SD41 Convention -- Some Impressions (Part One)

The Benster and I attended the SD41 Republican convention today at Columbia Heights High School. A few thoughts and observations:

• For those who aren't familiar with the area, it needs to be said that SD41 is a dog's breakfast of a district (PDF link) and one that's highly unfavorable for Republicans. It contains all of Columbia Heights and Hilltop, which are typically about 70% DFL, all of St. Anthony (purplish, at best) and New Brighton (also purplish), Fridley (majority DFL) and part of Spring Lake Park (purplish). It's tough territory to win and the politicians who dominate the district are from Columbia Heights. It's tough sledding for the GOP and the statewide candidates who came through our convention with the understanding that they wouldn't win SD41. Although it wasn't said explicitly, what the statewide candidates are hoping is that the Republican organization in our district can win enough votes to keep things close and avoid a 70-30 DFL victory margin in the parts of the district that aren't Columbia Heights. 
• Having said that, we do have candidates who are willing to run for the two house seats, and one of them is potentially very good. The candidate for 41A, the north half of the district, is Jeff Phillips, and he is an impressive guy. He's a law student at the University of Minnesota and has been working as a clerk for the Institute for Justice, who are definitely good guys in the realm of property rights and constitutional jurisprudence. He made a very favorable impression with the delegation and intellectually he'll have no trouble being on stage against the incumbent, Connie Bernardy. We can safely assume that Bernardy, who is essentially a rubber stamp for Education Minnesota, will be doing her level best to avoid any opportunity for a direct comparison.
• The candidate for 41B is Camden Pike, a young (only 26) man who has been active in party politics in the area. Camden is a bright guy and tends to be a bit of a libertarian. He's not as polished as Phillips, but he's willing to work hard and I think he'll be fairly effective at retail politics. His opponent, Carolyn Laine, is a loyal DFL foot soldier who hasn't done much of anything in the legislature, but because she's from Columbia Heights and has DFL after her name, she's not required to do much other than vote the party line. Camden has a tough row to hoe.
• What little drama there was at the convention came from the continuing antics of Tim Utz, who ran against Laine under the Republican banner a few cycles back, did poorly, became bitter with the GOP, and has been flying under the Constitution Party banner ever since. He's gained some notice in the area because he's fond of cruising around in a lime sherbet green school bus, Paul Wellstone style. He's disavowed the Republican Party, but continues to show up at GOP events and causes mischief, as he did today, skulking about in the lobby outside the convention itself. He has a fairly small band of acolytes who continue to do the hokey-pokey with the local GOP organization; a few of them came to the BPOU caucus in February and got elected as delegates. After Utz was not allowed to speak today, they tried to derail a formal endorsement of Pike for the 41B seat, explaining how it would be better for Pike if he didn't have the Republican label attached to his campaign; it was a touching gesture, really. Their efforts ultimately went nowhere, of course, but Utz is going to remain an issue because he's fond of playing the "true conservative" music. If he follows his typical pattern, he'll now be going around the district talking about how Republicans are repressing him, or something. He'll then go to the Constitution Party convention, which can typically be held in a booth at the IHOP on Stinson Boulevard. He's certainly going to run again, try to present himself as the true conservative in the race, and will do his best to drain votes away from the Republican candidate. It's too bad, but it's a free country and he's got every right to be a counterproductive gadfly. I'm certain that Carolyn Laine and the rest of the Columbia Heights DFL appart appreciates Utz's efforts, though.
• We got a look at least one potential GOP challenger to Betty McCollum for Senate, Sharna Wahlgren, who is a patent lawyer for a large Minneapolis firm. She's much like previous McCollum challengers Theresa Collett and Ed Matthews -- exceptionally smart, very polished and, like Collett and Matthews, clearly superior to McCollum. Assuming Wahlgren gets the nod, she'll be ignored and denied an opportunity to have any visibility, let alone a side-by-side comparison. I hope it's different this time, but I'm not ready to get my hopes up yet. I suspect the only way McCollum will ever be ousted is if some ambitious Ramsey County DFLer gets tired of waiting for Betty to leave and finally decides to primary her. John Choi, pick up the white courtesy phone....

