What I Saw At Pete Hegseth's Christmas Party

"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them." Leonard Cohen

Last Wednesday I attended the only political holiday party that was of interest to me and to which I really didn't need an invitation, as I don't get many of those these days. Sad! I went with no expectations and left feeling like I'd taken an acid bath.

It was Facebook come to life. At one point I half wanted Dolores from "Westworld" to appear and start shooting us all in the back of the head. Or anywhere, really. Just get it done.

I say this not because it was an entirely dour affair, it wasn't. I was genuinely glad to see a wide range of elected officials, activists, staffers, donors and miscellaneous hangers-on that I hadn't in some time. One wag later tweeted that it was a rare "shabbosgoy sighting," @shabbosgoy being my handle on Twitter. Not quite as valuable as a rare Pepe meme (the diamond Pepe appears only when does the savior of Western Civilization, which happened) but still appreciated because it involved humor, something sorely lacking amongst republicans of all stripes.

Hegseth is to be commended for hosting the event and casting his invitation with a wide net in a party fractured by ideological incoherence and petty personal political rivalries. I managed a few words with his wife, Samantha, before being cornered not three feet into the donor room. I met several interesting people I wouldn't otherwise have but this initial experience was but a taste of what was to come. When Pete sought me out we had a few moments, it was fun, but he was dragged away by the event organizer in order to speak on time. The organizer, a friend, was Barbara Malzacher, who ran a flawless event.

I was pleased to speak with Sen. David Hann, who single handedly brought republicans their majority in the senate while losing his own race. Sometimes you know when you're in the presence of a genuine human being and so it was when we talked. I apologized to him for getting that scandal a few years ago quite, quite wrong. The opportunity to make that apology was the motivating reason for my attendance and I should have left once I was ahead.

* * * * 

I was surprised at the number of Never Trump people who showed their face without qualm, as if they had been aboard for some time. "Shameless," apparently, is more than an unwatchable television show. Jack & Annette Meeks in the donor room embodied this best. There were others, of course.

I pointedly said hello to a few of them. I'm only human and it was irresistible. Mostly, though, we ignored each other, as though one of us hadn't been right for months, and paid the price, and the others were not and did not. So it goes and the clueless interest me only to the extent they'll fumble the opportunities afforded republicans in Minnesota by Trump winning 78 out of 87 counties. Neither Norm Coleman or Vin Weber were in attendance but plenty of people dependent upon their largesse were. You start to see the problem; think of fossils in amber.

* * * * 

Hegseth gave a fine speech, emphasizing the positive of a Trump presidency to a room largely filled with those who not only didn't support him but hope he lost. Everyone played along while I took notes. 

Congressman-elect Jason Lewis, perhaps sensing this and providing counter-point, gave a short but optimistic speech about the present and the immediate future. He rightly emphasized that name calling didn't cut it in this last election, something he shared first hand with Trump. He told the crowd to get ready for the first 100 days of President Trump. They weren't sure what to make of that, them being swamp creatures writ small. 

Sen. David Hann spoke and got a good round of applause, suggesting to me that even the guilty can still have a conscience. After the fact, of course.

Republican Party Chair Keith Downey said that Pete Hegseth brought the Minnesota republican party together, a remarkable and demonstrably false proposition. The crowd didn't gasp--that would be too overt for this group--but it fell flat with an audible thud. His, ours, is a political party torn asunder by one dimensional chess moves by those whose only principles are self interest and self enrichment, electoral, to say nothing of ideological, success coming in a distant second, unless they mesh of course.

Downey suggested more than once that Hillary's "basket of deplorables" comment united republicans, hence Trump's victory. Someone wasn't paying attention to the fallout from the Access Hollywood video or thought anything could be said, red meat-like, and the audience would applaud. It couldn't and they didn't. 

When we later engaged by accident, he congratulated me on becoming a regular contributor to The Hill, the news of which had broken earlier that week. I haven't written about it here because I don't write about myself here; I am myself here.

Downey was exceedingly gracious and I appreciated his comments. This was something I regularly encountered: The Hill imprimatur. Many others that night gave congratulations and I unexpectedly found myself behind the curve, only concerning me. That was different, mostly weird. 

