“They” being the Obamanistas running our nation. Government doesn’t grow like grass growing on a peaceful prairie; more like a brain tumor.

Would-be Obama Administration Commerce Secretary Judd Gregg speaks out on why he turned around and walked back out the door, embarrassing the President yet gain with another failed or controversial cabinet appointment (I’ll bet he pays his taxes) and even more so with his postmortem.

[Obama] may be “a charismatic person” with “a very strong understanding of who he is and what he wants to do,” but when it comes to the substance of what Mr. Obama seeks to accomplish, Mr. Gregg is less charitable. “They have a goal,” the senator says, “and he’s very open about it. They are going to grow this government.”

Why? Because that’s what liberals do. Why? Because they got nothin’ else in their quiver. Big government is to be made bigger for its own sake. How does that bode for the future?

“We’re headed on an unsustainable path. The simple fact is these [budget] numbers don’t work and the practical implications of them are staggering for the nation and the next generation.”

And as a result of all that spending, “You see the size of government growing from 21% [of gross domestic product] to 22%, to 23%, 24%, 25% . . . toward 30%.”

For the sake of credibility let me remind you liberals, this is the guy that Obama picked for his cabinet.

We post on torture and war and our liberal readers go ape. We post on Tea Parties and liberals argue semantics rather than addressing the fiscal crisis behind them. Why aren’t both sides freaking out about what liberal politicians, both Democrat (mostly) and Republican (sadly) are doing to our country financially?

I suppose liberals aren’t enraged because they’ve been sold on all these Hopey Changey concepts like wind-powered scooters and affordable health care for everyone without weighing the costs – costs beyond what we can afford as a nation – unless we borrow. Costs that without any market forces keeping them in check will make the current health care “crisis” look like the panacea liberals are looking for. But liberals in both parties have no aversion to borrowing and spending other-people’s money so long as the cause is “noble” enough – so for them, problem solved!

For Mr. Gregg, this is like living a nightmare. He has been a hard-nosed advocate for government spending restraint since his days as a Congressman (1981-87) and governor of New Hampshire (1987-93). At times, his commitment to fiscal responsibility led him to oppose tax cuts when they weren’t matched by spending restraint. Those stances incurred the ire of his Republican colleagues, but he always stuck to his fiscal-responsibility guns. Now he’s staring down a spending explosion that makes those battles look picayune.

What hope have we that prefer our nation not become completely insolvent?

…the runaway spending and growing pile of debt, could yet set the stage for a Republican comeback, and sooner than most pundits would predict. Mr. Gregg will not run for re-election when his current term ends next year. Republicans, he says, “became very clouded as to what we stood for under the Bush presidency.” But now they’re getting their “definition” back.

Once again, liberals will have screwed up our nation’s finances so badly that conservatives will be called back in to restore confidence. When will America learn?

Last week, I noted that some scolds on the left were tut-tutting about the “historical accuracy” of calling tax protests “Tea Parties”.

Being me, the English major, I noted that “language changes”.

Mark Steyn being Mark Steyn, he noted that they’re wrong; it is perfectly historically accurate (emphasis added):

OK, to be less absolutist about it, my interests include finding a road at the end of my drive every morning, and modern equipment for the (volunteer) fire department and a functioning military to deter the many predators out there, and maybe one or two other things. But 95 percent of the rest is not just “special interests” but social engineering – a $400 tax credit for falling into line with Barack Obama and Susan Roesgen. That’s why these are Tea Parties – because the heart of the matter is the same question posed two-and-a-third centuries ago: Are Americans subjects or citizens? If the latter, then a benign sovereign should not be determining “your interests” and then announcing that he’s giving you a “tax credit” as your pocket money.

He who forgets history probably votes Democrat anyway.

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 stampeded with a herd of Democrats to the left on a slew of privacy and civil liberties issues.

I figured that if the party actively subverted what I believed, and I didn’t have the capacity to change it myself or find enough people who believed as I did to change it, I shouldn’t be there.  So I joined the Libertarians.  I skipped the Gingrich Revolution (although I approved of it).  I even ran for office.  It was worth it; I developed an appreciation for what major parties are for; organization, mainly.

And in ’98, I came back. I figured I wasn’t going to win every battle, but it was worth fighting for in exchange for having a shot at getting what I believe actually in office.
———-
So after eight parts, I’ve said…what?

That the Minnesota GOP needs a message, one that attracts people.