We also got a look at a number of governor and senate candidates. I'll get to that tomorrow.

SD41 Convention this morning

It's at Columbia Heights High School. The Benster and I will be there and we'll have a full report later on.

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

Bernie Sanders is tanned, rested, and ready:

Bernie Sanders says he is “prepared to run for president of the United States.” That’s not a formal announcement. A lot can change between now and 2016, and the populist senator from Vermont bristles at the whole notion of a permanent campaign. But Sanders has begun talking with savvy progressive political strategists, traveling to unexpected locations such as Alabama and entertaining the process questions that this most issue-focused member of the Senate has traditionally avoided.

In some senses, Sanders is the unlikeliest of prospects: an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has never joined the party, a democratic socialist in a country where many politicians fear the label “liberal,” an outspoken critic of the economic, environmental and social status quo who rips “the ruling class” and calls out the Koch brothers by name. Yet, he has served as the mayor of his state’s largest city, beaten a Republican incumbent for the US House, won and held a historically Republican Senate seat and served longer as an independent member of Congress than anyone else. And he says his political instincts tell him America is ready for a “political revolution.”

Get in there, Bernie. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Rice and Rituals

Condoleeza Rice is supposed to give the commencement address at Rutgers University, but it's not going well for the folks at Rutgers who came up with the idea -- the "community" is organizing against her, claiming that Rice lacks "moral authority," or something. Juan Williams points out the obvious, yet again:

I am not a conservative but I have spoken out for years against the staggering amount blind hatred directed at black conservatives by liberals.

Liberals are shockingly quick to demean and dismiss brilliant black people like Rice, Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Professor Walter E. Williams and economist Thomas Sowell because they don’t fit into the role they have carved out for a black person in America.

Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom.

Carson would be Ben Carson, who is becoming persona non grata at Johns Hopkins because he's not so keen on Obamacare, among other things, even though he'd been head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.

It's not that shocking, actually, and I suspect that Williams knows it. We have our own commissars right here in River City, too. Williams asks a plaintive rhetorical question:

This shunning of Rice is especially troubling coming from a great American university. This is the place where debate and dissenting views are to be valued as sacred.

Rutgers’s own university mission statement says that one of its goals is to produce students who perform “public service in support of the needs of the citizens of the state and its local, county, and state governments.”

How is the public served by muzzling one of the most thoughtful, accomplished and respected political voices of her time just because she happens to be a Republican?

How is the public served? Well, having the reigning orthodoxy enforced is always a public service, because the orthodoxy is never wrong, at least as long as you're in agreement with it. And places like Rutgers and Johns Hopkins perform these rituals for precisely the same reason that the Romans would do crucifixions on the highway or in other public places -- you need to make sure that people see first hand what happens to dissenters.

Gettin' Lackey With It

Things aren't getting any better in Venezuela, but the insults are pretty good:

Venezuela's President severed diplomatic relations with Panama Wednesday, accusing the Central American nation of being a "lackey" for the United States in a conspiracy plot against his government.

"There are maneuvers by the U.S. government plotting with a lackey government that has a right-wing president who is leaving in the next few months, who is not worthy of his people, who has been working actively against Venezuela," President Nicolas Maduro said in televised remarks.

He accused Panama of pushing for regional organizations to intervene in Venezuela. As a result, Maduro said he was cutting off diplomatic and political ties and freezing trade relations with Panama's current government "in defense of the homeland's sovereignty."

Maduro is also concerned about the lickspittle government of Uruguay and the henchman government of Suriname.

I joke a little, but actually it's not a laughing matter in Venezuela. The mess that Hugo Chavez left behind is getting worse under Maduro, who lacks the charisma of Chavez and rarely wears a parrot on his shoulder. If you're going to succeed as a socially acceptable caudillo, you need to have better rhetorical skills and the willingness to put down a whole lot more people. And by "put down," I don't mean calling them lackeys. By whining, Maduro is inviting his eventual fate, which is the full Ceaucescu. Don't click the link if you're squeamish, by the way.

