Tinklenberg on the 1st ballot

El Tinklenberg won the endorsement at the 6th District DFL Convention. I'm told that 72% of the delegates voted for Tinklenberg on the first ballot. He was seeking the endorsement against Bob Olson. Tinklenberg will now face GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann in November.

It should be noted that Democrats had no problem with recording--audio or video--of their proceedings in the 6th CD. Democrats are the party of openness--unlike the Republicans, who evidently had something to hide because they banned all recording at their 6th CD convention.

I think it has to do with Senator Coleman hitting the rounds. Greasy Norm's standard stump speech in front of GOP activists is VERY different from his standard stump speech in front of normal audiences. Wouldn't want any recent video of him reminding voters that he's a Republican, now would we?

It's kind of pointless, because at the State GOP Convention two years ago, Greasy Norm gave a similar version of his standard GOP activist speech that was taped and still available in full courtesy of MPR. But if recordings had been banned at that convention, and a reporter had merely taken notes on that speech, and then published, say, Greasy Norm's comparison of Bush to Abraham Lincoln in the paper the next day, then Greasy Norm and his goons could have started screaming "Nuh-uh! Didn't say that! Liberal bias!!1!"

Greasy Norm used that tactic quite a bit in 2002: "I never said I favored privatizing Social Security!" "I never said I favored reopening BWCA to motorcraft!" "I never said I opposed reimporting drugs from Canada!" These are all real cases where, since there was no tape of him saying different things to different audiences, he just accused journalists of making up erroneous quotes. The funny thing was, on the BWCA thing, his own website had a link to the news article that "misquoted" him prominently displayed in an approving context until he realized that it was causing him more trouble than it was worth. Then he just scrubbed it and claimed it never happened.