A Party in Need of a Leader
OK, the recent elections in St. Cloud were not a mandate for the liberal agenda, so I’d appreciate the gloating to settle. Neither were the November off year elections.
But, this is another sign of a growing trend. Due to appointments, retirements, and people seeking other offices, the MN Republicans are in huge trouble.
I’ve been terrified of losing the majority in the State House because incumbents just didn’t run again. That is now playing true. Incumbents win 95% of the time, so why the heck is everyone quitting? The DFL and liberal activist groups are going to out campaign us, period. So we cannot give them any advantages over us. Their message of socialized everything, higher taxes, and barriers to personal responsibility cannot win at the polls.
So why the hell is it? These super low turnout elections prove nothing more than DFLers can get their voters out. Plain and simple. I feel that had the November elections or this recent special election fallen in the even year regular election cycle, the outcomes would have been very different. Off year and special elections favor Democrats, plain and simple. Campaigning is their life, and they plan for this all year. All of the DFL satellite organizations miraculously show up and work like a well oiled machine on election day. Each part knows exactly what to do. It is a seamless operation, that is nearly impossible to out perform.
So what can the GOP do? First off, we cannot have our sitting office holders quit, retire, or move on to other/higher offices. We cannot afford to lose one more seat. I’m betting that in the 6th CD one of the 3 candidates who currently hold a spot in the State Legislature will get the nod, and likely be the next Congressperson. That will be another seat lost. Jeff Johnson is running for AG, he could be another lost seat. There are other Republicans thinking of or committed to retiring. We are in serious trouble folks.
Here is what I think has to happen, and quick. We need to come back together as a party. We need to unite once again to take on the DFL, rather than each other. Me and some of my webfriends have taken more slings and arrows over the last few months than the Democrats. Sure, we’ve slung some mud around, but mostly in hopes of addressing an error we’ve seen.
Pawlenty was right when he said that he could not take on the DFL, moderates, and the conservatives. But I see it being far worse for every Republican in the State if we all spend the next 11 months bitching and moaning at each other only to hurt each other and watch the Democrats laugh all the way to victory.
Someone has got to stand up on the right side of the political aisle and take the reigns of this party. We are fractured into the many different factions all working on their own agenda. The DFL doesn’t do that, they are all in for the greater good. Who in the Party can and will stand up and lead us? Can Gov. Pawlenty mend the fences with the fiscal conservatives to be the leader I think we need? Maybe an unelected official could step up and be the one.
Whoever it is, they have to stand up and be heard quickly. Not only are the GOP troops demoralized and ready to pack it in, but the public is seeing us as a weak and broken Party. What do Republicans stand for? More importantly, who can we look to for leadership and guidance?
(This is not intended to be an attack on any one person, nor the party as a whole, I mean that. I am seriously concerned about what I see happening. The old guard (grassroots workers/Party staff) hate the new digital activists (bloggers and webheads) and there is a growing divide between the old and experienced members and the young and energetic new kids on the political block. The infighting is unproductive and dividing us. We are not one Party right now. The DFL takes its many different factions and utilizes each and every one of them. Why can’t we do that too?
This is something that has been brewing in my head for a while. I just threw this up today, to get people thinking about it over the long weekend. Am I wrong? Am I right? You tell me.)
I’m sure I’ll catch hell for this one, oh well.
That’s funny. “Off year and special elections favor Democrats, plain and simple. ”
Well, maybe not funny, but wrong. Republicans in MN have won almost every special election for the past 50 years. It is only in recent times that DFLers have started winning them, Otto, Bonoff, Clark, and Haws. In fact, 2005 will be the first time in history that the DFL has a net gain in seats during a non-election year.
So, admit it, its not that your incumbents are retiring or these special elections that get you down. People of Minnesota got tired of double digit property tax increases, their younger kids getting worse educations than their older kids, sitting in traffic, bad expensive health care, and pay that doesn’t keep up with inflation. They deserve better, and that is what the DFL is promising.
If we fail to deliver, than you can have the majority back when people get tired of us in power.
Local DFLers could try spending less rather than blaming someone else for their tax increases…
…or actually trying to reform public education rather than accepting ever more money from Education Minne$ota…
…or building a road …
…created by a bad tax system and a law profession that feeds off malpractice suits …
…which is a crock when non-salary benefits are added in.
So what exactly are you promising?
Mike is right, in Minnesota the GOP has normally done well when there hasn’t been a presidential election. So midterms and special elections should favor us. And the DFL machine is not as well oiled as you might think, Tarrly Clark had a good campaign, mainly because she has ran for that office twice before. Otherwise, I’ve seen the DFL training and talked to DFL activists, their political machine is actually a lot more disorganized than the GOP one.
