Residual Forces

It seems that there may be even more reason to dump Ron Carey than the 2006 election debacle. The 2008 elections are already trying to be sewn up by someone named John. John McCain that is. Check this out, McCain is already waging his campaign to straight sweet talk his way to the nomination by clearing out opposing State Party Chairs of Republican parties.

While we’ve all been focused on the 2006 mid-term elections, John McCain has not. Sure, he has been out campaigning hard for Republicans, but his focus has been elsewhere — he’s been gazing in the astroturf leading a secret war to slay state Republican Chairmen who are not already loyal lieutenants in the McCain ‘08 Army.
One need look no further for proof than the astroturf campaign against Saul Anuzis in Michigan. Saul is widely regarded as one of the best, if not *the* best, state Republican Chairmen in the entire United States. He has been an aggressive promoter of the GOP in Michigan. Though losses in Michigan this year trended like the rest of the country, with Saul’s efforts the GOP was able to stay close in many races.

Lucky them. Our chair threw a bunch of races.

But, in John McCain’s secret war, the effectiveness of Saul Anuzis is irrelevant. What matters is that Anuzis is considered a soldier in Mitt Romney’s army. Humorously, anyone who knows Saul knows this is not actually the case — but it does not matter to John McCain and his astroturf troopers. They’re out to get Saul because he is not loyal to McCain — the truth is irrelevant.
Already Chuck Yob, an RNC Committeeman is calling for Saul’s ouster, wanting him replaced with a pro-McCain soldier. And to aid in this battle again those who do not worship General McCain, a poorly designed astroturf campaign has been created — to the untrained eye, it would appear to be a grassroots campaign, but it is as phony and ineptly implemented as John McCain’s wooing of the conservative base.

So where does Ron Carey and Minnesota fit into this?

Tim Pawlenty. I got news for you folks, McCain and Pawlenty are 2 peas in a pod. trip to Iraq together. McCain came stumping for him. Those 2 are my pick for the first ticket that lines up first. Now Pawlenty has his sights set on the White House, no doubt in my mind, and he will play it cool in teaming up with McCain too early. But you can bet your bottom dollar if McCain becomes a legitimate :angry: presumptive nominee, you will see a McCain-Pawlenty ticket. Call it the McPlenty ticket if you will.

Ron Carey sold out the entire Republican party of Minnesota’s slate to get basically 2 people elected. Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.

Now Bachmann is a solid conservative who will do us proud in Washington, but she had tons of other resources helping her out from the NRCC to conservative groups. She didn’t have a problem raising cash, and was a national media darling. The help the State Party did give, in their negative attacks and juvenile press releases hits may have hurt Bachmann some in the anti-negative campaigning climate that developed in Minnesota this year.

Now as for Pawlenty, he has already disappointed conservatives in his first term as Governor. He had his road to reelection cleared by Carey when he had a small government conservative candidate challenge him for the endorsement and in a Primary. That candidate was not allowed to address hardly any Congressional District conventions due to orders from Ron Carey and the other elected statewide party officials. They also refused to allow her to seek the endorsement at the state convention. Now that candidate was not exactly a well polished one, but the message she was carrying was one that did lend itself to many of the disenfranchised conservatives. But the opponent was smashed by Carey and Pawlenty, and from that point forward, their was little doubt just what was going on.

Ron Carey was going to do anything and everything to get Tim Pawlenty reelected. A Pawlenty loss would have put an end to the oval aspirations he has, and Carey would have been a casualty of that. Some of the finest conservatives Minnesota had ever seen were tossed under the McPlenty bus by Ron Carey. Before last Tuesday, Minnesota Republicans held the Secretary of State’s office, State Auditor’s, and had an open Attorney General’s office that was ripe for the picking up. Ron Carey did pull resources from them and aimed them at his favored candidates in the final weeks.

As for Congressional races, Minnesota was a 4 to 4 state. An early on strategy Republicans aimed at was to pick up votes in the Congressional Districts to help state wide and local candidates. The solid red Districts were pretty well maxed out, and you couldn’t really pick up enough more votes to make up for the statewide totals seen in 2000 and 2004 for Gore and Kerry. So the preferred strategy was to peel off votes from the Democrat strongholds of the 7th, 8th, 4th and 5th Districts. 10 to 20,000 more votes in any or all of them could have made the difference in the state wide races. Bachmann did defend the open seat left by Mark Kennedy as he was seeking the US Senate seat.

