A Better Question Would Be Has The Party Learned Anything?
Posted by Andy on March 15th, 2008
Lady L has a post up at True North where she blames conservatives who stayed home for the $3 Billion turnaround in the state’s fiscal health. I beg to differ that the blame for the DFL’s ascension to power over the State’s purse is solely to blame on the coinservatives who may or may not have thrown the election to the DFL.
If conservative voters not showing up is what led to the DFL electoral wave, I would focus blame much more on the Party and Elected Republican leaders not providing the motivation. As I have harped on numerous times, Republicans lost their way and “we’re not as bad as the Liberal DFL” is anything but an inspirational and motivating factor for voters.
The larger problem for Republican candidates was that conservatives didn’t really see how things could get worse if the Republicans lost. Now, a $3 Billion turnaround in the State’s fortunes is a pretty cold shower, but the question of knowledge learned needs to remain focused on the powers that be in the Republican Party.
Will the Republican Party and elected Republican leaders hold true to principle and maintain the line for what the party will stand for? Will they allow the core beliefs of conservatives and the broader Republican party to be thrown out as they hhad been both locally and nationally leading up to the 2006 elections? That was what led to the absent conservatives.
The people who had the opportunity to fix things before they got5 as bad as they did, or most of them, were punished. Bush now has a hostile Congress, Pawlenty a rabid Legislature, Frist and Hastert no longer get to eat Freedom Fries at the COngressional cafeteria and Sviggum is now a commissioner.
Republican officials let liberal Republicans rule the party. Spending was setting records under Republican administrations, Congress, and a MN House. Republican officials forgot who elected them in the first place, and that was the conservatives. And the biggest problem was the Party did absolutely nothing.
Conservatives don’t show up and carry the burden of voter ID, lawn signs, lit drops, and GOTV for tax fee and spend liberalism. They don’t show up and try to elect people who are exactly, or near to, what conservatives so direly oppose. We show up for what we recognize as true to form principled conservatism.
So rather than blame conservatives alone for the DFL’s win, maybe Lady L and others should be more focused on asking the Republican Party and elected Republicans who managed to survive the 2006 Blue crush tidal wave if they learned anything?
Have Republican Party officials and elected Republican leaders digested why they really lost in 2006? Because if the choice on the ballot is tax and spend or fee and spend, you will see another Republican blood letting in 2008.
The conservative movement is in dire need of leaders in both elective office as well as the Republican party to provide a message that will get conservatives off the couch. We have glimmers of hope and new leaders in our movement are emerging, but will they have the power to drive the message so conservatives can come home again? The DFL is helping immensely in that task, but will our guys and gals do their part? Will they figure out in time that leadership does matter.
Those who can’t lead, cast blame for their failures. Leaders, do. (Lady L, that is not directed at you)
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March 15th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Ah, at some point people need to take personal resposibility for their part in what happens in a democratic form of goverment. You can blame a party for what people choose to do or not do, but that does not change what happens. You can’t not vote and then blame the GOP when your taxes go up. You can’t vote for the DFL and then act outraged when they raise your taxes. You can’t endorse someone who supports transportation and then be shocked when they vote to support transportation. The time to make a decision about whether you wanted your taxes to go up, whether you want more public transportation, whether you want a DFL veto-proof legislature is BEFORE you vote. Not 2 years afterwards.
The gas tax has been an issue for years, when conservatives choose to give up in 2006, they basically conceded the gas tax issue to the DFL to raise the gas tax. You notice which 6 GOP candidates *didn’t* lose in 2006. Honestly, you can blame the MNGOP if you’d like. But that doesn’t change the fact that people choose whether the GOP or DFL would have majority in the legislature and therefore what would happen.
Look, I pulled my weight in 2006 to try to elect Republicans. Obviously a lot of people didn’t agree with me. This year I learned my lesson. I’m going to sit it out and then after the election, bad-mouth the MNGOP. Apparently, that’s the way to go.
March 15th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
85 darlin’….85….
It is 85 DEMOCRATS in the House that gave us the gas tax. It is 85 DEMOCRATS in the House that are giving us Universal Health Care and a pork laden bonding bill that would make DC blush.
You can NOT control the agenda from the Minority. I have to give credit for that line to the person that I heard it from…Congressman JOHN KLINE. Hardly a whiner or someone who can’t lead. However, you don’t even get a chance to lead from the minority.
Our choices are simple…stay home (which pretty much guarantees that they get more votes)or we gain the majority back and then hold the elected officials to task. This is not a spectator sport. The deeper that I get into this thing called politics, the more I realize that simple fact. The electorate has to stay engaged or we get what we have on the floor now….
Oh and I realized that last line wasn’t directed to me dear. You are doing what I did…..getting the conversation going.