I'll take it and am grateful for the new platform and audience but I was struck by how important ersatz credentials are to these people. It's not like I'm going to say anything new or different there than here. 

* * * * 

The Hegseth Christmas gathering showed me a political party unsure of itself, vaguely happy that the orange guy won but quick to add qualifications and caveats designed to make certain members deep enough thinkers to release flatulence into the Almanac couch as well as onto the airwaves. 

The people who attended this event did so because, however begrudgingly, they recognized there was no better show in town and so there they were. Or their surrogates, furtively texting their bosses about the large crowd.

But mere attendance can't paper over the divisions in this party, starting but not ending with the outright, and deep, animosity between senate republicans and house republicans. That's a story worth reporting but in keeping with their legendary laziness, I saw not a single reporter from our DFL-centric local media. 

* * * * 

The 2016 election was the last one and we were on to the new one, by which, of course, I mean the 2018 gubernatorial race. Everyone, or so it seemed, had an agenda to push and I was frequently on the receiving end of it, willingly or not.

This, I thought in real time, was odd, given what I know about what most of those people think of me.

But they were undeterred and I was mostly a captive audience until I could manage to squirm away. Plus I was now a contributor to The Hill, something, like Trump, that they didn't see coming and so now must be dealt with.

It was an evening of exigencies, including for me, to be honest. 

The usual candidates were discussed: Minnesota Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt, Hennepin County Commissioner and 2014 republican gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson, Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek--the metaphorical elephant in a room full of political ones--as well as Scott Honour, Sen. Michelle Benson, and many others. 

One was Mike McFadden, who I saw slip into the event halfway through the speakers portion of the night. He looked through me even more thoroughly than had the Meeks earlier in the donor room, which took some doing. I returned the favor with my by now practiced wan smile. It's a Minnesota republican form of madness that he thinks himself viable in 2018. 

I learned it was much worse than I already thought when a former staffer on McFadden's misbegotten run for Senate against Al Franken called me aside and jokingly berated me for not noticing him. I was dancing as fast as I could and told him so, nothing personal. He shared with me that he encountered heated discussions, recriminations actually, about the Marty Seifert/Tom Emmer split from the 2010 endorsement battle. I really should have left earlier. That was topped by another political hand saying he'd run into disputes about the Brian Sullivan/Tim Pawlenty endorsement contest. The word irredeemable came to mind. 

A party and its activist base that still can't get beyond those old battles is not one well positioned for the future, especially given how Donald Trump has scrambled old assumptions, political techniques and electoral strategies. This would be true even if a conventional, establishment candidate had somehow won against Hillary Clinton. It's all the worse given the political transformation the president-elect has wrought.

I was routinely teased, often mocked outright, on Twitter for suggesting a political realignment was coming but come it has, even including Minnesota. I asked everyone who talked to me as though I mattered, what we were going to do to capitalize on Trump's showing here? I got blank looks, or faux thoughtful pauses, before the individual plunged back into a narrative that showed no sign of noticing what we all just experienced. By this time I was reaching my limit of how many out of body experiences I could endure in a single evening. 

* * * * 

I run the risk of appearing naïve by recounting honestly my attendance at this Christmas party. It's a risk I'll take because the stakes are so high. The evening should have been a genuine celebration but the event celebrated came about largely despite, and not because of, so many who were there. Consequently the night was like a bad family reunion: no one really liking the others and attendance forced by circumstances that were inescapable.

That was the impermeable barrier I kept encountering despite being something of a standout because I attend so few of these events. My merely showing up was noticed and that discomforted me. I was more interested in knowing what we Minnesota republicans were going to do next. 

The answers to that query left me adrift. It was as though nothing extraordinary had happened. But it has and how we "lean forward" into it spells the difference between success--and keeping Minnesota from becoming a one party state--and failure, which ensures its advance. 

I have no dog in the gubernatorial fight. I want the candidate that can defeat who I think will be the DFL nominee: Tina Flint Smith or Sen. Tom Bakk. I don't think St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman can overcome the metro establishment support of the former but I've never worried overly much about being wrong. That way lies paralysis. 

