The Tide Is Turning Against Norm - Time To Goodbye?

The tide of conservative opinion is turning against Norm Coleman. Both the National Review and Powerline today tacitly admitted that the contest is lost for Normie. In two consecutive posts in Nation Review's The Corner column yesterday and today, Ramesh Ponnuru said that Coleman should give up:

If he keeps up the fight, he is likely to lose, unnecessarily deprive Minnesota of a second senator, end his political career seen as a sore loser, and hurt his party in a state that is eager for this fight to be over. His team has talked enough about further legal challenges that if he leaves now, he will get some points for grace. (Needless to say, that sentiment would not be universal.) But this is, I think, the last moment where he can exit with some dignity.

Meanwhile, today on the Powerline blog contributor Scott Johnson admitted today that Al Franken "didn't steal the election." In a column also reprinted in National Review Johnson wrote:

The logical implication is that we may never determine who actually received more legally cast ballots. Coleman formulates the issue in terms of equal protection and urges a lowest-common-denominator approach to the inclusion of rejected absentee ballots as a matter of constitutional law, but I am afraid he may have identified a wrong without a legal (as opposed to a political) remedy.

[...]...the Coleman campaign has put on a performance that conveys a strong impression of complacency and ineptitude; the Franken campaign outhustled and outsmarted it.

[...]And I don’t think it can exactly be said that he (Franken) won the election fair and square. Indeed, I can’t find a single good thing to say about him except that he didn’t steal the election.

Wow, the harsh light of reality has finally hit the troglodytes at the National Review and Powerline! Now all we need is for Gov. Pawlenty to realize that Coleman is a political tar baby, and stop equivocating about putting his signature on the election certificate. Coleman has ruined any chance of further elective office in Minnesota, and T-Paw needs to realize that the same thing can happen to him by association. If he's planning to run for president in 2012 or 2016 (and he is, you can bet), Pawlenty needs to think about that long and hard. Personally, I don't think the Gov is smart enough not to toe the GOP line, and will do everything he can to delay signing that certificate. Meanwhile, Minnesota goes without full representation in the Senate.

The GOP strategy is clear: delay that 59th seat by whatever means necessary! Any consideration for the rule of law, for the principles of representative democracy, for the good of the country--none of that stands a chance against the greed and lust for power that's driving the Rethugs. I think this debacle will help counter the usual loss of seats by the majority party in 2010. People will remember who thought of the country, and who thought only of themselves.

And John Cornyn, why don't you just STFU?