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Thursday, July 07, 2005
Minnesota midterms: Senate and 2nd CD
MN Publius has two updates on the DFL contenders for Mark Dayton's Senate seat. Amy Klobuchar has raised over $1.1 million for her campaign, while Patty Wetterling has about a third of that total in her account. Despite Wetterling's fund raising woes, I'm not going to join MN Publius's call for her to drop out of the race. Klobuchar, now the odds-on favorite, will be running her first statewide campaign. Let her prove herself against friendlier fire first. There's plenty of time for Klobuchar to demonstrate her ability as a candidate and for Wetterling to jump back into the 6th district race.
On the Republican side, Rod Grams is already officially out.
Coleen Rowley officially announced her campaign for Congress in Minnesota's second district. I can't say I'm impressed by her campaign motto: "Always try". You don't have to be Yoda to find the punchline in that motto.
Teresa Daly, who earned 40% of the vote in her campaign incumbent John Kline in 2004, is leaning toward running again. The Burnsville city councilwoman will face tough sledding against Rowley, who enjoys high name recognition, CNN coverage, and DCCC support. Again, I see a lot of positives in a vigorous, respectful primary campaign. Both Daly and Rowley would benefit from a primary campaign that allows them to hone their messages, provided they don't bankrupt each other in the process.
You can listen to an extended interview with Rowley on Inside Minnesota Politics. Rowley has that Cyndy Brucato nasally Minnesota twang that should play better than Kline's Texan drawl, at least with the hot dish crowd.
Rowley has a brother serving in Afghanistan and a daughter in the Navy ROTC, but that won't stop the ridiculous right from claiming she's not American enough:
COLEEN ROWLEY'S ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH PROVES ROVE WAS RIGHT
"AG Ashcroft’s decision to seek the death penalty for Moussaoui also set a 'no holds barred' tone. But such draconian charges were accompanied by a significant cost to law enforcement and the effort to prevent further acts of terrorism. It made it impossible to attempt to interrogate and seek the suspect’s cooperation, something that would otherwise be standard operating procedure and which proved successful in most other terrorist cases -- for example the 1993 WTC bombing, the African embassy bombings and the case against the millennium Al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ressam."
Instead of defeating terrorists, Rowley would seek their "cooperation" in investigations.
It's clear Rowley believes terrorism is a criminal act rather than an act of war.
Yes, MDE, Coleen Rowley views the criminal prosecution of Moussaoui as a criminal matter. Just like Bush, Ashcroft, and everyone on down in the Republican party. You can tell by the criminal complaint.
Stupid is as stupid does, so that sentence is forgivable. What's not forgivable is the deep dishonesty in the use of the word "cooperation". Rowley is suggesting that the federal government should have offered to forgo the death penalty in exchange for valuable information about the identities and locations of other terrorists. For example, did he know where Osama Bin Laden was? Ashcroft was more interested in retribution than information and refused to offer Moussaoui any kind of deal.
One can disagree with Rowley's assessment. One can conclude that Ashcroft rightly refused to offer Moussaoui life in prison rather than the death penalty because Moussaoui had no useful information or was too unreliable. That's an honest interpretation of events. MDE doesn't do honesty. Instead, he takes the word "cooperation", changes the context, and claims that Rowley doesn't want to defeat terrorists -- she wants to cooperate with them. That's dishonest, reprehensible, and a badge of honor for the radical right which is more concerned with pitting Americans against each other for petty partisan advantage than building a united front against terror.
