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.