But isn’t Sarlin missing something here?

These books are intended to be satire. Whether you think they succeed or not, they hardly evidence how Franken might act upon becoming a senator. And most of the Franken critics that Sarlin cites — Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly — are hardly mainstream conservatives that swing voters are likely to take their cues from. Rather, they’re political pugilists whose sole purpose is to rile up the conservative base (and make boatloads of money).

If anything, the Senate campaign in Minnesota proved that merely attacking Al Franken as an ideolog and an interloper is not enough to convince voters to back the Republican candidate. Norm Coleman’s campaign attacked Franken incessantly throughout the contest — and it doesn’t look to have been a very successful strategy.

PepsiAmericas CEO Robert Pohlad has chipped in $50,000, while his wife, Rebecca, added another $37,500. Alida Messinger — a veteran Democratic donor, Rockefeller heir, and ex-wife of former Sen. Mark Dayton — also contributed $37,500. Finally, Jeffrey Balanga, CEO of Minnetonka-based Carlson Marketing, made a $25,000 donation.

As the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal previously reported, there are some other donors with Minnesota connections. UnitedHealth Group Executive Vice President Thomas Strickland contributed $50,000, while three other employees of the Minnetonka-based company gave at least $200.

Under rules put forth by Obama’s inaugural committee, individuals are prohibited from giving more than $50,000. In addition corporations, political-action committees, lobbyists and non-citizens are barred from contributing to the festivities.

But the proposed stamp reduction quickly sparked opposition from Democrats. “This is the way many members stay in touch with their constituents,” said Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller. “You don’t have to use up this total allotment if you don’t want.”

Sen. Steve Murphy echoed those comments. “Many of us that have larger districts … we depend upon that postage to stay in contact with our constituents,” noted Murphy, a DFLer from Red Wing. “Today, more than ever, we need the input from our constituents.”

Ultimately the proposal was voted down by a 38-27 margin, largely along party lines.

Al Franken has emerged from the U.S. Senate recount with a 225-vote lead over incumbent Norm Coleman. The five-member State Canvassing Board unanimously certified the results at a hearing Monday afternoon. Roughly two months after the election — and following a painstaking statewide manual recount of nearly 3 million ballots — Franken received 1,212,431 votes, while Coleman was backed by 1,212,206 voters.

While the actions of the canvassing board would seem to suggest that the epic election contest is finally drawing to a close, the Coleman campaign immediately made it clear that they have no intention of conceding defeat. Attorney Tony Trimble announced at a press conference following the canvassing board meeting that they will file a lawsuit contesting the outcome of the contest. The Republican’s campaign believes that various voting improprieties — wrongly rejected absentee ballots, double-counted ballots and lost ballots — have tarnished the recount.

“Since the process is far from complete there can be no confidence in the current results of the United States Senate recount,” Trimble said. “We will file a contest within the next 24 hours to promptly correct those problems.”

The Franken campaign, not surprisingly, hailed the development. “Today is a great day for the people of Minnesota,” lawyer Marc Elias said. “I stand before you proudly as the attorney for the next Senator for the state, Senator-elect Al Franken;”

Franken himself declared victory in front of his Minneapolis condominium this afternoon. Reports out of Washington today suggested that the Senate will attempt to seat him tomorrow with the other freshman legislators. Republicans have vowed to prevent that from happening through a filibuster. In another unwelcome development for Coleman, his office was ordered shut and staff sent home at the direction of the Senate rules committee.

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and the four other members of the canvassing board expressed satisfaction at the conduct of the state-mandated recount. “I think this recount has proven the wisdom and the strength of that system in an amazing way,” Ritchie said at the close of the meeting. “This didn’t just fall from the sky. People long before us built this system.”

But canvassing board member Eric Magnuson, chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, summed up the continuing ambiguity surrounding the ultimate outcome of the Senate contest. “I don’t think we’ve written the last chapter in this particular election,” he said.

The election will not be certified, however, for at least seven days. During that interim period Coleman will have the opportunity to contest the results in court — a step that his campaign has promised to take because of alleged irregularities in the vote counting.

