The party of Bachmann

The takeover is complete in Minnesota, of all places.

The most recent GOP nominee for governor, Tom Emmer, backed a “Tenther” bill that would require a two-thirds state legislative vote to ratify any federal legislation and supported a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Emmer got into some trouble when it was found that he appeared with a local “heavy metal ministry”—after it became known that its pastor said it was “moral” to execute homosexuals.

The 2010 party’s nominee for secretary of state nominee, Dan Severson, playing Protestant mullah, said, “There is no such thing [as separation of church and state] … I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation.”

Among the excommunicated is the former two-term Republican Governor Arne Carlson. “The Republican Party—both nationally and in Minnesota—has drifted away from balancing the budget to enlarge the role of social issues,” Carlson said in a phone call, pointing out that Pawlenty left his successor a $6 billion deficit.

Yes, but Pawlenty supports reinstating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so many so-called conservatives will happily look the other way.