Non-working blue

Oh, those wacky DFLers:

As Democrats, including President Obama and several members of the Minnesota congressional delegation, push for a federal minimum-wage increase, DFLers controlling the Minnesota House and Senate reached what Rep. Ryan Winkler called a “stalemate.”

“It doesn’t look like we’re making a lot of progress,” Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley, told his fellow lawmakers as they attempted to negotiate a compromise on Wednesday.

Since Monday, when Senate officials said for the first time they would support a minimum wage of $9.50 an hour, House and Senate officials have been unable to agree whether future minimum-wage increases should be automatic.

Again, we need to think differently on this issue:

Money don't buy everything, it's true. But what it don't buy, I can't use

Maybe a little theme music might help these recalcitrant legislators:

Be sure to throw in a free cell phone, too.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Whatever the Hell It is the Leader of the Free World is Doing

Maybe it just doesn't matter that Vladimir Putin is forcing his will on Crimea. Crimea river, perhaps. Maybe the Leader of the Free World is right and we shouldn't be viewing the world through an 80s prism. Maybe Walter Russell Mead is worrying too much:

Bashar Assad will surely be watching Ukraine closely over the next few days and weeks. Much is at stake for his main patron there. . . .

It’s not just Assad: Ayatollah Khamenei is also carefully watching events in Ukraine. Russia has consistently supported Iran in its conflict with Israel and the West, and Putin’s resolve in the face of widespread international condemnation is surely heartening for Tehran.

Even beyond the Middle East, certain world leaders are paying close attention to how President Obama plays out this crisis. China, as we wrote earlier today, is sure to consider Washington’s response in Ukraine as an indicator of how the United States would react to increased Chinese aggression in East and Southeast Asia. North Korea too. And don’t forget, our allies are also watching: if push comes to shove on Iran, Israel will remember these days.

Maybe it's all good and the strength that our President projects through his very essence is sufficient to make the world a better place:

You're an animal baby, it's in your nature, just let me liberate you

I just need to get over my mossbackitude. Setting red lines that don't mean anything is cool, it's just the Robin Thicke version of foreign policy. Offering imaginary repercussions is how the game should be played -- smart diplomacy, I believe is what it's called. I am trying to get my mind right on this. Really.

She's dumb, though

Res ipsa loquitur:

In October 2008, after Russia's invasion of neighboring Georgia emerged as a foreign policy flashpoint in the homestretch of a heated campaign, Palin told an audience in Nevada, "After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next."

Her prediction was derided by Foreign Policy magazine as "strange" and "extremely far-fetched," but Palin, frequent media antagonist that she is, couldn't resist crowing about how events have played out.

"I'm usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did, despite my accurate prediction being derided as 'an extremely far-fetched scenario' by the 'high-brow' Foreign Policy magazine," Palin wrote Friday.

Oh, and also:

Thank goodness these morons aren't in power.

Oh, #@%*!

The Pope is working blue:

With millions of people hanging on your every word, it was a slip-up Pope Francis would really have preferred not to make.

While giving his weekly blessing from the Vatican, the Argentinian mistakenly uttered the word 'f***' in Italian before quickly correcting himself.

But within seconds his mistake was posted on dozens of Italian media websites and YouTube and had gained millions of worldwide hits as it went viral.

The words the Pope stumbled on were 'caso' (example) and 'cazzo' which means 'f***' in Italian and often trips up those not used to speaking the language.

Later on, he was warned in no uncertain terms not to use the name "Chuck" in the "Name Game" song:

One can never be too careful....

Do It. Now!

The lege dithers when the answer is right in front of them:

The move toward a $9.50-an-hour wage floor marks a significant victory for advocates who have been campaigning for months to get the DFL-controlled Legislature to back a major jump in the minimum wage.

On Monday, Senate negotiators said they now support finding a compromise to raise the minimum to $9.50. Last year, the Senate backed only a more modest increase, while the House and Gov. Mark Dayton supported the higher level.

“This is the crux of the bill,” said Sen. David Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm, a veteran legislator and Senate negotiator on the issue.