Update: Late Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Democrats will not try to seat Franken on Tuesday.

Jim Manley, the spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CQ today that there “likely will be an attempt to seat [Franken] this week.” A senior Democratic aide also confirmed that Senate Democrats hoped to swear Franken in Tuesday, along with the rest of the freshman senators.

Republicans have promised to filibuster any attempt to seat Franken before the election is certified. “I think that is the likelihood here if the Democrats try to ignore the Senate Rule Two and Minnesota law and try to short-circuit this process,” Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, told CNN this morning.

But the likelihood of an election contest in either state or federal court has not deterred speculation on Coleman’s next move if he ultimately is defeated. The Washington Post reports today that one (unnamed) “well-connected GOP operative” said that Coleman is being mentioned as a possible chairman of the Republican National Committee.

There are currently at least six contenders for the RNC post, including current chair Robert “Mike” Duncan, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and South Carolina chairman Katon Dawson. Coleman would bring a couple of attractive attributes: an established track record as a prolific fundraiser and geographical diversity to a party increasingly dominated by the south.

In response he got hate mail and death threats from across the globe, or what Myers termed “the most impressive demonstration of mass lunacy I have ever seen.” He finally followed through on the threat, piercing a communion wafer with a rusty nail and tossing it in the trash. The Minnesota Independent published an interview with the unrepentant cracker abuser in July.

Thanks for the memories. Now please go away. Yes, we’re talking about you, Rudy Giuliani. And you, Wolf Blitzer. We no longer wish to be a swing state. Henceforth the residents of the state of Minnesota promise to vote reliably Democratic. Or Republican. It doesn’t much matter which — just as long as you people promise to stop showing up in our little slice of the frozen tundra seeking to feel our pain. But to memorialize the horrors visited upon us during the (still ongoing) campaign season, we offer — in honor of our favorite member of the Statewide General Election Canvassing Board — the G. Barry Anderson Awards.

Betty McCollum

Personally we thought the Andy Rooney date-rape skit had potential: It’s tough to recall now, but back in June it looked as if Al Franken’s Senate campaign was going to run completely off the rails. Despite two years of suffering through fish fries and potluck suppers in East Jesus Nowhere, his campaign was beset by controversies over improperly paid taxes and past writings. But it wasn’t the inevitable frothing of Minnesota Democrats Exposed that put the Franken campaign at risk of losing the DFL endorsement to a little-known challenger from the Trotskyite wing of the party. Rather it was the attacks from Franken’s fellow Democrats, led by Rep. Betty McCollum, that nearly doomed his candidacy. Her sanctimonious outrage over a (rather dull) Playboy article triggered a cattle call of Democratic politicians expressing faux outrage over Franken’s past writings. The comedian’s possibly pending triumph, however, raises hope for a 2014 Diablo Cody campaign.

T-Paw

He even cut off his hockey mullet, dammit: We really, really thought Gov. Tim Pawlenty was a shoo-in. When GOP muckety-muck Ken Mehlman hosts a Georgetown cocktail-and-mini-wiener gathering in your honor and it’s revealed that First Lady Mary Pawlenty refers to you as “45″ behind closed doors, it’s time to start measuring the curtains for Vice President Dick Cheney’s secret bunker, no? Pawlenty couldn’t have telegraphed his desire for the post any more strongly if he’d offered to take on eBay’s Meg Whitman in a steel-cage match. But when it became clear that Sen. John McCain’s appeal was largely limited to (some) former guests of the Hanoi Hilton and beer-distributorship scions, the drab choice of Pawlenty got scuttled for a moose hunter with a unique ability to arouse the Republican base with just three words: “Drill, baby, drill.” Does M-Paw now cry out “46?”

Xcel Energy Center

Let’s play hockey, please: Barack Obama decided to pee on the ice first. On the night that he finally slew the Pantsuited Beast once and for all, Obama showed up in St. Paul to stir the masses with his magic happy talk. A photo that would become one of the iconic images of the campaign was snapped in an Xcel elevator by Time photographer Callie Shell. It shows Obama, surrounded by his wife and advisers, beaming as if he’d just discovered indoor plumbing. Even better: nobody had time to organize a protest or arm the police with $50 million worth of the latest riot attire.

