Update: There is a winner in the “new name for Emmer” contest, and 
it’s not Tom “Jefferson Jackson” Emmer, but simply “Stonewall Emmer.” Rather than change this post however, it will just be adopted henceforth.
o O o
It is hard to imagine anything less probable than a Tom Emmer “listening” tour. It would be like a listening tour undertaken by Elmer Gantry. The bombastic, evangelical Emmer has never listened to anybody in the Legislature, so it’s a good bet he isn’t going to actually listen to anyone on the stump, either.
Emmer’s specialty is ramming stuff down people’s throats, and then tamping it down with the handle of a hockey stick.
Let’s take, for example, Emmer’s idea that Minnesota should, for all practical intents, secede from the Union. It’s a crazed, crackpot idea, like something that might have been attributed to Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip in the Sinclair novel It Can’t Happen Here.
We’ve been watching the Tenth Amendment antics of Tom Emmer for some time here at the Cucking Stool. For those of you who need to catch up on your reading, I recommend these posts:
The Minnesota Incandescent Lightbulb Freedom Act
In which Rep. Emmer gets a civics lesson
Governor Emmer, the federals are massing at the border
More bon bons from Tenther Tom
And most recently:
I really expected Tom “Jefferson Jackson” Emmer to walk away from his “secession on the installment plan” once he got the endorsement for the Republicans. But his appointment of Mark Buesgens as his campaign manager and his op-ed in the Sunday Star Tribune shows that he going the full crazy route all the way until November.
J.J. Emmer claims that he is channeling the “Founding Fathers” in championing an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution that would make adherence to federal law optional. And like every bug-eyed crazy in the Tea Party, he recites the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution in support of his position.
It’s just too bad that J.J. never read the rest of the document. Fortunately, David Lillehaug, on the other hand, like the authors here at the Stool, has.
I am already weary of writing why J.J. Emmer is such a painful gasbag that I commend the list of links above or David Lillehaug’s piece, also in the Strib Sunday, if you need an explanation. But I will say this.
This is from Emmer’s proposed amendment:
"Citizens of Minnesota are sovereign individuals, subject to Minnesota law and immune from any federal laws that exceed the federal government's enumerated constitutional powers. A federal law does not apply in Minnesota unless that law is approved by a two-thirds vote of the members of each house of the Legislature and is signed by the governor ..."
FROM AN AMENDMENT TO THE MINNESOTA CONSTITUTION PROPOSED IN H.F. 3738, LEGISLATION COAUTHORED BY GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE TOM EMMER.
And here are the two opening paragraphs of the Mississippi Secession Resolution:
Whereas, The Constitutional Union was formed by the several States in their separate soverign [sic] capacity for the purpose of mutual advantage and protection;
That the several States are distinct sovereignities [sic] [written by an early Tea Partier, no doubt], whose supremacy is limited so far only as the same has been delegated by voluntary compact to a Federal Government, and when it fails to accomplish the ends for which it was established, the parties to the compact have the right to resume, each State for itself, such delegated powers;
Tom “Jefferson Jackson” Emmer is in great company here.
And it’s not like these guys have thought this through. Senator Mike Parry, one of Emmer’s febrile supporters and a carrier — and I mean that in the most communicable disease kind of way — of Emmer’s bill in the Minnesota Senate was asked (by me) about the implications of Emmer’s proposal for the civil rights laws of the United States. Watch for his reaction.
If a single member of a minority community votes for these drooling idiots, well then God bless you, because you’re going to need it.
Ken Avidor provided the graphic.
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