Chip Cravaack stunned: Not everyone on Iron Range is a tea partier

Aren't we all Americans here? Not on the Range.

​It's no wonder Republicans in control of the Legislature want to gerrymander our congressional districts to get Chip Cravaack off the Iron Range. When he shows up there, he draws rabid crowds--and not the good kind of rabid.

That's hardly the kind of political PR the GOP wants when it sells the freshman representative as a man of the people. Aren't we all tea partiers now? Apparently not. Half the folks who came to his open house last night in Mountain Iron wanted his hide.

The Duluth News Tribune reports that,

When Iron Range legislative legend Joe Begich delivered an impassioned monologue that derided several Republican proposals and prompted a series of shouted comments from the audience, Cravaack asked for civility to reign.

"Let's everyone stay calm," Cravaack said at one point as the crowd got ready to pop. "We're all Americans here."

"There's two Americas!" someone hollered back, perfectly distilling the seething resentments between two groups of folks who figure they and they alone have the market cornered on legitimate patriotism.

The redistricting bill would create a new 8th District across the northern tier of the state to be held (for now) held by DFL Rep. Collin Peterson, while giving Cravaack a much safer swath of Minnesota to the south in a re-engineered 7th District.

​No Democrats voted in favor of the plan, and Dayton is sure to veto the bill, setting up a court fight between the two parties.

Previously:

• Republican House redistricting map means more safe seats, "isn't about politics"
• Rep. Sarah Anderson appalled that her gerrymandering is called gerrymandering