The DFL machine is getting a lot better. There was a terrific coordinated effort in the Cloud by unions (led by mighty, mighty AFSME!), Progressive Minnesota, and other independent groups. The DFL was well organized as well due the a terrific office in downtown St. Cloud that the local party had the forsight to acquire.
There were over 300 hundred volunteers that came out to get out the vote on Monday and Tuesday. It was an amazing sight.
Okay, hypothetical situation:
I run a business. One of my largest clients goes out of business leaving me with a big hole in my budget. I can a)increase my costs on everyone else, b)cut a lot of spending, c)some combination of the two. I would likely choose c) which is what nearly every city in Minnesota did to solve their budget defecit caused by state cuts to Local Government Aid. This isn’t the best example of what happend, as when you lose a client, your workload goes down, making it easier to cut costs. The cuts to LGA did not lower expenses by cities, in fact the continued unfunded mandates on cities and counties put more costs on them by the state with less money to do the work.
So, yes it is okay to blame others when it is their fault that crime protection and fire protection went down across the state while property taxes went up because of Pawlenty and the GOP House.
I’m sorry if teachers want to be paid like othe rprofessionals with four year college degrees, a lot of job training, and a lot of expectations riding on their performance.
The DFL (and GOP House) tried to fund roads, bridges, and transit, but Pawlwnty vetoed the transportation bill.
And drug companies that continue to make record profits year in and year out…helped out by Congress passing laws written by their lobbyists.
Tell pilots at Northwest who are taking what a 15% pay cut while also paying more for their health care that they are doing better now than 4 years ago. (Northwest pilots aren’t alone, just the highest profile).
AFSCME sucks and they are crooks.
There, that is out of the way.
The election was roughly 6 weeks. Clark had another HUGE advantage that I did not mention on my blog. Because she was a repeat, repeat loser for the same race she already had the infrastructure there. The signs were already printed, etc.
Ox, on the other hand had to actually start from scratch. His campaign was literally cut short by about 3 weeks. In a general election that is no big deal. In an election of only a few weeks that is a big deal.
Mike…you need to understand something about property taxes…the GOP had nothing to do with your property taxes going up. That is the direct result of your neighbors voting for increases and your neighbors selection for locality officials (mayor, council, etc).
You really don’t know what you are talking about…and King was kinder than he should have been in pointing out your ignorant attempt at shifting blame.
Transit…yeah, if it includes RAIL then it does not give enough to roads. That was a dumb attempt to blame Pawlenty.
Education…reform the system. (That is debatable, I concede, but it is still an alternative to the broken system the DFL supports: status quo.)
Teachers…let them EARN their pay. If they are not teaching well enough to get students to pass the state tests then they do not get a pay increase. If they fail long enough they do not get tenure. Tenure should be something earned through merit not longevity.
Drug companies (and oil) making profits…good. Go invest in their stock and you can share in that. When you people whine about profits it shows how absolutely anti-Commerce you truly are. Profits are good…very good.
Northwest pilots…their problem is their union. Period. Notice that the people who are suffering the smallest increases in pay are the ones that are unionized. Why? Because they demand outrageous pay/compensation for very little in increased productivity. The result is they are breaking/bankrupting their company. Northwest is the PERFECT example.
Nice way to avoid the points made in my post. Most of cities’ expenses are in direct public safety. When Pawlenty cut LGA, cities were forced to cut their police and fire departments across the state. This took an especially big hit in Minneapolis and the Iron Rnage which received the highest per capita cuts in LGA. So, they could have raised taxes more or cut more cops from the force. What would you have done?
Oh, and whine about rail some more. Hiawatha is meeting its ridership goal for 2030, that’s just 25 years ahead of schedule. People wanted it and its paying off. You need to fund rail, roads, highways, and buses, to have a transportation system that works for people. No one mode can reduce conjestion on its own.
Profits are fine, I want my compnay to make money, but excessive profits in sectors of human need are immoral. I said nothing about oil profits by the way. Let Polaris and BMW make all the money they can, but health care is a human need and the rich are getting richer at the expense of human life.
I don’t trust government for things I want, like my mail delivered or getting my driver’s license renewed in a timely manner. Why would I trust government for things I need like medicine? I need food also, but the food industry is for-profit and people make money on items on which I need to live. Should we have government take over supermarkets and farms? That led to widespread famine in the Ukraine under their centralized system earlier in the last century. I’ll pass.