Of course – as someone involved in party operations noted the other day – the party doesn’t put out messages.  The party works the people who do – the candidates and the groups of supporters who put them into contention.  The state party chairperson and the other officials elected by the Central Committee and, least of all, the party’s paid staff have very little to do with the message that candidates put out, other than making sure they don’t completely violate the platform.

All that’s true.

But there’s still a problem in the MNGOP.

As we all know, Norm Coleman trails in the “recount” process by something like 300 votes.  Leave aside for a moment the byzantine nature of the recount, or the  patchwork of “standards” (isn’t that an oxymoron?) that led to the 500 vote swing, or the danger this sort of uncertainty provides to democracy itself, what with not one in 100 voters being able to explain how we got here, and probably not one percent of those able to define the standards themselves.

Why is Norm Coleman behind by 300 votes?

Because he’s “too conservative?”  Please.  He was a DFLer.  He nominated Paul Wellstone in 1996.  He won two terms as mayor of Saint Paul as a moderate DFLer.

Because the opposition was so strong?  Well, it was a bad year for Republicans.  But the fact that such a relatively large number of people voted for Dean Barkley – the prickly wonk thrust into prominence by Jesse Ventura’s caprice and Paul Wellstone’s death – shows how little Barack Obama’s coattails were worth, even here.

All that is true.  But Coleman also lost because several “Republican party” factions actively campaigned against him, because of some of his votes (ANWR, among others). Did these factions bring up a viable alternative within the party?  Of course not. But they did actively sway people against Norm Coleman.  Was it 300 votes worth?  We will never know, but it’s not unreaonable.

These groups’ reasoning?  “The GOP needs to learn its lesson”. So what did we get for it?  If this recount wends its way to a Franken victory, we get an even more veto-proof Dem majority in Washington, to further grease the Obama Administration’s path, lubing up the skidway to hell.

So one of the things that’s wrong with the MN GOP is Minnesota Republicans themselves.  The party is crowded with people who are in it for a single issue (pro-lifers, God bless ’em, in many cases), or a single candidate (Ron Paul).  That’s good, as far as it goes – but here’s a suggestion:  if you’re in the GOP, then by all means try to influence the GOP in the direction you want. That’s what caucuses and primaries are for.  And an organized, well-motivated group can have quite an effect on the party, there; the Ron Paul supporters made quite an impact last year (and if they have the attention span, they can extend that impact into some real gains).

But if at the end of the day you call yourself a Republican but find yourself actively subverting the party’s candidates, you should ask yourself – is this where I belong?  Is the damage I’m causing to what I believe in by, de facto, helping get Democrats and their entire agenda into office really the goal I had in mind?

No, I’m not saying “your party, love it or leave it”.  Far from it; I applaud the Ron Paul crowd for the organizing and work they’ve done.

But I am asking; if you find yourself subverting the GOP after the caucuses and primaries, from either side – whether you’re a Coleman-hating paleocon or a Sturdevant-hugging Override-Sixer – then why are  you in the GOP? Don’t you belong in the Constitution, Independence, DFL, Libertarian or Natural Law parties?

You’ve got a little over a year to think about it.

Monday:  Summing up.  I think.

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 upon the federal government. Of course, if you’re a liberal, a complex formula of dairy price supports and support for the National Endowment for the Humanities are vital elements in national security.

But at a state level, it means a few really important things:

• Afflicting the lawless and comforting the law-abiding:  Law enforcement should be a burden on criminals and ne’er-do-wells, not on the law-abiding citizen.  Quit finding new ways to criminalize legal behavior.
• Laws are for enforcing: Dangerous people belong in jail.  End Minnesota’s revolving door for career criminals.  Quit subsidizing criminal behavior in this state.
• Police are not social engineers: if people break laws, any laws, then prosecute them.  That means everyone from CEOs to illegal immigrants. Focus on keeping streets safe, rather than canoodling about as government social policy enforcers.

This makes sense if you’re a Republican – or a citizen who may not be a Republican, but pays their taxes, works hard, and wants to know their neighborhood is their neighborhood, not the scum’s.

It’s easy to make the case that…:

Republicans: Common Sense and Safety.

…presuming we manage to actually embrace common sense: punish criminals, leave the law-abiding alone, quit tolerating (much less subsidizing) bad behavior.

