Iron Range on Rove’s radar

In this week’s Newsweek, GOP master strategist Karl Rove discusses the political trends in several key swing states across the country. It’s a mostly objective look at the lay of the land, but also gives you a quick idea of how deeply Rove and political strategists like him analyze these states.

Here is Rove’s assessment of Minnesota.

A close race here in the last election — and it may be another one this year. The Democratic blueprint is to win big in Minneapolis and St. Paul and then carry the Iron Range in the northeast. The Republican model is more complicated: dominate the rural west, run up numbers in the suburbs around the Twin Cities and pry away enough guns-and-life conservative Democrats in the Iron Range.

Did you catch that? TWO references to the Iron Range, by name.

I happen to agree with this very brief assessment of the state, with a couple exceptions. Duluth is equal in importance to the Iron Range and increasing Democratic strength in southern Minnesota and those very outer ring suburbs shouldn’t be ignored. But this should give Democrats in northern Minnesota pause. The GOP strategy, as it always has been, will be to get people like our friends and neighbors to vote against their economic interests (upper class tax cuts instead of deeper middle class tax cuts) in favor of wedge issues (guns, gays and the persistent contradictory belief that the federal government is somehow involved in getting to heaven).

The Iron Range has got to be especially confounding to GOP strategists. “They should vote Republican!” they must shout. “Those are lower middle class blue collar workers … why do they keep voting on schools, roads and jobs.” The answer, for those who don’t know, is that the Range wouldn’t be here if wise leaders from the past, Republican and Democrat alike, showed how marshaling the potential of government and the individual strength of people can keep a place like this alive. Well, that and the need for steel. But four generations of people have been lifted out of poverty because the Iron Range puts schools ahead of social issues.

At least the Iron Range I know. Once again, the theory will be tested.

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