Three unrelated comments:
1. Why do Republicans keep mentioning that Tarryl Clark lost twice before winning? I believe Mark Kennedy shares that distinction, too. Or was it John Kline? Either way, it’s pointless and, as my tip to Republicans, actually weakens what you are saying.
2. We expect teachers to be professionals (in the employment-category sense, not in the maturity sense), yet we do not pay them as professionals. Regarding the “earn it” remark, talk to a teacher. The generalizations about education and teachers put out by the Republicans is, in my opinion, one of the reasons this state is showing its blue leanings.
3. Isn’t it ironic that activists in both parties believe that their party is disorganized and losing its voice, but that the opposing party is an electoral machine? Look at the original post and remove all partisan references. You could find many Democrats that would say the same thing about their party.
1. I mentioned before the election for one specific reason: it is a part of her as a candidate…she lost twice for the same seat. Yes, Kline was the same, and yes, the opposition pointed that out as well. It is a relevant aspect: she was twice rejected by the populace previously. I mention it now because she had a very clear advantage because of her previous efforts. People (who as a group are stupid) were familiar with her signs, which she already had printed giving her a headstart in a race where time was in short supply.
2. I think I explained the “earn it”. If you cannot pass a test regularly on your field of study and your students cannot pass their standarized tests then you are not performing. Regular testing of the teachers should be in place; performance standards should be in place; merit pay should be the norm. I don’t expect teachers to be “professionals” in comparison with CEOs or accountants. But if you take a teacher’s pay and project what it would be over 12 months I think they are being paid fair. Performance requirements and then increased pay. Besides, the budgets are controlled by the localities quite a bit.
3. You’re right…they both say that. Well, I don’t think the DFL is an electoral machine and I don’t think the GOP’s voice is being lost. But in general you are correct.
Mike, medicine is, in all actuality, a luxury in the strict luxury vs need sense. Does it improve your quality of life? Yes. Does being denied meds decrease your quality of life? No…it just does not allow artificial/supplemented improvement. So at the very basics of this discussion you are incorrect. You cannot start an arguement with altered definitions and have a conclusion that is correct. Sorry. End of Line.
Rail: LRT may be making its ridership projections but that is not the point. The point actually is 2-fold. One, it is STILL useless and two (not mentioned yet here) it is a money pit…cost/benefit is woefully in the negative benefit. Roads serve commerce AND individuals. Commuter rail does not. Invest in roads. Expanded roads CAN reduce congestion if even only short term. Rail DOES NOT reduce congestion. Busses could anecdotally be argued to cause congestion (remember how smooth traffic was during the MTC strike?).
Finally, LGA. Who made the decision to cut police/fire? Not the state. The localities should have done a better job of budgetting/re-budgetting. And if those other services (city center, etc) are important enough to the locals then the locals can approve a tax hike on themselves. Stop shifting the blame of incompetent city management on state tax cuts. It is only deceitful and empty rhetoric…and you know it.
“You could find many Democrats that would say the same thing about their party. ”
True that. I thought I was on the wrong blog for a second.
Andy, the previous posters are correct about one thing, tradionally special elections have favored the Republican Party.
Here’s why I think the GOP won them in the past and the DFL is winning them now. Prior to the 2004 Presidential Election the GOP had a good voter database, it wasn’t spectacular but it was a lot better than what the DFL had. In the 2004 election the DFL special interest groups and unions mounted a huge voter ID drive in Minnesota. They poured a lot of resources into it and now have a database that is quite a bit better than the Republican one.
Why is that important? Ecspecially in special elections voter turnout is the difference between winning and losing. Whichever party has a more accurate list of voters by party and issue preference has a huge advantage at voter turnout. St. Cloud had a number of special circumstances, so it cannot be blamed solely on the voter turnout effort, but a big chunk of the victory margin can be.
Plain and simple the DFL is winning special elections now because it has a great voter ID list. It will deteriorate over time and eventually the GOP will catch up, but for the next 5 years or so, watch out. Unless…..
Republican activists work with the party to improve our list. It’s easy to do, just call the party (651-222-0022) and you can get a list of unidentified voters in your area along with questions to ask them. You can contact them by phone or at their door, fill out the survey and send it back to the state party.
This is a huge factor in winning elections. Minnesota can’t afford to flow back to the DFL in the next several years. To stop that we need to act now.
Rail serves individuals and commerce. I think you would find that to be true if you drove Hiawatha or rode the LRT and same the influx of development occuring along the line, especially in Bloomington. The idea that it doesn’t relieve conjection is just wrong. Does it eliminat eit, no, nothing does. For one, conjection is eliminated for those that choose to ride it (remember Republican points on everything else government does, choice is good). Also, everyone that rides it would otherwise drive, causing more cars to be on the road.
