Loss
I was at keegan’s last night. My trivia performance was less than satisfactory, but I carried the team I was on.

Boob
It was a largely pleasant night even though just blocks away some one was murdered by an illegally concealed weapon.

RF advice to all Minnesota criminals, the river is not a good getaway when its 35 degrees outside. Its pretty cold.

Ebensteiner
I had a rather long conversation with a guy in the know with the state GOP. He was an avid Ron Ebensteiner supporter. I am not. He asked me what I thought of Ron. I told him that the losses in the House last year are due to him. That the party did nothing for the local races. That there is no leadership. His responses to my accusations were very disheartening. He said that the leadership problem is due to the staff at the party, not the actual leader. He said that the lost seats were due to the candidates not taking things seriously. And he said that it is the local BPOU’s job to tell the state party what to do.

The guy seems to believe that the BPOU chairs have all the power in the world. I told him that the State party needs a spokesperson spreading the message. This guy told me that is my job. Its not the party’s job, that what I’m supposed to do. I got POed at this point. In my head, I got the impression that the loss of 13 House seats was my fault, and my fault alone.

Here are some of my more thoughtful reasons on what the state party chair should do.
He should be the main spokesman for the party, and use their access to the media to get the republican message out. This will allow the local people to see just what the party is for. I don’t think the party chair should use their position to fight personal squabbles between themselves and another single member of the other party. They should not send out a press release every day alleging what the DFL AG did or did not do. This only leads to the voting public thinking that all the GOP cares about is catching the DFLers in bed with a boy as Bob Davis always says. The public sees the GOP as petty, and the DFLers are very smooth, and can always play off the attacks, and spin them to make the GOP look bad. The chair should not allow the party office to be unapproachable. There should be an outreach program. The chair should make sure that some one is contacting the BPOUs and verifying that they are functioning. There should be a network available for the BPOUs to get together. The once a year conventions are the wrong place. The chair should see to it that the base of the party is happy. They should make sure that the Republican legislators are doing the Republican things. He should come out and castigate the RINOs and reassure the base that the party is working hard to make sure that the problem is being worked on.

I was told last night, that the Governor should do a lot of this stuff. That’s STUPID! What do we do when the Governor is a DFLer? The party is the party! The job of the party is to get Republicans elected. To do that, the party needs to make sure the public understands just what the Republican party is. For a long time now, the DFL and media have painted the GOP as evil, money grubbing, and selfish. We are not. And if it is up to each candidate to go from house to house to correct peoples’ thoughts, we’re screwed!

If the state party does not start minding the store, the shelves will be empty. There will be no GOpers in elected office. If the state party is going to leave spreading the message up to the local levels, the GOP will slowly fade out of sight. This attitude explains why there are some areas in the state that have no GOP officials. There are probably some great conservatives in the urban areas, but it is apparently up to them to organize, go door to door correcting the misnomers about themselves, fundraise, find a candidate, run them, and in the mean time figure out what the party expects them to do.

We’re not telepathic. I don’t know if and who I will support for the state GOP chair, but the conversation last night only drove me farther away from Ebensteiner. And quite frankly if this is the way the GOP in MN wants it to work, I see no need to be apart of it. If this is really the way it works, I will seriously consider resigning my post as BPOU chair. I do not have the time to run a BPOU that is supposed to completely carry the water of the party.

I am really POed at that conversation, and I wish it never happened. I had some hope that even though the GOPers in the legislature are loosing their edge and raising taxes, that the party could make up for that and keep the base fed with the message that we are still against government expansion. I got the terrible news that I personally must make up for all the faults of the GOP. I must find the time to speak for the party. I must somehow convince the news media to listen to me, and publish my thoughts.

I am steaming mad right now! Here is an old post I wrote on this as well, I was much more clear headed then.

(I still love how when you Google for Ron Ebensteiner, I come up #5

This entry was posted on Friday, May 13th, 2005 at 9:24 am and is filed under Minnesota, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.