There Is Still Time To Help Save the Senate

Pretty much all observers expect the Democrats to capture the House in November. If they do, they will impeach President Trump. But the much more serious danger is that they may also take the Senate. If that happens, the Trump administration will be paralyzed. The Democrats likely will refuse to confirm a single significant appointment. I would not rule out the possibility of a constitutional crisis, if the Democrats try to bring the executive branch to a standstill by abusing its “advise and consent” power to insist that President Trump nominate Democrats to key posts in the administration and the judiciary. In the Democrats’ disgraceful obstruction of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, we have a preview of the insanity that will reign if they become a Senate majority.

Here in Minnesota, a key race in the battle to control the Senate has unexpectedly taken center stage. After the Democrats kicked Al Franken out of the Senate, Minnesota’s Governor, Mark Dayton, appointed his Lieutenant Governor, Tina Smith, to replace Franken until the next general election–i.e., next month. Tina Smith is a faceless candidate with no clear profile in the state. Her career has been spent as a Planned Parenthood executive and a Democratic Party staffer. Most Minnesotans couldn’t pick her out of a lineup, but she has the advantage that Democrats almost always enjoy–a vast hoard of cash. The Star Tribune called it the “Smith money machine.”

The Republican candidate is Karin Housley. Housley started out as a relatively little-known second-term state senator, but she has worked very hard and is running a strong campaign. I wrote about Karin here, and everything I said in June is true today. The only thing I will add is that Karin is one of the most normal people I have ever met in politics. And I am pretty sure you agree that we need more normal (and conservative) people in the Senate.

Control of the Senate could turn on this race. And it is tight. Any statewide candidate with a D next to her name starts out with a lead in Minnesota, but Tina Smith seems content to try to buy her way into the Senate. Housley has outworked her to the point where the race is now, in my view, a tossup.

This morning, Housley’s campaign sent an email highlighting Bernie Sanders’ enthusiastic endorsement of Tina Smith. Smith may be boring, but she is a far leftist. The photo of Smith with her staunch supporters Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison tells you all you need to know:

Democrats in Minnesota raise vast amounts of money, largely from public sector unions, and use it to smear Republican candidates. One of the intriguing aspects of this race is that Karin Housley is just about impossible to smear. So far, the Democrats have come up with nothing, and it is hard to see what Smith is doing with the millions she has raised. Karin is much less well-financed, but she has used her resources to introduce herself and her conservative principles to Minnesota’s voters. This is the ad she is currently running:

Tina Smith has a Keith Ellison problem. She will, of course, vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court on the theory that he did something–God knows what–36 years ago, when he was 17. But Ellison has been accused in two recent cases of domestic abuse, both of which are documented, one by a 911 call. Tina Smith, like all of her fellow Democrats, remains silent, thereby exposing her party’s gross hypocrisy.

Control of the Senate hangs in the balance. If you watched any part of the Judiciary Committee fiasco last week, you do not want the Democrats to be the Senate majority. That would be a disaster. Perhaps the most cost-effective thing you can do is go here to contribute to Karin Housley’s campaign. She will never match the Democratic Party’s funding juggernaut, fueled by involuntary contributions by union members, but she doesn’t need to. She is a superior candidate and just needs to get her messages out. Please help!