Category: What The Hell…
-
What The Hell Do We Do With The MNGOP (Part II)`
Manfred Von Richtoven – better known to history as the Red Baron, the highest-scoring fighter pilot of World War I – was once asked for his “mission statement”, as they’re called in business today. Paraphrasing closely, he said “My mission is to patrol my sector, and shoot down the enemy. All else is bulls**t”. ———- As I…
-
What The Hell Do We Do About The MNGOP, Part I
I was originally going to call this piece “What The Hell Is Wrong With the MNGOP, Part X”; there’s plenty more to talk about in that series. But in the aftermath of the last legislative session, and especially Governor Pawlenty’s epic, lone stand against the DFL’s tax-and-spend orgy, I’m inclined to answer my question “not…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part IX
In 1993, disgusted with the GOP’s pusillanimous acquiescence on the Clinton Crime Bill (as gross an imposition on civil liberty as this country’s ever seen), I left the Republican party in disgust. “What the hell was wrong with the GOP”, at that time, was that it had completely abandoned the notion of small government, and…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part VIII
So what’ should the Minnesota GOP’s message be? We’ve talked about prosperity – achieved through cutting taxes and spending – and education. Today, Security. Security means a lot of things; the Constitution refers to the people’s right to be secure in their homes and possessions. National security is one of very few real clear mandates…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part VII
When figuring out messages for the Minnesota GOP, I limited my scope to things that elected officials and representatives in the State of Minnesota actually have some control over. And the biggest single thing the State of Minnesota controls is education. Along with building state infrastructure, education is the biggest bill the state pays, year-in, year-out. Now, on…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part VI
So the mission is this: dispense with the careerism and backbiting and just-plain-doesn’t-matter buncombe that occupies so much of the MNGOP’s time, and come up with a message – a message that’ll not only unite the party, but reach out to people who aren’t especially affiliated with either party to begin with. A message that…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part V
Yesterday, I noted that, from an activist’s perspective, the MNGOP seems to want to centralize control of its message – keeping activists and bloggers it doesn’t control at arms length – but at the same time, that it doesn’t seem to know what its’ message is. It’s a real problem. It’s easy for Democrats to…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The Minnesota GOP: Part IV
I’ve been writing for years about the problems I see in the Minnesota Republican Party. It’s taken years to even start figuring it all out. How can an organization so chock full of talented, smart, motivated, passionate people find so many clever ways to shoot itself in the foot with flamethrowers? I used to think…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The Minnesota GOP: Part III
It comes down to three words. More on Monday tomorrow.
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP – Part II
One of the most frustrating things about being in the Minnesota GOP is that the factionalism gets downright awful at times. It’s unavoidable, of course; the GOP is the big tent party in this state, for better or worse. But Reagan once said that to succeed as a party, we – the good guys who…
-
What The Hell Is Wrong With The Minnesota GOP?
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US military was faced with a challenge unlike any they’d faced, ever; how to root out and depose a government that was providing a safe haven for the terrorists that had launched the 9/11 attacks? Attacking Afghanistan, the mountanous anarchic home of peoples who’d been warring with each…