What else do you want cut? Remember, it wasn’t the choice of the local elected officials, Democrat, Republican, or independant, that caused milliosn to be eliminated from their budgets. Police and fire make up the bulk of any local government budget and thus had to take some of the hit when budgets were cut.
Remember what happend to Arnold when he went after teachers. You can keep it up if you want!
Mike- Police and fire should be the first item in the budgets, not the last item. The cities did this so for one reason, to raise taxes, oh yes, the locallities raised those taxes. New Brighton spent $1 million more this year than last. Not Pawlenty’s fault. They spent more. Plain and simple!
If a city did pay for public safety first, and run out, fine, whining is allowed, but none of the ones I have seen did that. Minneapolis is spending millions on greenways and trails. Policing was an afterthought.
It is the priorities that are way off on the left.
MN Liberal & Rew- I have noticed similar comments on the web. People on our passionate level (both sides) are never happy if they don’t get what they want. I don’t agree that the Left side is disorganized though. Maybe the DFL is, but they are not the major force on the left anymore. MoveOn and the rest of the 527’s have picked up all that slack.
The DFL voter database is no where near the quality of the GOP one now being implemented (the replacement to the old Mastermind database). I don’t think the DFL database is any larger than the GOP one either.
Marty, I hope you are right, and claim no special insight into the GOP database. The special election results lately scare me though, and with low turnout voter ID should make the difference between winning and losing. Lately, the GOP has not been winning.
Either way, it’s still a good idea to volunteer to help make the GOP database even stronger.
Mike, a city that relies on the state for its budget is a city run poorly. And to answer your question…go back and read my previous comment. I answered that before you asked it and I refuse to answer a second time because you are too obtuse to admit that it was not the state’s fault that city’s cut in the politically motivated way that they did.
Both Republican run and DFL run cities cut/raised taxes in much the same way.
What are you talking about that they are poorly run? To go back to my original scenario, if a company has relied on the same contract for a good portion of their business for 30 years, then that client goes out of business, was the company poorly run? Your saying cities all over the state should have turned down LGA money? Do you even understand how the system works? LGA is used to even out the playing field between high tax cities and low tax cities. That is why rural cities got hit hardest with the cuts.
The rural Republican legislators who lost their jobs last year were primarily over this issue.
For the record, a place like Minneapolis still pays more into the state in taxes than it receives back in all forms of state payments (education, LGA, health care benefits, etc).
LGA is simply wealth redistribution. It was intended as a way to supplement city budgets, not fund them fully. The program, as most state funded ones are, was abused.
The cities that relied so heavily on LGA could be likened to the evil “Big Oil” companies immorally making profits (according to your hypothesis).
I am for local control. Let the people I can actually vote for decide if my taxes go up, rather than 201 people in St. Paul who are not beholden to me. I know, that messes up the whole Union levies and arm twisting, they have to travel around to so many more places. (No more one stop pay increases tax increases.
Local control is the best way for people to control their communities, but then again, that isn’t probably high on your list of things government should do now is it?
For the record, 40% of my income goes to taxes. Big whoop, can I get LGA too? Lots of high income housing, $800 million for a cute little electric train set, massive infrastructure for the commerce and entertainment it provides. Oh yeah, I suppose we owe poor little Minneapolis something else. Oh, how about if we continue to pour money into the U so that even more people will come and live and shop in Minneapolis? Would that help get that poor little city catch up with the rest of the ones in the state?
Please, LGA is a crock sham money laundering scheme at best.
And can we get back to the topic of the original post?
Who is going to step up and be the vocal leader of the Republicans?
Fine, I’ll throw this in for the Libs. Who will stand up and bve the voice for the
commiessorry,socialistsdang it, sorry, MN lefties?LGA et. al. realtes to the post because your top spokespeople, Pawlenty, Strom, Anderson Awada, etc. advocated the cuts.
But from your last post, I won’t let some of that go unresponded to: you pushed for cutting funding from the U. Wow, take that to the voters and see what they think. Especially the voters in Duluth, Crookston, and Morris who have benefitted nicely from state investments in the U. Oh, and don’t forget every other county in the state, since the U funds the Extension program that operates state-wide. Yeah it sure makes sense to stop funding higher education which is why our state does so well in national and international commerce. We really should drop our higher ed institutions to the level of, oh say, Tanzenia.
And for the record, we have some good spokespeople. I’ll take Entenza (+13 seats) and Pastor/General Johnson (+2 in an off year) any day; our new candidates look pretty good too, Lourey, Ritchie, Sande, Otto, Tinklenberg, etc.