Kennedy too was a casualty of the Carey preference. From day one of his chairmanship Carey snubbed and held back Kennedy. Carey flat out refused to acknowledge that Kennedy was running for the seat. Thus Kennedy had to work on his own statewide grassroots campaign. Once he was finally endorsed, even though the state party let a ‘no chance in heck’ candidate dog him the entire time, and even allowed him to seek the convention endorsement. Now keep in mind they did everything in their power and then some to block any challenge to Pawlenty.

As the campaign season went on, it became more and more clear that Carey was all about one thing. Reelecting Tim Pawlenty. The promised statewide together promise was dropped. Statewide and Congressional candidates were written off, and good solid conservatives in the Minnesota Legislature were forgotten about and faced the full force of the liberal groups and Democrats all by themself. And with out the benefit of having a top of the ticket candidate that they could ride the coattails of. Many of them had butted heads at least once or twice with Pawlenty on one issue or another and had philosophical differences with the vision for Minnesota.

The champions of smaller more accountable government were allowed to lose last Tuesday, and carey did nothing. They actually lost long before Tuesday. Under Carey’s leadership of the Republican movement, it has been on a leftward tilt. There has been no attempt to push the elected officials to the right, another Carey promise broken.

There was no message sent out by Carey either. The one time the state party really tried to use an issue to motivate voters to our party was the Marriage CD. You may remember this as the onethat Bob Collins dismembered for a data-mining operation in about 2 minutes. Instead of simply trying to educate the voters on what exactly it meant to be a Republican in Minnesota, he spent hundreds of thousands dollars (I still haven;t seen the real total spent on it yet) on a failed CD that actually harmed our cause.

That with bungling of the legislative lobbying in the MN Senate led to the Traditional Marriage Amendments failure in a Senate Committee. All that money and time spent was a waste, and in the mean time, all other issues were ignored. The stadium bills flew through with support coming from Republicans, and the charge for spending $380 million dollars on a Gophers football stadium was never even combatted. Not to mention the near criminal lightrail expansion, the commuter rail boondoggle, and then there is always the transportation amendment that passed.

On all of those issues, it was Republicans leading the charge if not authoring the bills. Smaller more responsible government? Not under this party’s leadership.

ROn Carey sold out the soul of the Republican Party. I’m not saying he should have let Pawlenty lose, but did he have to let Pawlenty redefine the Republican Party of Minnesota? Just like Bush has demoralized the small government Republicans nationally, Pawlenty has done so here.
Minnesota Republicans saw years of solid work of building a majority in the MN House, holding a majority of statewide offices, and having a split on Federal offices all thrown away for one man to win. A man that we will be lucky to see finish his term. The Minnesota Governor’s race was little more than Pawlenty’s Veep nod primary test. He passed, and so did Ron Carey.

He will not have to face the wrath of the McCain machine. There was a time when state parties were controlled by the delegates from the states. There was a time when the Party leadership did what the state delegates wanted. That was not the case in Minnesota this year. Ron Carey was taking orders from somewhere. He was following the McPlenty agenda.

I hope other people have seen this, and that we will not let the Minnesota Republican Party be taken over by elected officials simply abusing us in order to get power. Stand up everyone. We need to take our party back. We need to fight against this type of abuse of power. Our state party should not decide who does and who does not get support. We the delegates decided that through our endorsement. The fact that the state party abandoned some of them is almost criminal. Many good people had their careers destroyed by this leadership.
There isn’t much left for Carey to throw away in order to get Pawlenty and McCain elected. I hope rank and file Minnesota Republicans don’t let our party get hijacked again to get someone elected. There is a meeting in December where we can let leadership know just what this party is for, and that isn’t getting one person elected. This party should stand for our common values first.

(end rant)

Let’s take back our party folks. Don’t let them sweet talk you into thinking they did all they could.