Suddenly, Congressman Walz remembers his training

Despite forgetting how to lead from the front, Congressman Walz finally remembered his military training last week and called for reinforcements.

Outnumbered in the current battle (54-35 from Rasmussen), critically outgunned intellectually (President Obama's gaffe on USPS vs the CBO's sobering estimate of 1.6 trillion dollars), and having been forced to engage the opposing force on ground not of his choosing (Where's Walz-do?), Congressman Walz tried to call in reinforcements, but bungled the call. Rather than calling someone in Congressman Kline's office to ask him to appear with Walz at a town hall meeting tomorrow, Walz's staff released the request to the media before giving it to Kline. When Kline's office declined the request, the memo appeared quickly on a local lefty blog. Which confirms what everybody suspected-Walz's invitation was a publicity stunt.

Congressman Walz realizes he is in serious trouble here. His initial plan to not have town hall meetings because they were 'not productive', was scrapped when local papers all across his district started printing hard hitting letters to the editor and followed it up with hard hitting editorials. Despite winning with over 62% of the vote in 2008, the his district is still a conservative district. President Obama only garnered 52% of the 1st CD, and Al Franken would have lost the district 38%-43% against Norm Coleman.

So Congressman Walz tried to tie his sinking ship to Congressman Kline by publicly inviting him to a town hall meeting. It was actually a lose-lose situation for Walz. If Kline showed up, he would have had the crowd on his side (assuming the crowd isn't packed by the unions) and Kline could have taken shots at Walz directly in a public forum. If Kline turns down the request (which he did), he can simply point out that Walz asked for help talking to his district but didn't offer any such help in Kline's district.

Tomorrow night is Congressman Walz's town hall meeting in Mankato. It should be interesting.