Residual Forces

Great piece by/about soon to be MN House Deputy Minority Leader Tom Emmer in the Bemidji Pioneer. GOP must return to core issues

Pushed too far to the right, Minnesota House Republicans now need to return to the center — their center, says newly named House Deputy Minority Leader Tom Emmer.
“We have the best message out there,” Emmer, R-Delano, said in an interview Friday. “We have to get back to the core issues of Republican conservatives.

“We did a very poor job of distinguishing ourselves, and we need to get back on message,” he says.

Great piece, read the rest on the Bemidji Pioneer website, but she’s a subscription site. Its free, but I hate them as much as you do. I aim to please, so I went through it just for you all. I put the rest below the fold.

House Republicans, in charge since 1998, found their margin slip to only two seats in the 134-member chamber in 2004, and this month’s election turned the chamber back to the Democrats, who will hold an 85-49 edge when the Legislature convenes in January.
This time, there will be new leaders all around, except in the governor’s office where Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty won a second term.

The GOP, now in the minority in the House, will have Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, step down for new leadership. The GOP Caucus elected Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, as minority leader.

On Wednesday, Seifert tabbed Emmer, elected to a second term earlier this month, as deputy minority leader and Rep. Denny McNamara, R-Hastings, as minority whip. He starts his third term in January.

Emmer, an attorney, was in Bemidji as a youth hockey coach with a team from Delano playing at Nymore Arena. Running several teams, he was also planning to bring a team to Baudette and Thief River Falls.

Republicans need to return to the Reagan era and that of the early 1990s that won the House for them, Emmer said. Somewhere after 2000, the party became disconnected with those core values and instead were painted as a single-issue party, focusing on abortion and then gay marriages.

“The Republican Party is all about (being) positive in those core values, and if you stay true to those core values … you’ve got a strong core which should be the trunk of the tree,” Emmer said.

Those include, he said, “individual rights and responsibilities, smaller government, protecting families, public safety and education.”

Seeking a ban on abortions and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage should be branches on that tree, Emmer said, not the tree itself. Instead, the GOP allowed the left to push Republicans to that far right spot.

Also, he said, the war in Iraq which plagues President Bush flowed through Republicans down to the legislative level.

“Federal issues and concerns did bleed through to a state level because they just exacerbated this already negative feeling,” Emmer said. “You’ve got this big tree that was just solid in the 1990s and the early New Millennium. But it’s starting to rot at the core, because we got away from those core issues that made the Contract With America so attractive.”

Rep. Newt Gingrich used the Contract With America to win the U.S. House for Republicans in 1994 and later became speaker. The contract was simple, pledging the GOP to core principles such as cutting the number of House committees and staff, requiring all laws that apply to the country also apply to Congress, requiring zero base-line budgeting for the federal budget and a raft of legislation for public safety, personal responsibility and middle-class tax relief.

The vast majority of voters in the middle — not die-hard Democrats or Republicans — “are looking for issues that apply to them and their everyday, daily lives,” Emmer said. “Does gay marriage apply to everybody? No. Does abortion apply to everybody? No.”

They do, however, remain as core values for many conservatives, “and there’s nothing wrong with us promoting those as our core values, but when you get away from focusing on individual rights and responsibilities, self-determination, smaller government, and make those (social issues) your showcase, you have allowed the other side to move you way to the right.”

The DFL, in moving to the center, has taken the Republican mantle, Emmer believes.

House Speaker-designate Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, has tried to attach “fiscal conservatives” to members of her caucus, now that the DFL will rule.

“That remains to be seen,” says Emmer. “This is the same group that was actively behind a $1 billion proposed tax increase put forth by the now Senate majority leader, Larry Pogemiller, just two years ago. … Now they have actually taken the Republican message and made it theirs, that they are a bunch of fiscal conservatives. They get the opportunity to lead for the next two years, we will see them put their money where their mouth is and find out if they are truly the fiscal conservatives that they claim to be.”

Republicans hit their mark after taking over in 1998 until 2002, Emmer says, with Pawlenty and Sviggum combining for measures that cut taxes and state spending. The $4.5 billion budget deficit in 2003, however, put both parties in a tailspin and put off reforms started earlier.

“Where have we started to shrink the bureaucracy in Minnesota?” he asks. “Somewhere between 2002 and 2006, we started to lose our way a little bit.”

Now voters want to give the Democrats a chance, and so will the Republicans, he said.

“The Democrats say they can do it,” Emmer said. “We’re going to give them a chance. … You’ve got a lot of great Republicans in this area that probably voted Democrat because they believe that we’ve got to give the other side the opportunity to show us that they can actually be fiscal conservatives, that they can actually protect our individual rights, our rights to hunt and fish, that they can actually do that stuff.”

The test will come with a metro-dominated Legislature and new Speaker Kelliher “who is anti-gun to no end,” Emmer said, adding that Rep. Frank Moe, DFL-Bemidji, “has done an excellent job, but he’s going to be dealing with the forces of the city.”

That Kelliher has expanded the number of House committees from 25 to 37 doesn’t bode well for shrinking state government bureaucracy, he said. “It looks like full employment for everyone who’s been in the House for two years or longer.”

Emmer, however, labeled Moe as “a professional guy to deal with, he’s always been straight up-front. … We may disagree on issues, but I’ve never had an issue where I felt like Frank said one thing and did something else. He always says what he’s going to do, and he does it.”

Saying Moe, who was named an assistant majority leader, is a communicator, Emmer adds the Bemidji Democrat is something the DFL needs to “change its stripes.”

“As we go forward, that party needs folks like that,” Emmer said. “If they can change their stripes, if the DFL really has a belief that they can include other points of view, then I think the Republicans are going to have a tough time.”

But Emmer has his doubts, especially since Senate DFLers put Pogemiller in charge of that caucus, perhaps one of the most combative senators to negotiate with Pawlenty, and whom Emmer calls “a brilliant man” but who “doesn’t understand the issues beyond the Twin Cities.”

For their part, the House GOP minority will regroup and act as a team. Emmer said new Minority Leader Seifert wants the caucus to act a team and to not just oppose DFL policy, but to offer better policy itself.

Seifert “is a team builder,” Emmer said. It will be the minority’s job to point out the Twin Cities tilt in both House and Senate DFL leadership, “and to set out options. … One of the mistakes of a minority is to just sit up and complain, we need to be part of the solution.”

Health care and property tax reform come to mind, he said. “It can’t be about just your neighborhood … we have to think of Minnesota as Minnesota, as opposed to the Range, southeastern or southwest Minnesota or the Twin Cities core.”