LL
March 16th, 2008 at 9:07 am
A couple of more random thoughts for you AAA and one for Brent….
1) “The Party” is not on the ballot…individual Republicans ARE. A lot of these very earnest young men and women have never held public office before and therefore have no voting record to kjudge them by. Are you going to “judge” them based on the actions of people who have no control over their votes or their campaigns? Or are you going to judge them on their own personal actions? If you think your BPOU put up the “perfect” Republican candidate then you had best be out there busting your (not you personally AAA - the collective “you”) butt for them and if you don’t know what kind of candidate your BPOU put out I have to ask…WHY THE HECK WEREN’T YOU AT CAUCUS AND CONVENTION?
2) Leaders can’t lead if no one is there to follow. I (as a local leader) am using every opportunity and vehicle that I have available to me to drag people off of their couches and out into the campaign. You know and I know that you can not do it all. If you believe in your candidate, you should be doing the same thing that I am doing….grabbing people by the collars and saying “do you like having your pocket picked by the DFL? If not then GET BUSY!”
Brent - if you see something wrong, do you ignore it or do you say something? Yes the MNGOP is broken and broken badly! People need to speak up on what they see is broken! However, as I have told AAA (and others) in the past - you have two choices 1) step up and get involved in the process or 2) stay home and b8tch and do nothing about it. AAA as we all know followed path 1. I know in my BPOU there are a lot of people who stayed home 2 years ago that got off of the couch this year and came to caucus and convention - some for the first time ever, some for the first time in 10-20 years. Still there are other self-professed Republicans who bitch mightily about how F’d up the Republican Party is, who are still sitting at home b*tching. It is THOSE people that I was slapping at in my post. Those are the people that need to be slapped upside the head…..not people like AAA who are busting their butts to make the party better…..
Sorry for the length but it all needed to be said!
LL
March 16th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
if you see something wrong, do you ignore it or do you say something?
You need to say the right thing. 2 years ago Minnesota voters basically by the way they did or didn’t vote said they wanted tax increases. It’s nice to get out now and get involved but too late. The gas tax is already built. Same with the Twins Stadium. Once it is done, it is done. You can decide you don’t like it, but there’s no undoing the stadium and I doubt the gas tax will be undone.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I suspect (and this is only my gut feeling) is that people actually believed (or maybe they just wanted to believe) the Democrats when they ran as “moderates”. We (Republican activists) let them define themselves as “moderates” before we got off of the starting block. Once that was done, anything and everything we “said” sounded like we were defensive - which we were!
We need to get on the offensive NOW.
LL
March 16th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I think we’re all more in agreement than we are in disagreement on these issues. AAA is certainly right that many ostensible Republicans are unreliably conservative - the apostate six are only the most egregious examples. My own sense is that LL is right about the dangers of teaching a lesson, though, because of the example I saw in a neighboring district in 2006. It’s bad enough that in my district (50B) that we lost an open seat, but over in 53A we had one of the staunchest conservatives around, Phil Krinkie, lose his seat by 50 votes. The local GOP voters have to understand that sending a DFL hack like Paul Gardner to replace Krinkie is so much more than simply the loss of that seat. Krinkie is a leader and his presence in St. Paul may well have been enough to keep someone like Tingelstad or En-Abeler from selling the party out on the first major vote. Had Krinkie been there, I’m pretty sure the veto would have been sustained and the DFL would have had to try a different approach.
Marty Andrade made a good point on his blog last month about this, too — he argues that while moderates are unreliable generally, you have a chance to get them to do the right thing as long as you have the power. People who are unmoored to principle gravitate to power. It was no surprise that the moderates looked at that 85 number and figured that they should be part of the in-crowd.
My feeling is that to solve the current problem you do both things — when you are out of power, you try to get as many principled conservatives to run and win as you can and then you build from there. Downey would be a hell of a lot better for his district and his state than Erhardt. But if you have a real chance to win, you may have to hold your nose and support someone who is with you 75% of the time, as long as it’s the 75% that relates to core principles. I’m certainly on record as supporting the ouster of Erhardt, Peterson, En-Abeler and the rest of these folks, because they sold us out on core principles. But if conservatives stay home and let the DFL rule, they have demonstrated quite clearly that they will rule. And we have to face what LL is saying, because it’s true — if 51 additional disaffected conservatives in Shoreview had bothered to show up on election day 2006, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I think before we answer the question of who will carry the message, we need to ask what the message IS. You can’t tell by locking at the GOP platform, and that’s BEFORE all of these new resolutions get added to it. Fortunately or unfortunately, nobody reads it anyway. It’s all well and good to talk in general about “conservative principles,” but turning them into real legislation is difficult, and a “conservative agenda” is even moreso. Don’t expect what you can’t define.