Andy, none of us ever reads any of your posts, we just wait for a good thread to light up.
Tinklenberg? When we interviewed him on our show he was, well, unimpressive as an individual.
Oh, and, LGA was nothing more than a socialist wet dream.
To use your example, if a company relies so heavily on ONE vendor and (1) does not diversify at any point or (2) efficiently reorganizes after the loss of that ONE vendor, then yes, the company is very poorly run.
If a city finds it necessary to cut fire and police rather than cutting school administration, teachers, city officials, staffing the city center, etc. then yes, they are poorly managed as well.
Bottom line…LGA should have been cut. Balancing the playing field between low tax and high tax areas? That is the job of the localities NOT the state. If a low tax area needs more money they need to raise it within their community.
I understand why you don’t like that concept. If people are actually held directly accountable for raising taxes then your drive for a communist nation would come to an end. Keeping the state or federal legislators in control of raising taxes put a cushion between the voters and the tax-hikers (how can I vote Boxer or Feinstein out of office?). That makes it easier for communists like yourself to keep on your effort to kill capitalism (you do after all intentionally lie about medicine being a “necessity” and attack profits).
It would be so much more credible if you would just be honest about your panacea: a model of economy closer to the former Soviet Union than to any semblance of capitalism.
Until then we will just have to accept you for what you are: a facade afraid to be true to your own pursuits.
Okay, all I wanted to hear is that you think LGA should be cut. The voters have already rejected that idea, so keep with it. If you want to over simplify me down to some good political buzz words, that’s fine.
Political buzz words? You mean like communist or socialist? No, just giving you the title that you deserve. Why run from the title? Conservatives embrace their title. Hell, I even embrace “evil conservative”. Stop running from your true self young Anikin.
Voters are not rejecting LGA cuts…they have been lied to about what the impact REALLY is. The truth is only that it is up to their local officials to run their locality properly. You guys (the Socialists) keep lying by blaming cuts by the cities on the state instead of holding the people who actually think that the first cut in a city should be fire/police. The ones who cut fire/police first are the ones you should howl at. Instead you have lied to the populace (and they are dumb in general, thus following your drumbeat lies).
Be honest about who made the cuts in fire/police and THEN you can claim the voters reject the idea.
Why did I leave the Democrat party in 1991? Because the lies like this are the norm. Why did I join the GOP in 1994? Because the issues were being framed honestly, even if I did not agree with a lot of them it was that honesty in discourse that won me over. And when I talk to people one-on-one that is what I point out.
The norm for the DFL is to lie about who is to blame, who did what, why things happen…and worse is that it is intentional.
Look at the GOP. We have debates about if a balanced budget amendment is proper. Hard to lie to the people about the issue when the discussion is also being waged internally. The DFL would rather make some rationalization why one is better, silence those that disagree and then mislead the people in the issue.
Embrace your ideas and let those win or lose. Don’t try to win on lies. Those who are smart enough to recognize it see that as a last ditch effort to save a losing idea…which is what you are doing with LGA.
You know its also not a good political strategy to call voters dumb. I think voters have the facts on LGA and they understood why their local officials were put into the position they were. And talk about lying, no city cut police and fire first, or raised taxes first.
Lets see, lies of the GOP. Can I please start with Gay Marriage? At the national level it was crisis mode in 2004 before the elections, now that W. got reelected, I have not heard him or anyone in Washington talk about a marriage ammendment. In Minnesota, our DOMA legislation has been court tested and passed the test. There is no “danger” of gay marriage happening here. You are using social conservatices for their votes. I don’t blame Bachmann, I think she is just crazy enough to believe what she spouts off.
I’d like to know what is impressive about Tinklenberg. I don’t know many DFLers who are impressed by him.
It will be very interesting to see how well the DFL database will work should Lourey or Kelley win the DFL endorsement and face Hatch and Doran in the primary.
Eva, let me guess, this is you being Republican again?
Face it, the socialists of Minnesota lie to the voters about LGA…and the fact that the average person has no clue what the truth is (LGA was welfare for cities to let cities avoid having to make their own tough budgeting decisions, and to prop up poorly run municipalities) are dumb. The fact that an electorate can be swayed by “October surprises” supports the idea that the electorate is dumb. The fact that they voted for Jesse thinking he was different from other politicians proves they are dumb.
What was the lie about gay marriage? The urgency? Give me a break. If that is the barometer for “lie” then it is safe to say that 100% of politicians lie everytime they open their mouths. Poor standard (and wrong).
As for the (incorrect) claim about gay marriage not being able to happen in Minnesota, please answer this. If a couple marries in MA and then moves to MN, do they get married benefits?