In 2006, Democrat Tim Walz shocked the world by beating six-term Republican Gil Gutknecht in Minnesota’s 1st congressional district, which consists the two or three southernmost layers of counties in the state. He’s another Democrat who won in 2006 who rode the Iraq war, Bush-bashing, and past honorable service in the military to victory.

But once in office, Walz began compiling a voting record that left him with an ACU rating of . . . 8. Out of a possible 100.

Of course he voted for the stimulus, and Obamacare, and cap-and-trade, and card check. What’s more, Walz wants a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those consistently liberal stances doesn’t fit this district. It scores an R+1 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. Bush carried it by four points, Obama carried it by four points. It includes Rochester (home of the Mayo Clinic) and farm counties to the west.

Now that he’s in trouble, Walz is running attack ads against his GOP opponent, Randy Demmer, calling him a “career politician” (he’s a farmer, an entrepreneur who started three businesses, and a state legislator) who wants to endanger Social Security, while touting his own NRA endorsement. He votes liberally; he just doesn’t want to talk about it much right before Election Day.

It’s no surprise Demmer is touting himself as “the right fit for the first district”; his commonsense approach of stopping the expansion of government and promoting personal responsibility fits the district much more than the lockstep party loyalty of the incumbent.

If you don’t help Randy Demmer replace this moderate district’s down-the-line liberal congressman, that Minnesota winter is going to seem just a little bit colder.