Minnesota republicans have to heal themselves. If those old political wounds that were on display last Wednesday night still rankle, I don't know how they do so. Maybe, as I always have, talking about them in the open will help.

We owe that much to our voters, who happen to be real, live people. They voted for a flawed and a brilliant man for president, one whose personal shortcomings, much like their own, they saw past to a different and better future. 

How republicans make that future come about for the average Minnesotan is the abiding question of the next two years.

Phil Krinkie Torches MN GOP Potemkin Villages

In a simple act of astonishing integrity, Phil Krinkie, republican candidate for Congress from Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, today announced that he would not participate in so called "debates" which charged attendance and from which the public or media was excluded. He was referring to upcoming debates hosted by GOP CD 6 and the Freedom Club.

In doing so, he burnt to the ground the fraudulent, hypocritical and incompetent Potemkin village that constitutes the republican establishment in CD 6, as well as delivered a body blow of truth to fatuous, hydroponic groups like the Freedom Club, which pretend to influence but which, in fact, are nothing more than a plaything of their creators, Bob & Joan Cummins, they of the marriage amendment which set back republicans in Minnesota a generation.

It's hard to overstate what Krinkie has done in giving notice to the good old boys network (and the women who want to be in them). The shockwaves of his decision should last long after this coming cycle. These upcoming debates are a fraud and he said as much. Or so it seems to me.

Krinkie told Mark Sommerhauser of the St. Cloud Times that "[p]eople shouldn't have to pay to hear where candidates stand." He went on to note that Tom Emmer, the gum on the shoe of Minnesota republicans, consciously avoids functions where media might be present or attendees are considered less than favorably disposed to him. Emmer is a coward, in other words. No news there but refreshing that Krinkie called him out in a respectful but deadly honest way. You can read Sommerhauser's article by clicking here.

Emmer recently was too scared to attend a forum for all candidates hosted by St. Ben's & St. John's University republican students. Excuses were made but everyone knew he was intimidated by being onstage before an educated audience. Dominating the endorsement process is the only way this mediocrity can get to Congress; best to keep him underexposed while pretending he's the frontrunner.  

The 6th CD debate is December 14th. The organizers are, almost to a dolt, Emmer supporters. This debate was manufactured after the negative publicity stemming from Emmer being afraid of college students at St. Ben's and St. John's.

The Freedom Club sponsored debate is set for January 13th and is equally a joke. Bob Cummins founded the group and has already maxed out to Tremulous Tom. These Potemkin events are an insult to any thinking republican, in or out of CD 6. That Phil Krinkie has called them out for what they are gives hope to anyone wishing the Republican Party of Minnesota can become more than the same stale, unaccomplished insiders we see each week on "At Issue" or "Almanac."

Krinkie's "emperor has no clothes" moment can also be applied, if not by him than by others, to RPM Chair Keith Downey, another pawn of Bob Cummins, and to the pigs-in-the-trough DC establishment that is attempting to foist the human ipecac Mike McFaddin upon us.

None of this will do if we want to win elections again. Republicans in Minnesota need to take the control for selection of our candidates out of those stale, tired, hacks who are in it for the money and the jobs. Phil Krinkie, by saying simply and honestly, the truth about current conditions shows us how.

Kudos to him.

MN Republican Party As The Bourbon Restoration

Tallyrand famously said of the Bourbon restoration that they learned nothing and forgot nothing. This classic description of fatal failure put me in mind of the Republican Party of Minnesota. After the roughly 18 month interim term as Chair by Pat Shortridge, we now have a full complement of party officers elected in the normal course of state central committee meetings. The early assessment of their performance is distressing.

Let's stipulate, first, that the bar is low for this evaluation. Everyone knows the trouble the party qua party has been in for some time. Yet the concerns I have don't focus on the usual problems: party debt and how to retire it, an actual function for the party given its abysmal record in statewide races and a last gasp attempt at making the endorsement worth the effort.