So what’s the alternative?  Revolving door justice.  Criminals who should be in jail attacking, raping and killing people, and illegal immigrants soaking up our resources while the DFL legislature looks for ways to punish the law abiding citizen (the gun owner) and harass those who run afoul of their picayune social policies (Saint Paul’s dwindling number of small landlords).  Our streets grow more dangerous, as the DFL diverts resources away from enforcement and into subsidizing more bad behavior.
Democrats:  Chaos and Fear.

It should be an easy sell:

Republicans: Common Sense and Safety. Democrats:  Chaos and Fear.

Tomorrow: Getting along.

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 the one hand Minnesota putatively has much to be proud of; our state’s education system ranks at or near the top of the nation in most categories that matter on the major standardized tests – for those of you who place lots of value in standardized tests (which, let’s remember, test the ability of kids to take tests more than anything).

But in whatever part of Minnesota you live, we’re slipping. As per-pupil education spending skyrockets faster than inflation, inner-city minority graduation rates are falling.  In the rural areas, traditional town schools are being consolidated into big consolidated districts, gaining many of the disadvantages of big urban districts – the maddening bureaucracy, the stunted achievement, the addiction to infrastructure and administrative overhead, the “I’m lost in a huge school” effect that makes urban education such a morass – while losing all the benefits of being a small school, changes made purely for the convenience of the administrative beast.  If you live in a ‘burb with a successful school district, mandates on curriculum and funding formulas are having more and more affect on the schools your communities have built.  If you’re a charter school parent, the education/media complex is trying to draw a big bullseye on your schools’ foreheads.  And if you’ve opted to secede from the school system – like so many inner-city black Charter School parents, Christian homeschoolers, Latino catholic-school parents and Asian kids attending school in the ‘burbs due to Minnesota’s Open Enrollment laws, the DFL majority is aiming the whittle down your choices even as it whittles up the bill we all have to pay for all of those diminishing returns.

And while Minnesota’s test scores – whatever they’re worth – are still strong, you’d be blinkered not to notice that neighboring North Dakota pays vastly less per student for about the same results.

Against this backdrop of failure and anti-parent recrimination, the GOP has consistently stood for the full range of answers to the problem:

• More accountability in the public system
• More choices for parents, within and outside the public system.

Or, to sum it up:

Republicans: Parental Control, Choice and Learning.

Against this, the DFL has consistently fought for what’s best for Education – with a capitol “E”, anyway.  This isn’t just bagging on the teachers’ unions; Institutional Education at all levels, from Big Adminsitration to Big Consolidation to Big Union all have their role.  Against this, there is no Big Parent; indeed, the GOP is the closest we’ve got to such a thing.

And the best the DFL can come up with is “the GOP wants to cut education funding”.  It’s a powerful argument – if you don’t dig beneath the facility of the numbers.  Minnesota’s “best” public schools in terms of student achievement are its cheapest; the state’s few remaining one, two and three-room country schools.  Its worst, overall, are the ones that are most “blessed” with resouces.

So we can sum it up:

Democrats:  Bureaucracy and Failure.

The truth is out there; the track record is clear:

Republicans: Parental Control, Choice and Learning. Democrats:  Bureaucracy and Failure.

Tomorrow, “Security”

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 will clearly frame the fact that there is a very clear choice between Republicans and Democrats.

Here’s the hard part; they have to be messages that even Republicans agree on amongst themselves.  And that’s a tough one; leaving aside the single-issue voters who might be completely ignorant about issues outside their turf (I can’t count the number of single-issue pro-lifers who’ve claimed to oppose, say, concealed-carry reform, just because they had never cared to learn about the issue beyond what the media told them), a lot of the messages that are absolutely vital to one group of Republicans can be anathema – or at least not very important – to others.

Good example?  Gay marriage.  It’s an issue worth taking up arms over to some Republicans; to the GOP’s tiny gay minority, it’s a goal; to a lot of us (the “Mitch Berg Bloc”, let’s call us), it’s various degrees of “important, but not the most important issue out there.  In any case, it’s an stance that serves more to ensure ideological purity within a movement than to win elections.

The goal here, once again: find messages all Republicans can agree on, and that can win people over to the party.  The idea is this; when we’re back in power, we can fuss about all the issues that divide us; if we’re out of power, we lose on all the issues, no matter what; the Democrats will gut-shoot every liberty that matters while they’re in power.

Last week, I suggested three of those messages:

Prosperity.

Education.

Security.

These are all make-or-break issues on the state level (these are not intended for the national party, although two out of three should be), both for unting the party and winning over voters.

We’re going to go over one of them per day.  We’ll start with prosperity.