Alas, there's discord:

Still, the deal is not done. On Monday night, House negotiators rejected the Senate’s proposed hike because it included only the wage for big businesses and not other key parts of the measure.

“I just don’t think we can take it piece by piece,” said Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley. “Usually every concession has a price,” he told his fellow legislators on why he didn’t fall in with the Senate proposal.

Oh, that Winkler; he's so disappointing to his colleagues:

“I don’t understand why you can’t support your own language,” Sen. Chris Eaton, DFL-Brooklyn Center, told Winkler.

If you had Winkler's Twitter history, you'd understand why Winkler has trouble supporting his own language, Sen. Eaton.

Still, $9.50? Seriously? What is it that's supposedly magical about that figure? I saw this on the internet the other day and frankly, I think it's the obvious solution:

We'll be rich!

C'mon, DFL -- let's get serious about this. If we're gonna solve poverty, $9.50 isn't nearly enough.

Eat, dammit

"He who complies against his will is of the same opinion still."

-- Samuel Butler

Goes for the lunchrooms, too, as this report from Wisconsin indicates:

Students at Wilson Junior High School had a wide assortment of healthy options as they walked through the lunch line recently. Pizzas made from scratch, cheeseburgers with whole-wheat buns, deli sandwiches, beefy nachos, and unlimited fresh fruit and vegetables were all on the menu.

In the past, students were able to choose any three items out of five in order for their lunch to be counted under the National School Lunch Program, but new regulation, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, is aimed at helping kids make health decisions and requires that students take a fruit or vegetable on their lunch tray. The legislation also places stricter calorie and saturated fat requirements on foods offered to students and necessitates that any bread product offered must be whole grain.

Lynette Zalec, food service director with Chartwells School Dining Services, the company that provides the meal program for the Manitowoc Public School District, told HTR Media (http://htrne.ws/1fplZKG ) she has worked with local vendors to find healthy foods that kids enjoy to fit the requirements.

Students who made their way through the lunch line that day took fruit cocktail, broccoli, baby carrots or an apple to fit the requirement. However, while the legislation requires students take a fruit and vegetable, it cannot force them to eat it — and many students choose not to.

"We had very little waste before, now we have a lot of waste," Zalec said.

I get this -- I was a very picky eater when I was a kid and I fought with the nuns and the lunch ladies all the time back then. My kids are much better at eating healthy foods than I ever was, but they don't much like the new rules, either. Kids don't benefit from what they refuse to eat, but never mind that -- they need to get their minds right. And it's not just lunches:

The new standards also apply to food-based fundraising efforts — which could mean the popular heart-shaped suckers sold as a fundraiser around Valentine's Day will be a thing of the past.

Ken Mischler, the MPSD director of business, said the legislation could have unintended consequences if legislators don't tweak requirements.

"We don't know how to address this yet, and other schools don't yet either," Mischler said. "It may sound great, but what's going to happen is it's going to eliminate fundraising at schools is what it boils down to."

And when you start to hit the schools in the wallet, that's when it really gets interesting. There's more at the link; this is a story to watch.

The World You Refuse to See

It seems that the Russian invasion of the Crimea has caught much of the Washington establishment by surprise:

President Barack Obama’s handling of the Western response to the Ukraine crisis is now arguably the biggest test of his presidency. It is a crisis that no one anticipated and that the West has been frustratingly divided over since the European Union’s original, misguided attempt to force Ukraine to make an either-or choice about going east or west. For too long we have heard U.S. officials says repeatedly, “The Europeans are taking the lead.” That needs to stop. 

Walter Russell Mead, writing about what's happening in Ukraine, gets to something important:

Nobody, including us, is infallible about the future. Giving the public your best thoughts about where things are headed is all a poor pundit (or government analyst) can do. But this massive intellectual breakdown has a lot to do with a common American mindset that is especially built into our intellectual and chattering classes. Well educated, successful and reasonably liberal minded Americans find it very hard to believe that other people actually see the world in different ways. They can see that Vladimir Putin is not a stupid man and that many of his Russian officials are sophisticated and seasoned observers of the world scene. American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works.

