Well Tea Party, you can forget about the current Minnesota House Majority.  Commence recruiting for 2012 endorsement challenges as soon as possible. BillsandVotes.com will keep you supplied with plenty of material on incumbent voting records.

Three months after you handed them the majority, the GOPers you put in charge have all but forgotten you. They never accepted the one-and-done mission you gave them:  Fix our broken state government in the short two years in which you control both chambers of the Minnesota Statehouse. 

Yesterday's debate on HF 130 confirmed that, as per usual, its all about two years from now.  It's all about being savvy political strategists.  Winning isn't about fixing government, its about getting reelected.

The details of HF 130 hardly matter now.  It may well be the case that, just like the Democrats said, HF 130 cuts funding for veteran programs, the elderly, the disabled and bad government schools while simultaneously raising your grandmother's property taxes and laying off policemen.  It hopefully takes money out of the pockets "hardworking" "public servants." 

But the reason HF 130 needed to pass - and why all Republicans should have supported it - was because it did what it needs to do.  It freezes the wages of government workers, cuts $840 million worth of automatic increases for next year, cuts funding for the House and Senate and addresses the Christmas in June spend-downs that occur just before budgets are set. 

For that reason, all 72 House Republicans should have eagerly voted for the bill.  They should have offered amendments to exempt vets programs and teachers from any cuts and then voted against their own amendments just to reinforce their commitment to fix our broken government.

Hats off to Paul Thissen and the DFL Caucus for smoking out the GOP.  Employing the reverse rope-a-dope, Thissen and the DFL offered no roll call amendments to the bill, opting instead to hammer away on all the fictional horrors that will unfold if the bill becomes law.  The strategy worked.  The Majority had no chance to vote for pro-veteran, pro-elderly, pro-(insert sacred cow here) amendments before they voted against them on final passage. 

The Majority was caught off guard and without the amendments to provide cover the following GOP freshmen - no doubt urged on by their staff shepherds - voted nay: 

• King Banaian, 15B
• Deb Kiel, 1B
• John Kriesel, 57A
• Rich Murray, 27A

The vote is on House Journal page 188.

The worst part of the debate came at the very end. Just after Speaker Zellers closed the tote board and before he called the vote, Albert Lea freshman Richard Murray seized the opportunity to flip flop by changing his vote from yea to nay.  Zellers seemed prepared for the rare move, which suggests the Murray vote change may have been, well, less than spontaneous. The Murray action brought the total yeas from 69 down to 68 - the bare minimum needed to pass the bill. 

Thissen immediately stood up and called Murray out for the maneuver, which in turn brought Greg Davids to his feet to protect the fledgling Murray.  Davids admonished Thissen for questioning the motives of a member.  (For the record, BillsandVotes.com fully supports the questioning of member motives, because politics is all about motives.)

If this behavior continues, BillsandVotes.com will be rewriting it's scoring application to allow all members of the GOP to receive a failing score on HF 130 and any other reform bill that does not get 72 GOP votes.  It will be a pleasure.