America has a hard time not being prosperous.  You airdrop ten Americans in the desert with jackknives and plastic tubing and come back in a week and they’ll have built an ice cream machine, and a commodity market to trade ice cream futures and spin them into complex derivatives that they can sell to the Saudis and then short-sell when the Russians move extra capacity into the sherbet market, making money on the up and downsides.

Oh, business has up and down cycles – creative destruction isn’t just a great band name.  But as John McCain (and now Barack Obama) said, the fundamentals of the American economy – immense human and material resources, drive, constantly-replenishing intellectual capital) are more sound than in any econony on earth…

…provided government gets out of the way.  The most dismal periods in recent American history – the most extended swatches of misery – are the times when government opted to “help” solve financial crises with taxation, regulation and intervention.  Government intervention extended the Great Depression until the beginning of World War II (and, without the war, it’d have likely lasted well into the forties) when it would likely have ended on its own by about 1937-8.  And government regulation and aggressive taxation – the bastard children of FDR and LBJ’s policies – helped make the seventies the dismal morass they were.  And let’s not forget that the mortgage bubble grew out of the government’s mandates to expand sub-prime lending, socializing the risks of shoddy loans.

The more you leave government out of the equation (yes, yes, make sure  nobody’s making baby formula out of arsenic, and yes, the courts exist to an extent to help people get relief from business’ excesses), the better things are.  Any number of the world’s great philosophers and economics and economic philosophers, from Smith to Hayek, have shown how it works; all the greatest periods in American (and world) economic history have accompanied periods of enlightened deregulation.

Conservatives stand for “limited government” – but that’s another ephemeral concept to an awful lot of people.  How do you shrink government?  You starve it!
So how do you sum that up briefly?

Like this:

Republicans: Low Taxes, Prosperity and Freedom.

Low taxes lead to free markets lead to jobs, which leads to prosperity.  Low taxes mean you have more money; having more of the fruits of your labor at your own disposal is freedom – very likely the most-used freedom in our society today.  It’s the freedom to take a trip, donate to charity, put money away for your kids’ education, buy a car, change careers…whatever you choose (which benefit in turn the travel industry, charities, banks, car dealers…)

Republicans equal low taxes. Low taxes equal prosperity. Prosperity equals freedom.

So how does this compare with the alternative?

Democrats:  Taxes and Control.

The Democrats believe that your earnings belong first to government; that government’s mission, and keeping that mission funded, is the reason you work.  Anything left over?  Well, don’t spend it all in one place!

When government claims the fruits of your labor, you don’t control what you do with a third of your life.  You cede control of what you do to the government; you cede your freedom.

DFL Senator Cy Thao put it well at the beginning of the 2007 session; “When you guys win, you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money!”.  If the GOP doesn’t make up T-shirts with this saying emblazoned in white on black and distribute them througout the state, they don’t deserve to be a party.

The choice is simple; freedom to enjoy the results of your hard work versus being (in effect) government property.

It’s not just fuzzy-headed libertarian theory; Obama’s current spending mania is going to make you, your children, and your grandchildren into de facto government servants for their entire lives.

There’s nothing abstract about this.

Republicans: Low Taxes, Prosperity and Freedom.  Democrats:  Taxes and Control.

Tomorrow:  Education.

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 get on message; most people learned the key points of Democratic/Liberal philosophy in kindergarten; “share and share alike! Take your fair share! Everyone is exactly the same (except your teachers, of course)!”.  Take these simple tropes, tack on the element of state force to get compliance, and you basically have the DFL message; “Share what we think we need, or we’ll take what we want”.  They word it more nicely, but that’s really about it.

It’s more complicated when you’re right of center; many of the tenets of center-right thought are harder, almost counterintuitive, to the things we were tought when we were five years old; merit, tough love, rights don’t impinge other rights, enumerated powers, individual responsibility.

