Can outspoken Republican survive in Minn.?

She also noted that Tinklenberg supported the bailout which she voted against. As the debate reached its home-stretch, Tinklenberg again sighed in frustration, as he acknowledged that he would have voted for the bailout if he’d been in Congress. “We couldn’t stand there on the floor of the House and just say ‘we’re not going to do anything.’”

Bachmann’s relentless debate performance indicated one would be foolish to write her off. The most recent public poll in the race, one conducted last week by the University of Minnesota, showed the race statistically tied.

“The people in the district have been overwhelmingly supportive,” she said as she hustled to her car after the debate. “One thing I hear everywhere I go, Democrats, Independents they say, ‘Michele, thank you so much for voting against the bailout.”

If Tinklenberg goes to the House
If he can defeat Bachmann, Tinklenberg will have to deal with another formidable woman, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Tinklenberg’s description of what he wants to do as a new member of the House is idealistic. His mission he said is “working together, building through addition and not division, reaching across the partisan divide to get things done for the district.”

He noted, “I have never held partisan office. The position of mayor in Blaine was not a partisan position.”

His benign, perhaps utopian view contrasts with the way Pelosi and her aides actually run the House.

It isn’t nonpartisan. And if — as now looks likely — Pelosi’s majority grows from 235 to 250, 260, or more, she’ll have even less need to consider the views of the minority party.

Typically on major legislation, Pelosi does not allow Republicans much, if any input. Often a major bill is presented to the Rules Committee, where almost all legislation must be vetted, late the night before the bill is to be debated on the floor.

The minority party is allowed little opportunity to read and assess a 200 or 300-page bill. On a party-line vote, the Rules Committee usually passes a “closed rule,” which means that Republicans can offer no amendments.

This is pretty much the way the Republicans ran the House when they were the majority. And if Pelosi has an even larger majority, reaching across party lines is not necessary.

But this is not the Tinklenberg vision.

When asked how he would live in such a sharply partisan world, Tinklenberg said, “I don’t have to run defending how things operated in the past…. We’re here to create a culture in which we find ways to work together.”

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