The Republican National Convention

What a gas: Did anyone other than St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, Gov. Pawlenty and a few other insecure, ambitious politicians have any desire to host this four-day excuse to beat on protesters, arrest reporters, scream epithets at cops and hire really high-priced hookers? Does anyone care about whether the world at large has any clue where St. Paul, Minn., is located on a map and whether people view it as a “first-class” city? Can we please go back to being a Cold Omaha that rich people visit only when their nasal passages can no longer reliably process coke? Nobody was impressed by forced exposure to Minnesota Nice Passive Aggression and the Land of 10,000 Cops in Riot Gear. Anderson Cooper will not be returning this winter to hang out at the St. Paul Curling Club. If “this is what democracy looks like,” as the protesters kept insisting, we don’t want any part of it. To quote Meir Kahane and Kelly Clarkson: “Never Again.”

Palin-tology

Let them eat moose: That damned Katie Couric. She ruined everything. Before Sarah Palin performed her excruciating media belly flop on the “CBS Evening News,” she brought the house down at the RNC in St. Paul. Winking her way through a speech notable for its withering contempt for the Democratic presidential nominee, she had pundits (particularly the male variety) swooning. But even after it became clear that she was about as prepared to take up residence at the White House as your typical TV sports reporter, the GOP faithful were positively loopy for Palin. When she returned to Minnesota for a rally in Blaine (along with the old guy at the top of the ticket) just two weeks later, the delirious Palin-ites nearly filled an airplane hanger. But after it became increasingly clear that McCain had no chance of winning Minnesota, we were stuck with the surrogates. And unfortunately it wasn’t Bristol Palin. Or Levi Johnston. Instead we got the first dude — a man (to put it kindly) not known for his rhetorical gifts. But Minnesotans apparently weren’t offended by this snub. Todd Palin’s whirlwind two-day tour of the state was the biggest thing to hit Grand Rapids since the annual Judy Garland Festival.

The Crazy McCain Lady

Now she would have been a bold VP pick: When McCain arrived in Lakeville for a town-hall meeting in October, we were concerned that Minnesota might not be living up to expectations as a swing state. After all, recent McCain-Palin rallies had featured party faithful so riled up by the red-meat rhetoric that they’d spewed death threats at Obama and gnawed the legs off of anti-war protesters (OK, not really the latter). Were nice Minnesotans psychologically equipped to live up to such demanding standards? But then 75-year-old Gail Quinnell wandered up to the stage and let everyone know that we’re just as loony as the rest of the country. The “Crazy McCain Lady” utilized her moment in the political spotlight to declare Obama an Arab, earning a rebuke from McCain and her own skit on “Saturday Night Live.”

Cullen Sheehan

In October Harper’s Magazine reported allegations that Norm Coleman’s close pal Nasser Kazeminy financed lavish shopping sprees for the senator at Nieman Marcus. The Republican’s campaign initially refused to answer any questions about the controversy, brushing off inquiries from both Harper’s and Pioneer Press reporter Dave Orrick. “There are very awful things that are said about people on the blogs,” Coleman revealed. But it was the senator’s campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, who really transformed the story into Intertubes gold. At an excruciating state Capitol press conference, he repeatedly refused to disclose whether Coleman had received any free suits from Kazeminy. Instead Sheehan recited this mantra over and and over and over and over again: “The senator has reported every gift he’s ever received.” Of course Suit-gate was soon trumped by Donor-gate, after two lawsuits alleged that Kazeminy attempted to funnel $75,000 to the senator.

