Pawlenty isn't acting alone against the DFL

5/27/09
Rochester Post-Bulletin
By Brian Thiel

We all know why most parents warn their children not to take cookies from strangers. It is also risky to take them from people we do know if we eat too many at once.

Since the closing hours of this year's legislative session, the DFL has been sending out bags of PR cookies all over the state, blaming an irresponsible governor who was supposedly acting alone and for his own future political interests.

Your editorial writer gulped the whole bag of those cookies in the poorly reasoned editorial last week parroting the DFL line about the governor. And now columnist Paul Scott seems to have eaten a bunch of them, too.

Minnesotans elected Gov. Pawlenty and matched him with a large but not veto-proof majority from the other party in the Legislature. Nobody -- certainly not the governor -- is acting alone. ALL were elected with lots of support from their respective parties. You have insulted the voters and the party who stand with the governor, implying we are stupid and unrepresented by him.

Obviously your editorial writer and Mr. Scott agree with the DFL majority of legislators that it is more important to continue (with little examination or revision) all the spending policies of the state and to increase taxes to overcome a reduced revenue because of general economic conditions. That is one possible way to have a balanced budget, and your paper is certainly privileged to take that stance in its own unsigned editorials or by printing those from others!

But if you do take that position, please give us better-reasoned editorials. It is NOT the GOP governor standing alone against the DFL (and apparently the interests of the people) saying, "Live within your means." Pawlenty has the full support of a veto-proof minority of legislators, all of whom were duly elected and plenty enough of them who are not blindly loyal.

When you have editorials that better recognize how Minnesota's deeply divided electorate fuels this raging debate about steadily increasing the level of services they expect from the state versus the steadily increasing cost of government and how that impacts our economy, then print those opinions. Until then, don't insult the voters who elected all this diversity of legislators and the governor with the upchuck of writers who ate too many cookies from the DFL political PR bag.

Brian Thiel of Austin is a Republican who last year ran for the District 27 House seat now occupied by Jeanne Poppe.