about running for a spot on the Ramsey County District Court bench.

Sonny Perduce. There, I've said it. I love the name. Apparently the voters in Georgia are still thinking about it. A new Rasmussen poll shows he's lost a bit of real estate in his gubernatorial re-election bid.

The New York Times article today, In an Election Year, a Shift in Public Opinion on the War, chronicles a shift among war supporters in Congress. The lead on the story was great, but got me completely off the subject. A politician takes her car to the local oil-change joint, gets out, and jumps in the pit to change her own oil. There's a metaphor there somewhere.... somewhere.....hmmmmmm.

Broken Nails has a play-by-play of the SD65 convention. I just love these things. Minnesota Campaign Report stopped by the SD44 shindig. Residual Forces took on SD51.

Recurring theme of the weekend. Why is the media so concerned about Dean Johnson. I can't find any information on the bonding bill? Don't they care? Psst. Also got a bunch of e-mail, somewhat similarly worded, wondering why the media wasn't keeping track of the legislators' performance on other issues besides Dean Johnson. Pssttt.

From the "I'm not with him" department. GOP's DeWine Stresses Independence.

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Johnson's apology

Posted at 2:39 PM on March 27, 2006 by Bob Collins

It wasn't exactly the Checkers speech, but Sen. Dean Johnson issued his apology on the Senate floor today. Here is is (RealPlayer required).

What's in Pawlenty's future?

Posted at 6:02 PM on March 27, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Rumors about Gov. Pawlenty's Washington aspirations have swirled ever since he announced he was running for the U.S. Senate years ago.

A visit to the toney Club for Growth during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York could've been a little "toe in the water" action. And they liked him and, especially, his no-new-taxes pledge.

In 2005 he pushed -- hard -- for the ethanol bill in last year's Legislature, and then called the agriculture department to get some talking points for a trip to Iowa -- where, you may have heard -- they have some presidential caucuses; significant because Pawlenty wasn't doing any out-of-the-state travelling at the time, so DFLers couldn't complain that he wasn't tending to the state while they and the Republicans were tying it up in knots in the Legislature.

And, of course, he completely ticked off the White House with his effort to set up a Web site for cheaper Canadian drugs, and looked good doing it, which made some seniors -- I hear they're an important voting bloc -- pretty happy since their organization -- AARP -- had pretty much sold them out in Washington's effort to get the issue off the table in the 2004 election.

I thought of all of that this afternoon while listening to him speak during a conference call after returning from a visit to Iraq. In the past, his visits have primarily been of the "boosting the Minnesota soldiers" variety.

But this sounded different... this sounded like a guy muscling up on the foreign policy stuff.

In a few weeks they're arriving in Kuwait and they're going to be training up for three weeks in Kuwait and then from there they'll deploy in country. I hope during that time that the announcement of the formation of a unity government can be made and then things will begin to improve relative to today over time."

Pawlenty was on a delegation that was led by Sen. John McCain. We probably shouldn't read much into that since I believe Sen. Russ Feingold was on that trip too.

But I do anyway. If Pawlenty isn't checking out the national waters, then maybe McCain is taking a look at Pawlenty.

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