No, the trouble is that new leadership is off to a wrong start. Chair Keith Downey had an impressive dog & pony powerpoint presentation in the run up to his election. It can be reduced to the cold fact that republicans were out manned, out gunned and out financed at every turn last cycle, which came after a rather crushing defeat for the DFL in the 2010 election. I saw an impressive amount of data and nomenclature but no real understanding as to why republicans lost house and senate majorities in the shortest time possible. Except for that old, you know, didn't get the most votes thing. Isn't that why we're still in business? To win?

Downey rightly focuses on identifying republican voters, something as embarrassingly basic politically as indoor plumbing. But indoor plumb we must so I was encouraged by his unvarnished, unsentimental focus on that need.

Regrettably, he is directing approximately $100,000 of party money (no one I know seems to know the source for it) to the Civis Group, run by Mike Scholl, who is best known as Bob Cummins' gatekeeper and all around lackey. Cummins founded the Freedom Club and was instrumental in destroying the republican brand last fall through his pet project the marriage amendment ballot initiative. Cummins also started Civis Group so all current party roads lead to Bob. Right.

The Freedom Club wasted an enormous amount of money on Keith Downey's race for Minnesota state senate. Downey ran a poor campaign. Downey lost. The Freedom Club is dangerous precisely because it doesn't realize it is.

Is directing one hundred thousand dollars to Civis a manner of paying back the favor? Could well be and could be no big deal because things like this happen in party politics.

I understand, though, that Civis Group will keep all of the data for which the party is paying it to collect. Why should that happen? Such a condition should never have been agreed to and the contract should be modified at once.

Worse, the Civis Group is advising both the Emmer for Congress campaign as well as the Thompson for Governor campaign. How can a conflict of interest this obvious not be apparent to Downey? If Civis wants to corner the market on angry, white, male, out of touch republican has beens, fine. It should not be given party business as a simple matter of fairness & integrity for those other republicans running in those races. One wonders, in passing, who has provided what fake jobs to Emmer & Thompson with which to support themselves while they run for office.

Beyond sucking up to his benefactors, Downey has hired Bill Walsh as communications director. Walsh's record is one of abject failure in that very position but he's Keith's friend and so he got the job. Is my Bourbon restoration analogy making more sense now? After his shilling for Kurt Bills, I didn't think Downey's judgment could get worse.

On Tuesday of this week DFL Rep. Ryan Winkler tweeted that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was an Uncle Thomas. Calamity ensued and Winkler became a national story.

Where were Keith & Bill? Nowhere, apparently, as they couldn't even generate a press release on the matter, let alone pull together a press conference. This is simply unforgivable. The next day Downey sent out a badly written email rightly bemoaning the loss of 150 jobs in Minnesota. The idea, however, that both that email and something on the day of an exploding national story involving a rising DFL star couldn't both happen is ludicrous and pathetic. There was no excuse for missing such a rare opportunity.

Yesterday Downey published a quintessential Pollyanna op-ed in the Pioneer Press. You can read it by clicking here. Stamping his feet he decried name calling, and, tightly pursing his lips, demanded the DFL and affiliated groups cease their extremely well oiled, effective messaging machine. Because that's all it takes, you know: some half baked whining about a superior message machine and clucking about the by-now-embedded-in-our-political-culture Alinsky principles of political warfare.

As if this wasn't enough, MN GOP Secretary Chris Fields weighed in on Twitter that Tuesday of Winkler's self-immolation but only to squander the opportunity and make a hash of things. Fields tweeted that if Justice Thomas is seen as Uncle Thomas by Winkler then that must make Winkler poor white trash. I'm starting to think MN GOP personnel may be DFL plants.

Deputy Chair Kelly Fenton continued to demonstrate her lack of leadership with which she is synonymous by doing or saying nothing about the national Winkler story. No, tweeting doesn't count because, remember?, it started there? Yep! Then, you know, scooted out the door into national media pronto, 'member? That's where you and the rest of the party didn't chase the story. That's right: a national story you guys let go. Is anyone awake at headquarters?

Local media were more shameless than normal in their grotesquely sympathetic coverage of Winkler, the DFL's Eddie Haskell. They essentially took his dictation and left it at that. No questions from these poodles. The mind runs riot when thinking of their "coverage" had the political shoe been on the right foot. Everyone reading this knows I'm correct in that regard.

