I don’t usually care for Nick Coleman, the liberal columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (don’t worry, I don’t like the conservative columnist, Kate Kersten, either. They are both jerks.).
However, he does a have a good profile of Aubrey Immelman, the moderate Republican who challenged Michelle Bachmann for the Republican primary in the MN-6 and who has now revived his candidacy as a write-in campaign. Here is how Coleman describes Immelman:
A South African immigrant to the United States who chose Minnesota for the great walleye fishing and the great colleges, Immelman has taught at St. John’s since 1991. He calls himself a moderate Republican and says he supported Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000, but opposes the disastrous turn in U.S. foreign policy that followed the Iraq war.
“I gave up everything to come here, which is why I feel so strongly about the direction my country has been taking,” he said Monday. “I’m a proud, patriotic American. And I cannot tolerate this festering brand of neo-McCarthyism Michele Bachmann is pushing.”
Coleman describes Immelman as solider on a one-way mission:
He doesn’t want Democrats or Independents to vote for him. He just wants to take enough votes from Bachmann to bring her down.
It might seem like a hopeless cause but, like Colin Powell, I think it’s a way that a moderate Republican can speak out against the direction of the party.
As a fellow moderate Republican, I wish him well.