I would reverse that DFL vote today as my once sensible Rep got hit with her own committee gavel, suddenly lurched way left.

Darn. Who would have guessed?

Re: Andy

The session is where the battles are won and lost.

If you have no players in your caucus, there’s no battles to win during the session. Like a baseball team, you want 9 $70 million players out on the field all season long, but most teams don’t get that. You put together the strongest team you get and hope for a winning season. You don’t win by kicking everyone off the team but the 3 perfect players and then expect to win any battles.

Re: J Ewing

You can’t put your solutions to the issues if you don’t win, and the “enemy” will do great damage to your issues if you let them win.

You are my hero.

Put another way, if you forsaake all principles (which never happens, Republicans are Republicans for SOME reason) to win, you get nothing. If you forsake winning for even one principle, you get less than nothing. Choose.

The point of winning elections is the issues. If you have to sell out your issues in order to win, you can’t expect the people who are there for the issues to care since you’re saying you won’t do what they want. Frankly I don’t want to give the liberal Republicans any more chances.

This isn’t sports where when the whistle blows the game is over. Election night is the preseason. The session is where the battles are won and lost. If we can’t explain to voters why liberalism sucks, we have no business being a party.

But I continue to think that the Pawlenty’s of the world will ultimately destroy the Republican Party. Hopefully, Sue J. will take another run at him.

At the end, I absolutely agree that we need a highly-publicized “Contract with Minnesota.” To twist one of Senator Coleman’s favorite maxims, a Party without clear goals is just a bunch of guys going nowhere.

But frankly, other than feeling your pain at having our candidates try to appeal to enough moderates to win, I’m left wondering if you’re one of those people, like those who probably stayed home in 2006, that thinks being right on the issues is more important than winning elections. Those people are dangerously wrong. Not only does that approach elect people who will work AGAINST their tightly-held principles, but it sends the wrong message to the Party. The Party recognizes that the principles which bind the Party together are not advanced without winning elections, so if the voters want liberals, then some of those principles must be sacrificed to gain election. After 2006, you should have expected that our candidates in 2008 would be somewhat MORE liberal, not less. And look at what we have. Would anybody care to repeat this last legislative cycle, and let the Democrats do even more damage?

What’s the point of crossing the goal line without the football?