And yet--that damn yet!--who was going to call out media coverage when the Republican Party of Minnesota itself was dead to that story, itself failed to capitalize on it and, instead of doing anything effective, itself wrote juvenile & useless op-eds, wanting to be rewarded for it?

All anyone has to do to know what's wrong with the Republican Party of Minnesota is to simply look at it.


Image: Coat of Arms of the Bourbon Restoration

With A Wimper: M Stebbins Is Sixth Alternate

Last night the undisputed leader of the poisonous Ron Paul invasion of the Minnesota Republican Party, Marianne Stebbins, was elected sixth alternate from SD 33 to the State Central Committee which meets on April 6th to select new party leadership, among other tasks. She may as well have not been elected at all. Alternates are just that and her last place position essentially means that assassins would have to take out all of the delegates and the five preceding alternates before she could cast a vote at that meeting.

This is an amusing descent from her apotheosis at Tampa and the Republican National Convention last August. There she lead a delegation that was overwhelmingly in support of Ron Paul and voted accordingly. It was all for naught, of course, because Ron Paul wasn't going to win the nomination, just like he hadn't won anywhere else. Most Paulers are not in politics to win elections but an argument. I have taken up the helpful nomenclature of Nancy LaRoche (soon to be the next Chair of CD 5) who refers to builders and destroyers when looking at the infusion of people who came into local republican politics under the Ron Paul liberty banner. This keeps me, as I had done previously, from sweeping too broadly about them. Builders welcome. Destroyers must be destroyed. Destroyers delenda est.

I'm not sure that this won't keep the local media and the laughable Prof. Larry R. Jacobs of the shopworn Humphrey School from putting Stebbins on their stale, tired programs or stale, tired panels. At some point, however, even these democrats with a byline will have to recognize that the future of the MN GOP does not, and never did, belong to this group of people. I don't fault them, actually, for including Stebbins but to position her in the manner they did was simply to hurt the overall image of the republican party. I'm not interested in appearing on these shows or panels (we're trying to attract not repel people) but I can give interested producers a dozen names of smart, savvy, hard working activists who know far more than Annette! Meeks or Andy Brehm or just about anyone else you see on those programs, Ben Golnik specifically excluded.

We'll see if that happens. In the meantime, republicans who want to fight the awful overreach of a one party state should be gladdened by last night's denouement. Keith Downey seems very well positioned to become our party's next Chair, something I now welcome and about which more another time. I think he can reach out to all sorts of republicans, including the builders. Our choices for deputy chair are deeply disappointing and the current field is the best argument for abolishing the position altogether and saving money. The elimination of this position would only strengthen the role of executive director, something long overdue. In fact, without a deputy chair, we could pay someone who is very good (do we ever search for national talent or is Minnesota still too xenophobic?). We shouldn't duplicate the senate and house caucus example which simply hires leaderships' friends regardless of how good they are or how much they had a hand in losing the majority in each chamber. For a party that insists on measuring outcome, not intent, I'm always surprised by the junior varsity teams we deploy based purely on cronyism. To be sure, there are other reasons for our shocking lack of messaging which the fishbowls of caucuses seem worried about not at all.

I've thought for some time Minnesota is in a post-party environment and that the DFL realized this long before republicans. The new chair will necessarily have to take this into account. The tasks are daunting but not insurmountable. Fortunately our Portlandia political opponents are doing their best to show normal Minnesotans just how out of touch and embarrassingly far left they really are at heart. Their relationship to unions is a classic example of the Stockholm Syndrome. Their overreach is necessary but not sufficient. In addition, the republican party's endorsement means virtually nothing (as opposed to being an outright kiss of death) given the Kurt Bills fiasco. The primary will be moved to June and republicans will select quality candidates who can win; not hot house flowers that wilt and die in the heat of political battle.

The withering of the Ron Paul destroyers is a much needed and welcome sign that the worst of this hostile take-over is behind us. Yes, small skirmishes likely remain but the overall direction of the party back toward something voters would like to trust with a majority again has commenced. Republicans need to keep that momentum going by admitting our failures in the last cycle while providing principled opposition to one party rule during the current one. As always, the future is unwritten.