Friday, November 9, 2012

The Future of Minnesota's Republican Party

Republicans lost their majorities in both the Minnesota House & Senate a mere two years after taking control of both chambers for the first time since the early nineteen seventies. Put another way, so great was the incompetence of leaders in the house & senate that they failed entirely in the shortest time possible. Thanks for that although I'm feeling unsatisfied without at least one ritual political Japanese-style suicide. Now there's a foreign tradition this conservative would support adopting here at home. Not surprisingly, no one takes responsibility for Tuesday's disastrous election outcome. Yet why should we expect a display of responsibility when none had been demonstrated in the prior two years?

Neither the senate nor the house caucus seemed to have figured out a message with which to convince voters to send them back in the same strength as in 2010, let alone avoid the wipeout they experienced. But for so long they avoided the obvious problems of running on their record: Obama may have gotten away with it (barely, it kills me to say) but they never could. Their incompetence was on a par with the Pete Hegseth campaign who only figured out it was over when they saw the Kurt Bills bus parked inside the convention hall last May. Funny thing, reality.

The caucuses, though, when not infighting, are hothouses of small bore political intrigue. Brodkorb's dominion. Monkeys, greasy poles. Tedium and immaturity. Thanks to both of them costing us the legislature. We're just bloggers, a friend of Ian's once told me, in the eyes of staff caucus. I think I had pride of place in the list of bloggers house caucus staff thought the most deranged. Now how was I to understand myself? It was an interesting temperature take of the hothouse. Clearly, nothing improved there and our losses this election must be owned by them, to sound like a progressive. We call it responsibility, don't we on our side? Can we avoid applying it to ourselves? So thanks Ian Marsh, Tom Freeman, Greg Peppin & Kurt Daudt. Oh: P2B products/services suck, I'm told. How about another less self-interested vender? Wait: for competent I'll take self-interested.

Then there's the matter of the ballot measures: how does voter photo ID fail? When you have losers promoting it as a partisan issue thereby making the Dayton/Carlson tee vee ad effective. This is akin to throwing yourself on the floor and missing.

Traditional marriage also failed because mailing it in doesn't cut it for advocacy. My friend Andy Parrish pretty much mailed it in; he failed to recognize the power of 300,000 door knocks.

This is not to say we should be lectured to by those who themselves contributed in an oh so personal way to republican destruction in Minnesota. Local media love such types, especially if that type is desperate for a PR comeback. What media petting zoo? I love my friends very much. I'm the definition of loyal. But I'm also honest, coming from South Dakota, where such wasn't a big deal, it was the norm. Must be the prairies and their sheltering sky.

Minnesota appears to be a land of agreed upon deceptions.™

To be fair, this is no better than the milquetoasts in my party who stood by while Ron Paul supporters swept the republican party of minnesota in order to undermine it. Were this warfare, you would be humanely shot for treason. Hyperbole is not my style but there you have it, my last sentence.

We have no one, currently, to run credibly against Sen. Franken nor anyone against Gov. Dayton. Our chances are better with the former than the latter and I think early bird nerds may agree with me. But I know nothing: I predicted President Romney on October 18th.

I do know that the future of the republican party is almost beside the point. Every activist I know has taken, well, my advice and moved forward on those structures and legal entities that our friends on the left have done so well to create.

We need to do the same because the Republican Party of Minnesota is now beside the point. To stay with that structure is to die.



11 comments:

Lynne L. Geistfeld, Publisher said...

Is Pete Hegseth out of the question to run against Al Franken? I think the party needs to look for young, charismatic people...charismatic is what put Obama back in the White House.

Charlie Quimby said...

Which comes first, the leaders or the followers? MNGOP had shortage of both, seems to me.


Anonymous said...

At the state level, my voting reflected total disgust with the party's advocacy for the Wilf subsidy. Perhaps this position accounted for a portion of the failure.

JM said...

I have to disagree that there is no one on the bench. My husband and I both met David Carlson in 2008 when he door knocked our house and have been very impressed with him ever since. Both of our first Republican votes have been for him in that State House race in Saint Paul in 2008 and this go round for U.S. Senate against Kurt Bills, and my husband even wrote him in against Amy although I did still vote Amy because I wasn't going to vote for Bills.

