Jim Antle is the Washington Examiner magazine’s executive editor. A few days ago he invited me to write a column about our cranky governor’s abandonment of his quest for a third term. The column has just been published as Exit Tim Walz, stage Biden: Another Democrat has clung to power past his expiration date” in the magazine’s January 14 issue. Here is the opening of the column:
Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) abandoned his ludicrous quest for a third term on Jan. 5. He has angrily refused to resign from office. Whenever he departs, whether upon his resignation some time this year or the expiration of his term early next year, we can say this much with certainty: Like former President Joe Biden, he has become a dispensable inconvenience to Democrats, in this case, Minnesota Democrats facing the 2026 elections at all levels of state government, and, like Biden, he will leave office in disgrace.
To say that Walz is the worst governor in Minnesota history does not come close to doing justice to his case. Like the children of Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, our governors have mostly been above average, with a dip here and there. Walz has plumbed the depths of political turpitude while refusing to take responsibility for the catastrophe over which he at least bears supervisory responsibility. He is at best guilty of an old-fashioned kind of political corruption that has been magnified to the nth degree by an absurdly creative welfare state. We have never seen anything like it.
Whole thing here. Again, sorry it’s behind the Examiner paywall, but the entire issue — including related columns by David Harsanyi, Guy Benson, and the great Dominic Green — looks to be of interest.
