The Democratic governor of Minnesota backed down yesterday. Said governor, who claimed to be elected into office with a mandate, has realized that he’s damaging the state of Minnesota. Unlike his election, the election of a republican congress DOES carry a mandate. And that mandate is “no new taxes”. So, after allowing the state to experience a government shutdown for nearly two weeks, the governor accepted a deal that the republicans had offered as far back as June 30.
Despite my serious reservations about your plan, I have concluded that continuing the state government shutdown would be even more destructive for too many Minnesotans,” Dayton wrote to legislative leaders. “Therefore I am willing to agree to something I do not agree with — your proposal — in order to spare our citizens and our state from further damage.
Dayton walked away from the edge. I suspect that he realized his partisan agenda didn’t mesh with the responsibilities of governing a state. And he relented.
This should serve as a guide to national republicans. This is how the debate is to be won.
Reasonable people in America are aware that the policies that we have been following in recent years are not sustainable. We simply can not continue to spend and spend and spend. It simply isn’t gonna work.
In the past, the liberal left has been able to co-opt the democrat party into engaging in baseless class-warfare. The meme that we can tax “someone else” has always worked. As long as we define “someone” else as a group of people smaller than the rest of us, it’s worked. But the game is up. The group of people that we’re gonna have to tax to make this work is getting bigger and bigger. And soon enough, in this case today, the folks are gonna stand up and say “Enough”.
The lesson to the National Republicans is to stand up and fight. The Democrats will relent and agree to sacrifices even they know we have to make. They are the ones held hostage by the wing-nuts of their base. Not us.