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This morning, Mike Hatch was on Midmorning and was greeted by protesters who, I think it's safe to say, are not Minnesota farmers who left Old Bossie in the stantion to go to St. Paul to protest.
I haven't paid much attention to the E-85 controversy, although I acknowledge that if I were a farmer and I sold corn to make a fuel that makes my car get fewer miles per gallon, it'd be high on my radar.
Frankly, there's a good debate surrounding the role of subsidies and alternative fuels and all that. We all know that. We all know it's never going to happen.
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So we're left with the fact that Judi Dutcher had a long day of campaigning at 11 in the morning and didn't know what E-85 is. OK, that's interesting, because it's probably a big 'suck up' issue on the campaign trail (more so than, say, mental health parity, or the current income limits for MinnesotaCare, I'd guess.) and candidates should at least be aware of the suck up issues.
And I'm still wanting to understand what Hatch meant in this quote from Tim Pugmire's story:
"The governor is running against me for governor, and he's behind in the polls, and he's so desperate that he wants to pick a fight with the lieutenant governor, the woman, rather than me..."
Ummmmm. What?
But you know what interested me the most? Channel 5 gave this "space shuttle explosion"-like coverage and KARE 11 gave it about 20 seconds.
I went with Channel 5 because a good friend of mine works for the state and runs around the world pushing ethanol and called me and said, "ya gotta watch Channel 5 tonight!" I'm not sure he was referring to this exchange with a reporter.
"Stanley Hubbard is a political hack and he hires reporters who are political hacks."
It's true, Stan Hubbard (KSTP owner) is a Republican. I don't know who the reporter he was referring to was. But that's not what interested me. (Memo to KSTP: the Dayport stinks.)
What interested me was who Hatch thought he was playing to? He clearly wasn't trying to influence favorable coverage -- and you have to assume he's smart enough to know that -- but is this the "I'm running against the media" strategy which -- and excuse me for saying this -- a lot of candidates resort to when the campaign isn't going so well (see "Party, Green").
Is it a strategy at all, to burnish the "bulldog" image?
How about when you call a reporter a "whore"? What strategy is that?
My guess is a whole bunch of reporters are going to join in following the Hatch campaign this weekend. Because Judi Dutcher ain't the issue anymore.
Republicans have wanted to get Hatch to explode like this for the entire campaign. Forget about whether you agree with him or not. It doesn't matter. But in the last few days, have you noticed that Tim Pawlenty has switched from the negative campaigns to the warm-and-fuzzy ones? They're going to position the guy over the next four days -- I'm guessing -- as a calm, likeable guy next to Hatch's angry outbursts.
And the reporters? They're smelling blood.
Suddenly, the air feels like the last days of the Ventura administration.
