Residual Forces

Now I want to make sure that this point hits home. I was not at the entire event. I had to leave at noon to get back to work to deal with the snow, so this is not a judgement of the event’s organizers, nor the event as a whole. But I do think the 2 speakers I got to see are a prime example for why conservatives in Minnesota and the Nation for that matter, are so upset with the direction of the Republican party.

Now I preface that on the idea that many old guard moderate Republicans in St. Paul (Sviggum is a great example) and Nationally (scores of long timers on our side) are upset with the agenda being pushed by the new comers who brought with them, the conservative principles they were elected on, so the old guard is calling it quits. I am hearing that a lot of them are more interesting in going along with the Democrats, rather than fight over which side is right.

Most of us in the Conservative movement, at the activist level have our own idea of conservatism, or which issue or issues are what it is all about. The first speaker, pollster Tony Fabrizio, raised that point, and even asked the audience to shout out their #1 conservative issue. Mine is limited Government. It is the state’s rights, federalist model that supports just about every single issue all the conservatives believe in.

Fabrizio’s presentation was based on his polling work done for Gov. Pawlenty for 2006. And, as I noted during my live blog coverage, it was almost as if we were getting a Pawlenty stump speech more than anything at times. He just couldn’t say enough nice things about Pawlenty. I’m sorry, but if they could see the metamorphosis this guy has gone through in 5 short years.

Now Fabrizio is a high profile national pollster, so you can see why Pawlenty is getting so much attention as a rising star and leader. In the scores of pie charts and graphs from his polling, we got to see just why Pawlenty is the man he is ….. today.

A question just popped into my head: Which came first, Pawlenty’s support for a particular issue, or the poll telling him he should?

A you know, I loathe politicians who base their agenda on polls. That has been one of my major sore points with the current leadership of the Republican party of Minnesota. They spend more time and money on polls, than they do explaining conservatism to the voters.

I call that quota based politics.

A key example of why I think this poll based strategy for defining conservatism is so dreadfully bad for the movement would be the data presented on “renewable energy and the subsidies for them”.

Fabrizio used this to explain how Pawlenty’s push why ethanol and the other green energies are good for national security because the reduce our dependency on foreign oil…..

It was at that point of the conference that I thought someone had maybe spiked the coffee or I was in a liberal conference. It was classic liberal Democratic talking points. Oil = bad ; PC environuttiness = Good. I was not alone either. A number of people had that stupified look on their faces of who the hell does this guy think he is talking to, we stood in the hallway after wondering what the heck we just witnessed.

I had this feeling of blurting out “What about Domestic oil?”, but didn’t want to cause a scene, as I was a guest, and the event’s organizers were so kind to me both before and during the conference. A speaker can say anything, you can’t blame the organizers.

But anyways, Fabrizio is clearly in the divide and conquer (trianulation) wing of the GOP powerborkers. I am pretty sure he, and those like him, are behind the moderate is conservative push that we are seeing in the Minnesota and National Republican Party. The data he provided was clearly intended to back up much of what the leadership in the party is doing in not taking principled stands on core issues, and the reasons why elected officials do wander away from the party’s base. The POLLS told us to.

His expertise, as that of a pollster, is why party leaders and officials take his data as scripture, and thus, if the election is to be won, they do as he recommends through the data. The people support A, so the politician must support A. His data by itself, lends credibility to that. BUT, and this is my major point, trying to change public opinion is not even on the radar screen, and why the Republican party is floundering.

The Democrats are slowly convincing voters that socialism is great, and not to be feared. We are watering down conservatism with socialism. In other words, we’re losing that battle. If the voters truly like the sound of socialist ideas, then we need to do a better job explaining to them why that is so bad. I feel that is why you see nothing but negativity from the Party’s communication Department(s). They can’t take principled stands on the issues with out alienating an elected Republican who has embraced the liberal position, thus it is all about exposing Democrats.

If a majority of the people actually believe we should subsidize unreliable, dirty, and inefficient energy sources simply to stop buying oil from the middle east, wouldn’t the principled conservative feel compelled to explain to them that we are dependent on oil too heavily to just go cold turkey as being proposed. And through bad domestic policy we have made it so we have no choice but to get oil from foreign sources. Oh and then of course they should also point out how we get over half of our oil from the Americas. Plus we have domestic oil resources that are not even being considered.

Here’s my “principled conservative” idea/answer to this problem.

We tap into our Domestic sources, we drill for more, explore for more, and utilize what lies with in our borders. Gas, Oil, coal you name it. We continue to buy from our true friends and allies around the globe. Rather than them hold us hostage with high prices, we hold them hostage by shopping elsewhere. Meanwhile, we let the free markets work on identifying the best ‘next’ forms of energy. We encourage the public to conserve whenever they could. When they do need to buy a new car, appliance, or electronic that they should strongly consider the most efficient one. But we won’t mandate it. We won’t subsidize their purchase or the production of the item. We encourage personal responsibility. We get Government off the back of the energy producers. We cut the mandates and regulations that add additional costs to that gallon of gas or btu of home heat. We build reliable safe nuclear power plants.

All in all, my readers here know that environuttiness and RINOs who try to legislate it into reality, drive me nuts. Pawlenty’s energy policy is liberal to the core. So what if it polled well? It is bad liberal policy that will hurt our state and nation. It IS Big Government nanny state to the core. It is interventionist. It is protectionist. It is a liberal position, if not all out collectivist. It is flat out liberal lunacy being perpetrated by a so called Republican.