Fargo Forum: Grover Norquist Is No Friend Of North Dakota
Because the ivy tower liberals at the Forum have apparently appointed themselves as arbiters of who is and is not a friend to North Dakotans.
The op/ed linked above is a rather hysterical response (and by “hysterical” I mean “more akin to something an adolescent girl would write about seeing her ex-boyfriend out with someone new on her MySpace page”) is a response to the Americans for Prosperity meeting held this last Sunday at which Grover Norquist was the guest of honor. I attended the meeting, and my summary of the even is here.
I’m not all that surprised by the Forum’s hyperbolic response to AFP’s meeting given their earlier opinion piece about the AFP’s proposed ballot measure cutting the state’s income tax (which can be summed up as “How dare anyone suggest we cut taxes!”). In that editorial the folks at the Forum even went so far to try and brand AFP’s Duane Sand (a Navy veteran and former Senate candidate in the state) as an “out of stater,” criticism they never seem to find valid when it is aimed at folks like Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan and Earl Pomeroy each of whom get more than 70% (more than 90% in the case of Conrad and Dorgan) of their campaign contributions from out of state. It’s pretty clear to this observer, given the undue nastiness the Forum has directed at both AFP and Duane Sand (the group’s state director) that, for someone at the newspaper, this personal.
And I wonder if that someone isn’t Jack Zaleski, who I’m told has a history of animosity with Mr. Sand.
Now, to be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of Norquist (as I made clear in my post about the AFP’s event), but in their criticism of him and AFP the Forum goes overboard. Norquist may be a rank partisan (I think that description would be accurate), but that doesn’t make him wrong about tax policy. Which is exactly why the Forum’s response to Mr. Norquist’s visit comes off as so childish. Rather than respond to the substance of his remarks at the AFP event the Forum decided to attack him personally. Which is quite telling, given that Norquist made two stellar points during his speech:
- North Dakota needs tax relief so that the state legislators stop spending the state’s tax surpluses.
- Kent Conrad’s federal budget does, in fact, raise taxes. Something the Senator continues to lie about.
Both of these positions are in direct contradiction to positions the Forum’s opinion board has taken. The Forum doesn’t see the need to take some money from the ND state legislature (despite those politicians increasing general fund spending some 24% in the face of a $500 million budget surplus), and the Forum would never sink to calling out their friend Kent Conrad on his obvious lies about his budget and raising taxes. I mean, it’s obvious to everyone in the country that Conrad’s budget raises both taxes and spending. Everyone, that is, except the Democrats and North Dakota’s media.
But whatever. If the Forum wants to support liberal tax-and-spend policies, that’s their prerogative. But if they’re going to jump on high-profile visitors to the state who share North Dakota’s values, why didn’t they jump on the Democrats for inviting Howard Dean to the state? Certainly Dr. Dean’s far-left views don’t represent those of mainstream North Dakotans (neither do the Forum’s, but that’s a matter for another post), so why no editorial condemning his visit? Or at least a mention of the rather hilarious way Dean was avoided by the top Democrat politicians in the state like Conrad, Dorgan and Pomeroy?
The double standard is because the folks at the Forum, for all their bluster about down-home North Dakota values and politics, are nothing but a bunch of arrogant liberal media elites who are going to try and poo-poo anyone in the state with a conservative agenda. Which wouldn’t be a terrible thing if there were some conservative voices in North Dakota’s media to offset those that are overwhelmingly liberal at the Forum and other media outlets in the state, but there aren’t.
