Source: Office of Governor Tim Walz & Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan
Walz: a Progressive Dream Come True
How would Walz steer the country? Think of Forest Gump wanting to be VP.
It looks as though the 4th Estate seems to still be sitting on its hands like it did /when hiding President Joe Biden’s regrettable incoherence. The media might not care about Tim Walz’s economic record as governor of Minnesota, but voters sure deserve to know.
America’s Future Would Be Left
Editors of the WSJ emphasize how Walz’s record foreshadows where a Kamala Harris/Tim Walz administration would take the country with its policies. One could ask, does Harris understand America?
“An Abject Failure”
Right now, Americans are concerned about the economy. Immigration and crime are also tops on voter concerns, Ben Domenech reminds readers of Spectator US.
Harris has just added a blue-state governor who is weak on all three. Minnesota has seen a shrinking workforce with residents fleeing the state at record levels during Walz’s tenure, his record on border security is marked by little more than unserious flippancy — and as for crime, well… Walz’s record during the summer of George Floyd will be central to Republican attacks.
Even Walz himself admitted in a press conference the response to the rioters was an “abject failure”; his slow action in that moment — combined with Harris’s promotion of a bailout fund for those same rioters — hands the Trump-Vance campaign a viscerally powerful attack line at just the moment they needed it.
Minnesota, which boasts a low employment rate (2.9%), is less impressive than it seems. Under Mr. Walz job growth has been in industries that rely on government spending.
Since he entered office in January 2019, Minnesota has added a net 41,500 jobs. This includes 43,900 in healthcare and social assistance and 12,600 in government.
Job losses in private industry (finance, information, professional/business services, retail, manufacturing, leisure/hospitality) started before the pandemic. Under. Walz, however, losses “accelerated during Mr. Walz’s prolonged lockdowns and have increased during the last year.”
In a vibes-based election, apparently Democrats think picking a white bespectacled “I would have voted for Obama for a third term” guy who happens to wear a field jacket is all it takes to transform a politician who makes fellow Minnesotans Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale look conservative into a “moderate.”
Moderation is a label rendered particularly ridiculous when assigned to one of the most radical culture-war governors in America, continues Mr. Domenech. Is this what a moderate sounds like on abortion?
What is especially notable, according to the WSJ, is Walz’s signing last spring. Of “a giant tax increase, including a 1% surcharge on investment income over $1 million. He also reduced standard deductions for businesses such as for net operating losses.”
Walz’ No Limits on Leftist Priorities
- Walz signed an extreme bill with no age limit on transgender treatment for minors — consistent with the Biden administration’s advice, but utterly at odds with the scientific treatment trends out of Europe.
- Walz signed abortion policies into law that have no gestational limits; even Planned Parenthood itself officially agrees this is the most pro-abortion ticket ever.
- And that’s before you get to all the other issues— education, energy, guns and more.
- It’s impossible to find an issue where Walz can conceivably be described as in the
- political middle of the nation — which is probably why even though he’s from the same state as Amy Klobuchar, his winning cohort was completely different.
Harris’s choice of Walz is representative of a folksy leftism rather than a radical agenda. “But for the Harris campaign, this seems like a selection with massive potential to backfire,” argues Mr. Domenech:
Choosing Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly might not have inspired the progressive activists, but they would absolutely come around in an election waged against Trump and Vance. Picking the VP choice backed to the hilt by Squad members like Ilhan Omar the same day that their compatriot Cori Bush goes down to primary defeat against a pro-Israel candidate has a certain “mark the date” element to it for future lookback articles. If you want to win, maybe pick a politician that people who don’t have “In This House” signs in their yard find appealing — just an idea.
It’s telling that a major factor for Harris (to elevate) Walz was reportedly his performance on Pod Save America — where he talked about J.D. Vance being “weird” and referred to himself on LGBT issues by saying “you gotta have an ally who looks like this” — and a “white men for Kamala” Zoom where he called Trump a “bastard.”
Tim Walz: the Real Version of MSNBC’s Shane Gillis
It continued last night in his choice to repeat an online lefty joke about Vance having sex with a couch in his announcement speech. So instead of picking a popular swing-state politician who would appeal to normie Independent voters, Harris is doubling down on progressive left energy in a way that seems, in a repeat of the nature of her presidential campaign failed in 2020, way too online. And that’s who Tim Walz seems to be: the real-life political version of Shane Gillis’s typical MSNBC dad.
Scrutiny of Tim Walz’s military record is warranted, writes editors at NRO. Focusing on two topics:
- The circumstances surrounding the Minnesota governor’s retirement from the National Guard during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan nearly two decades ago.
- The way in which Walz and his various campaigns have described the nature of his military record.
Tim Walz may view his motives for leaving the National Guard and running for Congress as noble. But it is not true that Walz did not know a mobilization was coming, and these former soldiers are entitled to their opinion and deserve to be listened to instead of being rejected as partisan hacks, as some have claimed they are.
National guardsmen and reservists are a critical if misunderstood component of America’s armed forces, continue NRO editors.
Their service is rarely glamorous. It’s fairly common for a guardsman to lose money on net during a drill period after travel expenses and lost civilian wages are taken into account. The “one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer” recruiting slogan is just that, as many citizen-soldiers’ service regularly adds up to multiple months per year away from home and jobs and family. Guardsmen and reservists like Tim Walz should have the thanks of a grateful nation, and Walz should be commended for his more than two decades of service to his country.
But as he campaigns for the vice presidency, that service should not shield Walz from scrutiny over the circumstances of his retirement and his suspect claims about his service. At the very least, Walz should apologize for the 2004 “Enduring Freedom Veterans for Kerry” sign incident and for allowing his service to be mischaracterized for nearly two decades by the press.
Why didn’t Harris go with Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of must-win Pennsylvania? According to NRO, leftist public pressure was strong against Shapiro, a Jewish supporter of Israel who has criticized antisemitic protesters. Walz, a favorite of the MSNBC crowd, has not criticized any protesters.
“By choosing perhaps the most left-wing governor in America, at least Harris isn’t trying to hide who she is.”