Neiman Marcus

We’re pretty sure that was Rod Blagojevich trying on a houndstooth jacket over in aisle three: What other clothing store in the country can claim a place at the center of two different scandals during this election season? Coleman may have been responsible for the first free Neiman Marcus advertisement, but it took Sarah Palin to truly put the retailer in the national spotlight. After she was tapped as the VP nominee, the GOP brass were apparently fearful she might show up at the convention in camo waders and a blaze orange overcoat. So they tapped local Republican pooh-bah Jeff Larson to lead the Alaska governor on a $75,000, donor-financed shopping spree at Neiman Marcus. No word on whether she ran into Norm (or Nasser) while at the Nicollet Mall store.

Sixth Congressional District Voters

They’re not anti-American, but they’re definitely pro-Scandinavia: After the best-dressed homophobe ever to represent Minnesota in Congress spread her magic to the whole wide world via “Hardball,” it looked as though her congressional career might be over after just one term. Money poured in from across the country to support the underdog campaign of Elwyn Tinklenberg, and polls showed the race deadlocked. But the nice, racist Scandinavian voters of the Sixth Congressional District had an election day surprise for the pollsters. They gave Bob Anderson — a candidate who wasn’t endorsed by any political party, wasn’t invited to most debates, and hardly campaigned — 10 percent of the vote, thus ensuring that Michele Bachmann would return to Washington. We can vividly imagine the thought process of Ole and Sven while hovering over the ballot: “Bachmann? Isn’t she the one who wants to start gulags for everyone with un-American thoughts? Tinklenberg? I do kinda have to use the bathroom now that I think about it. Anderson? Well, I betcha he’s an awful nice gentleman. I’m sure he’d do a wonderful job in Washington, just like Coya Knutson.”

The Recount

This is dedicated to Eric Magnuson’s goatee: The fifth pile. The third pile. Wrongly rejected absentee ballots. Allegedly double-counted ballots. The 133 missing ballots. G. Barry Anderson. Marc Elias. Tony Trimble. The Lizard People. Flying Spaghetti Monster. G. Barry Anderson. Minnesotans have been forced to learn an entirely new lexicon and nomenclature to fully follow the U.S. Senate Contest That Refuses to Die. And now it’s clear that no matter how much we repeat the totemic words “G. Barry Anderson” over and over and over again, the recount is destined to drag on well into 2009. Even if we don’t end up in the swamps of south Florida with hanging chads and Cruella Harris haunting our dreams, it’s still been a rather gruesome process to behold. But here’s a simple proposal to bring this mess to an end: a lutefisk-eating contest on the state Capitol steps. The Uptake will carry a live feed. G. Barry Anderson will officiate. Whichever candidate can cram the most lutefisk down his throat in 15 minutes goes to Washington. With one caveat: He can never come back.

The Minnesota Supreme Court will not wade into the murky issue of allegedly double-counted ballots in the U.S. Senate contest. Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign believes that in some instances both duplicate and original ballots were mistakenly included in the statewide manual recount. It had asked the state’s top court to prohibit the canvassing board from certifying any election results until the issue is resolved.

But a unanimous Supreme Court ruled today that it doesn’t have sufficient information to get involved in the matter. “We do not and cannot decide that question based on the record presented in this abbreviated proceeding,” Justice Alan Page wrote in his opinion for the court.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the issue of double-counted ballots is dead. More than likely it will now be contested in district court, where there would be an opportunity for both sides to present evidence and testimony on the matter. Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak told Minnesota Public Radio’s Tom Scheck today that the decision “virtually guarantees that this will be decided in an election contest.”

The Franken campaign, not surprisingly, hailed the Supreme Court’s action. “Minnesotans have waited a long time to find out who won this race,” communications director Andy Barr said in a statement, “and today’s unanimous ruling means that the process can move forward despite attempts to halt its progress and cast doubt on the result.”

In a related matter the Supreme Court also extended the deadline for local election officials to identify wrongfully rejected absentee ballots. The justices originally ordered county canvassing boards to certify adjusted tallies that included such ballots by the end of the calendar year. Under today’s order they are now required to identify any mistakenly rejected absentee ballots and deliver them to the Secretary of State’s office by January 2. The state’s top election official will then have two days to tabulate the ballots.

The canvassing board is slated to meet on January 5 and 6. Theoretically it could (finally) certify a winner at that time.