Here in Minnesota, one Democratic legislator has decided he's had enough of the lies. He's leaving office; not going to run again this year.
State Senator John Harrington graduated from the FBI National Academy. He began his police career as a patrol officer in St. Paul and worked his way up to the top. He was elected Chief of Police in 2004 and served there until 2010, when he was elected to the State Senate.
Here's Harrington explaining why he won't run again:
"It was frustrating being in the situation where you could make all the right arguments, and it was seemingly going into a vacuum, and you couldn't change the hearts and minds because of the way the Legislature is divided," Harrington said Monday, May 28. The former St. Paul police chief said he would publicly announce his decision Tuesday.
"Maybe it's just my experience as a cop," Harrington said. "Generally speaking, in court, if you have the facts right, things go the right way for you. (In the current Minnesota State Senate,) you could come with all the facts, and it wouldn't matter."
Asked for an example, Harrington referred to the debate over a voter ID law requiring picture identification at the polls. The matter will be on the ballot in November in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment.
"Show me one example of where somebody had fraudulently voted here. Oh, you don't have one. You have no evidence. You have no cases. But you unilaterally vote for it, anyway -- that seems a little strange," Harrington said, referring to the Republican legislative majority that put the voter ID question on the ballot.
Now contrast Harrington's political career with another one. Here's journalist Eric Alterman talking about the conservative war on truth. Guess which politician Alterman used as a prime example of that?
(CONTINUED)
Remember, the person picked by the Tea Party movement to represent it nationally in opposition to President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), thinks that the famous “shot heard around the world in Lexington and Concord" credited with beginning the American Revolution was fired in New Hampshire, not Massachusetts. She thinks “the very founders that wrote” the U.S. Constitution “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States” even though they agreed to extend it. (etc., etc., all the Bachmann craziness and idiocy that Alterman could fit into two paragraphs...)
OK, just one more. Global warming, says climatologist Bachmann, is “all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax."
...conservatives apparently prefer to throw away taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars rather than confront the fact that sometimes—even most times—reality does not conform to right-wing ideology.
Well, we already knew that. We've known that for decades: for American conservatives, "reality is the enemy; truth is the enemy." (Alterman sounds a little tired when he's pointing this out.) It's as much a psychological problem as a political problem. Right wing demagogues appeal to worst in people--hate, fear, paranoia, greed, superstition... You need lies to feed those appetites.
And Michele Bachmann began her extraordinary national career in the Minnesota State Senate--just like retiring Senator John Harrington.
So what do you make of the fact that Harrington's leaving and Bachmann--proponent of crackpot conspiracy politics and lying as career long political strategy--is staying?
She's not just "staying," "just hanging on," either. She's thriving. She's favored to win reelection to Congress easily this year. And if that happens, she'll continue to influence the character of politics in Minnesota and influence national politics far beyond the state's borders (as she has in the past.) Most liberals and Democrats here in Minnesota don't even think it's worth trying to defeat her this year. And the fact that she's been repeatedly exposed as a liar and a fool? That has won her the admiration and support of conservatives here in Minnesota and across the nation.
Meanwhile, State Senator Harrington says he's leaving the legislature because he now believes it's useless for him to try to defeat conservative lies by presenting the truth. Harrington's going, but Bachmann's will remain.
So here we have a case where the lies--win. Again.
Michele Bachmann was ahead of the curve; a pioneer for a movement. Her phenomenal success sprang from the evangelical right and--later--the manufactured tea party. Her success proved that conservative candidates bearing right wing paranoid lies were electable in districts that would vote Republican. The admission of right wing extremism (with its strategy of institutional lying in the service of sowing paranoia) has changed American legislative politics.
Bachmann's bred imitators in the Minnesota GOP and elsewhere--politicians who've made lies and conspiracy theory the bases of their careers. (These are the mainstay of the GOP legislature that's driving Harrington out of the Senate.) We'll see more imitators in government, as Bachmann's "war on the truth" style of politics drives the people defending the facts--out of the government.
John Harrington, the credible public servant and state legislator who deplores lies as a basis for lawmaking--isn't going to be defending the facts against the lies in the State Senate anymore.
Here in Minnesota, we're still paying for our failure to stop the career of Michele Bachmann. If you've got GOP legislators in the service of the tea party manipulators and the evangelical right in your state...you're paying for that failure, too.
LINKS: Harrington's retirement and statement, from the Pioneer Press (thanks, Jacob):
http://www.twincities.com/...
Alterman on the conservative war on knowledge:
http://www.americanprogress.org/...