How many times did foolishly confident American experts and officials come out with some variant of the phrase “We all share a common interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine.” We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t.

We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media. Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box. How many faithful New York Times readers have no idea what American conservatives think, much less how Russian oligarchs do? Well bred and well read Americans live in an ideological and cultural cocoon and this makes them fatally slow to understand the very different motivations that animate actors ranging from the Tea Party to the Kremlin to, dare we say it, the Supreme Leader and Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Emphasis mine. I attended a "good school," but I had the good fortune of attending it in the early to mid 1980s, when intellectual conformity wasn't as strong as it is today. Still, I see the results of this conformity and groupthink all the time. All I have to do is look at my Facebook feed and I'll get to see my fellow alumni comparing people who live in southern Indiana with the Taliban, to use just one example. It's a particularly jovial form of misantrophy, but it's there and it's unceasing.

The neoconservatives have come under justifiable criticism for not understanding the world in the previous decade. Whether we'll ever come to a similar understanding about our current leaders is another matter, because what we're dealing with is a willful commitment to ignorance, and it's an ignorance that's celebrated and regularly reinforced.

How do you solve a problem called sloppy reporting?

KARE 11 was proud of itself for its reporting on yet another predatory priest, which led its 10 p.m. newscast on Wednesday. See if you can figure out the problem here:

By his own account, Gerald Funcheon of the Catholic Order of the Holy Cross - the Croisers - started abusing young boys in the 1970's here in the Twin Cities.

"I suspect, and I don't remember, it would have been at it St. Odilia's," he testified in a 2012 deposition.

"The guy was a wolf," according to David Bidney, one of kids who says he was abused starting when he was just 10. "They hurt me bad. And they hurt a lot of kids bad."

In addition to St. Odilia's in Shoreview, Father Jerry served in parishes and schools in Anoka, Onamia, and St. Cloud plus other assignments literally from coast-to-coast.

Let's stipulate that this guy was, and is, a monster. Let's also stipulate that, like all the predators, he should have been stopped. But there's a problem in the report. Here's more:

At least one of the complaints was from Minnesota, because the memo suggests talking to Father Kevin McDonough about the "Statute of Limitations" here. That's the same church official now at the center of a legal battle over whether he'll be forced to testify about how the church handled predatory priests.

We don't know if any conversation actually took place. Here's the point, at least from KARE's perspective:

And the priest's deposition? It's been posted publicly on YouTube for nearly a year.

And even though it's there for anybody to see, when the Archdiocese released its original list of abusive priests back in December Father Jerry Funcheon wasn't on it.

He wasn't added until last week, after an outside company hired by the church recommended it.

Coverup, right? That must be it. Well, not necessarily. The list of priests is here. If you look at the list, you'll notice something. The vast majority of the priests on the list are diocesan priests, along with a handful of order priests and monks. Jerry Funcheon was a Crosier, an order priest. The report says so right at the beginning.

The Crosiers were at St. Odilia, which is a large parish in Shoreview, for a long time, but they pulled up stakes in 2007. It's difficult to explain the role of Catholic orders to a largely non-Catholic audience, but it's important to understand that while order priests sometimes do become pastors or work in parishes, it's pretty rare. It's also important to understand that order priests aren't really answerable to any diocese. Fr. McDonough may have been advised about Funcheon, although we don't know that. McDonough would not have been able to do much about the abuse in any event, because the Crosiers were responsible for Funcheon.

Assuming McDonough knew about Funcheon, could he have turned him into the authorities? Maybe, but this is why the statute of limitations matters. If Funcheon's actions took place in the 1970s and McDonough theoretically learned about them in 1992, it's quite likely that the statute of limitations would have run out by then. And if Funcheon were no longer in Minnesota at the time, it's hard to say what he could have done. No law enforcement agency pursues extradition for crimes that fall outside of the statute of limitations.

I don't dispute that Fr. McDonough has a lot of questions to answer about the other priests on the initial list, and potentially other priests as well. But there was never much he could have done about Funcheon, even if he did know about him. And KARE presented no evidence that he did know. I would suggest that KARE follow up with the Crosiers about this case.

