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October 31, 2006

Our View — Klobuchar has the right ideas

If you don’t care about the issues at all, Amy Klobuchar is the better person to elect to the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.

If you do care about the issues, she’s still the right person.

Klobuchar has conducted a first class campaign that promotes positive messages and politely, but firmly and resolutely, disagrees with a lot of what’s been happening in Washington under a Republican president and Congress.

She has detailed her positions, ducking few hard questions, and put a very specific agenda on her Web site.

Her opponent, 6th District Congressman Mark Kennedy, went to negative advertising early in the campaign, and has never recovered from that bad decision. He doesn’t seem to see the error in his own judgment. That’s a problem in and of itself.

Kennedy started out distancing himself from the Bush administration, possibly with an eye on the polls and running for a statewide office in a centrist or Democrat-leaning state. But according to the nonpartisan HillMonitor.com, Kennedy agreed with the Bush Administration nearly 92 percent of the time.

He now says he holds fast with the current policy in the war with Iraq even though members of his own party are calling for change. Klobuchar has been pressing for a plan for months from the Bush administration, and points to leaning with Republicans like Sen. John Warner who also is calling for a change in course in Iraq.

On issues, Klobuchar seems more aligned with a vast majority of Minnesotans. She has vowed to reinstate pay-as-you-go fiscal rules for dealing with the federal budget deficit, a plan that helped bring about surpluses when it was supported by Republicans like Sen. John McCain in the late 1990s. Kennedy says he supports pay-as-you go as long as it doesn’t involve reducing spending to help pay for revenue lost to tax cuts. That plan would push deficits higher.

Klobuchar opposes the current health care policy that prohibits the government from negotiating bulk volume discounts for drugs from the drug companies. Kennedy says it’s better if private sector buys the drugs.

Kennedy holds fast to Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Klobuchar says those tax cuts should be directed at the middle class for things like tax credits for buying a home and helping parents fund a college education.

Klobuchar is no big city liberal. She says she will make Minnesota’s mostly rural renewable fuels industry a priority by supporting higher tax credits for the manufacture and purchase of hybrid cars. She has spent a lot of time in outstate Minnesota visiting all 87 counties.

Kennedy does not have his ear to the ground as much in all of Minnesota. He was possibly a good fit for the 6th District, whose majorities seem interested in the hot button moral issues, but he is not a good fit for the diverse interests of Minnesota that a senator must represent.

Finally, in what is likely to be a split Congress, Klobuchar will be better suited to work in a bipartisan way. Kennedy’s approach has been very absolute in his campaign, whereas Klobuchar’s policy statements are filled with nuances and room for seeing the other side of an issue.

Klobuchar is a principled person who won’t be bullied. She’s right on the issues. She’s the right person to be the next U.S. senator from Minnesota.

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