What more do you want? Here's a candidate with honorable military service as a Marine who actually shot machine guns in the infantry, a Bachelors and Masters degree at the University of Minnesota, a small business owner, and an attractive young man with a gorgeous children and a great story of working hard from nothing on the East Side? If he was a Democrat I guarantee that party wouldn't be saying they have no one on the bench, we told him that in '08 when he was running as an R on the East Side.

Franken is very beatable as long as the GOP doesn't put up another Kennedy, Coleman, Emmer or Bills! Carlson received 44,000 votes and nearly 40% of the state with little resources and had some high quality TV ads and social media. You people say you have no one to match up? Wake up and embrace this veteran if you want to win.

Mr. B. said...

Putting Pete up against Al Franken would be making the same mistake that was made in putting up Hernandez and Fields.

But, as John says about himself, "What do I know?"

Anonymous said...

Pete Hegseth was not charismatic. In fact he just came off as a spoiled, groomed, patsy who was "desyined to win" and then lost because he had no real ideas.

Also, why on earth should we support, as a party, a guy who couldn't win at his own covention?

JM said...

I have to disagree that there is no one on the bench. My husband and I both met David Carlson in 2008 when he door knocked our house and have been very impressed with him ever since. Both of our first Republican votes have been for him in that State House race in Saint Paul in 2008 and this go round for U.S. Senate against Kurt Bills, and my husband even wrote him in against Amy although I did still vote Amy because I wasn't going to vote for Bills.

What more do you want? Here's a candidate with honorable military service as a Marine who actually shot machine guns in the infantry, a Bachelors and Masters degree at the University of Minnesota, a small business owner, and an attractive young man with a gorgeous children and a great story of working hard from nothing on the East Side? If he was a Democrat I guarantee that party wouldn't be saying they have no one on the bench, we told him that in '08 when he was running as an R on the East Side.

Franken is very beatable as long as the GOP doesn't put up another Kennedy, Coleman, Emmer or Bills! Carlson received 44,000 votes and nearly 40% of the state with little resources and had some high quality TV ads and social media. You people say you have no one to match up? Wake up and embrace this veteran if you want to win.

MikeWBL said...

John, I told both Zellers & Dean that the marriage amendment was a terrible mistake during the 2011 Session. I told both of them it would bring in outside dollars & outside help to defeat it.

But more importantly, it would prove to be just like Prohibition. It may pass but it'll be be overturned in 4-8 years since this was & is a generational issue, i.e. I would vote for it but my 30 year old children would not.

Whatever image the RPM had before the marriage amendment, it is forever tarnished in the eyes of college students as well 20 & 30 year olds.

I'm an Independent now and will be joining the rest of the WIFM (What's In It For Me)crowd.

Anonymous said...

You lose all credibility in the MNGOP when you support Klobuchar over someone such as Bills. If you want statism why not just go full fledged DFL?

PPurcell said...

Blaming the Paul supporters is short sighted. Had the GOP elected members of both houses tended to business, governed w/ conservative conviction, the Paul movement would not have taken root. A complete lack of leadership & direction from a scandal ridden party, "moderates" in leadership who only know how "go along to get along" doing their damnest to squelch TParty members, pushing a taxpayer funded building (stadium) for a millionaire owner & pampered players while refusing to support freedom afforded by the Employee Freedom amendment -the blame for the loss falls squarely w/ the GOP. The numerous failures of the party are too many to list, but the accumulation of those failures over the tears predating the election of Jesse V, are the reasons Paul & Party folks are demanding better and now being blamed.

Anonymous said...

What? We have lots of candidates to run against Dayton! Why, David Hann, Kurt Zellers, and Jeff Johnson have all been running for years. And then there's Dave Thompson. Not good enough? I don't think so either. . . .

P.S. Anonymous said...
"Pete Hegseth was not charismatic. In fact he just came off as a spoiled, groomed, patsy..."
- Andy, your mom said she wants you off her computer now.