Heh

Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, is getting pretty good at this game:

Sen. Rand Paul still believes Bill Clinton is a detriment to Democrats as the former president is reprising his role as super surrogate for the party.

Speaking to Fox News Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 White House contender said that the Democrats are mistaking Clinton’s popularity after the former president spoke at a campaign rally for Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democrat challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell.

“We have a lot of conservative Democrats in our state who go to church each week and really don’t approve of his behavior, what he has done with sexual harassment in the workplace,” Paul said, referencing the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “A lot of Democrats in our state don’t approve of that kind of behavior.”

But that ain't all:

Talking about Clinton’s appearance at Grimes’ rally, Paul said Democrats should return money he has raised and that they should be “embarrassed” to be seen with him.

“I think he’s a bad role model for the workplace, for women’s rights, for all of that, and I think really they ought to be a little embarrassed to be associated or being seen with him,” Paul stated.

This would be what's known in the trade as Alinsky Rule 4, to wit:

“The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

The Dems use the War on Women meme all the time. Bill Clinton has quite the horndog history and it's especially effective to throw that in the face of female candidates. After all, if Bill Clinton isn't a good role model, why is he speaking on your behalf, ma'am? This works on Grimes and it will work with Mary Landrieu (in Louisiana) and Kay Hagan (in North Carolina), among others.

I don't know if Rand Paul is going to be able to do much in 2016, but if he can minimize Bill Clinton's value in 2014, it will pose problems for Hillary Clinton down the line. Politically, a very smart play.

All aboard

So the President comes to town to tout transportation, with specific mention of the "spiffy" new light rail line. A few blocks away, hilarity ensues:

At approximately 4 p.m., wheels on the lead car of an out-of-service, three-car light-rail train came off the tracks while traveling northbound on the Green Line through the intersection of 12th and Cedar streets in St. Paul. This train had been located at the Union Depot and was returning en route to Minneapolis.

Wheels on the lead car came off the tracks because of snow that had accumulated in the rail right of way. Trains had not traveled on this section of the track since the snowstorm last week. Rail operations responded to the scene to clear the snow and put the wheels back on the tracks. Metro Transit Police and St. Paul police directed traffic through the partially-blocked intersection. Two train cars that were attached to the lead car were moved to Tenth Street Station to clear the scene. The train cars were returned and reattached to pull the train car back onto the tracks. The effort to put the train car back on the tracks continues.

Obama himself played the "spiffy" card:

"I just had a chance to take a look at some of those spiffy new trains," Obama said in a speech at St. Paul's Union Depot. "They are nice.  And they’re energy efficient.  They’re going to be reliable.  You can get from one downtown to the other in a little over 30 minutes instead of when it’s snowing being in traffic for two hours."

Unless they derail or something. And anyone who sits on 94 between the downtowns and endures a 2-hour traffic jam apparently has never heard of Marshall Avenue, or Selby, or Summit, or Grand, or St. Clair, or....

But hey, they're spiffy. That's something.

Ask an expert

Gov. Dayton on nasty independent expenditure groups:

It will be challenging and there will be — unfortunately — a great deal of negativity. The independent expenditure groups can come in and spend unlimited money without disclosing their sources and run whatever kind of vile trash they decide to without any consequences.

Yep. They might even run something like this:

I'm sure the Alliance for a Better Minnesota will be more than happy to put out all manner of vile trash -- they've got a long track record of that sort of thing. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Mark Dayton can blow it out of the orifice of his choice.

Quarry Owner Complains About Rocks

Mark Dayton, in MinnPost:

“The occupation of the Republicans is to make me and the DFL majority in the House look as bad as possible so they can defeat us in November,” Dayton told MinnPost in a wide-ranging interview the day before session.

“There will be no cooperation, and there will be all sorts of throwing rocks from the sidelines and trying to cause problems at every piece of significant piece of legislation to try and score their points,” he said.

I guess it's true, he's stone in love with you, Republicans.