And even with that, there are so many flavors of thought in the GOP:

• The Ron Paul crowd – basically Libertarians who saw a major party ripe for the picking.  They are largely hardcore civil libertarians, largely without the faintest interest in social conservative issues.
• Evangelicals – largely social conservatives; they focus (some of them almost to exclusion) on issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research; I’ve met not a few that were hard-core pro-lifers who were wobbly on Second Amendment and even fiscal issues (I’m talking to you, Mike Huckabee).
• Culture Conservatives – Similar to the Evangelicals, although not always motivated by faith; immigration, gay marriage and the near reaches of social policy motivate them.
• Fiscal Hawks – These range from Center of the American Experiment policy wonks to Jason Lewis’ hordes of tax hawks.  Many are social conservatives, but it’s no lock.
• “Reagan” Democrats  – There are not a few moderate DFLers – union members, blue-collar guys and gals, veterans – who are nauseated by some combination of Dems’ policies.
• Homesteaders – That’s my term for the small, but growing, groups of black Republicans who realize the DFL represents a tragic quackery on education and welfare, and Hispanics who are tired of having their conservative social beliefs piddled on, Asians who recognize the DFL’s threat to free enterprise, African immigrants who’ve already lived through third-world hell and don’t want to see Minnesota even start to flirt with more of the same, and even a few Gay conservatives who are tired of being treated as ripe voting sucks by a party that expects their votes in exchange for not a helluva lot but rhetoric in return.
• “Moderates” – These people used to control the party; the likes of Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman pine for the days when Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger were the voices of the MNGOP.  They[‘re still out there; the Override Six battle showed they’re still alive,well, and – this is important – a non-trivial force in the party.
• “Pragmatists”  – Moderate?  Conservative?  Fiscal Hawk?  Opportunist?  They may be a minority in your BPOU caucus, but they’re pretty prominent in the party leadership and, lest we forget, the governor’s mansion.
• Security Voters – Maybe they remember the joke that was the Democratic Party during the Cold War; maybe they recall the way the Dems giggled and skipped away as the Communists inflicted epic mass murder on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; maybe they’re sick of Minnesota’s catch and release criminal justice system; maybe they still see the Twin Towers burning when they go to the polls.  Whatever; they are Republicans because they see that the Dems are whores on the battlefieldand generals in the bedroom when it comes to security, at home and abroad.
• The Mitch Berg Bloc – This last bloc, of indeterminate size (from one to thousands; nobody knows for sure) represents people who are fiscal hawks, social libertarians, personal Christians, legal Constitutionalists and who are pragmatic yet absolutist on security.

To make it challenging, remember; without any of these blocs (Homesteaders and the Mitch Bergs might be expendable, sorta), the party will have a very hard time winning.  And that means any bloc; the RINOs, damn the luck, are as important as the fiscal hawks.
So what happens when you put a Taxpayers’ League wonk, a MCCL activist and Ron Paul supporter in a room?

Currently, not much; the pro-lifer calls the other two RINOs on social issues; the wonk calls his roommates RINOs on fiscal issues, and the Paulbot bags on the others’ commitment to small government and liberty.

And they’re all wrong.  And they’re all right.  And it’s no way to run a party, either way.

———-

In the past, I’ve used the metaphor of the “Tug of War” to describe my beliefs about partisan politics.  We live in a pluralistic society; nobody is ever going to convince everyone to believe as they do, to “pull the other side into the mud pit”, to complete the metaphor; the best they can hope for is to convince as many people as possible to join their team to “pull the rope” for their particular issue as far as possible in the direction they want.  Which doesn’t necessarily mean “compromise right out of the gate”; indeed, it means “pull like hell” – to a point.

As a Reagan Conservative – a center-right fiscal conservative and social libertarian – I’ve set my stake in the ground.  I wrote the “True North Manifesto” almost two years ago – and with its six key pillars (Liberty, Prosperity, Security, Limited Government, Culture, Family) it was a pretty decent summation of center-right conservatism as I’ve seen if I say so myself (and I say so myself).  Those are the six ropes I haul on, and try to convince others to join me in pulling for.

But when you run a genuine big tent party, there are many, many of these tugs of war – many of them within the party itself.  What does “limited government” mean to Arne Carlson?  What is “Security” to a Hispanic conservative, a 9/11 Democrat, or a Ron Paul supporter?

The problem is, to get anything of this implemented into policy, you have to win elections, no matter what bloc you belong to.  And with the Minnesota GOP this fragmented, that looks dicey.  But if the GOP isn’t in power, it’s for sure that the DFL is not going to stand for anything we believe in, whether fiscal sanity or law and order or the sanctity of human life.

What’s a party to do?

———-

My friend Andy Applikowki at the blog Residual Forces  – one of my colleagues on the ruling junta at True North – put it well at an editorial meeting a few months back.  Paraphrasing, he said we need, as a party, to put aside the things we disagree on to fight for the things we do agree on.

He’s right, of course.  If you oppose abortion, who is more likely to return your call when she’s in office – a Republican for whom it’s a non-issue, or a Democrat for whom it’s a social sacrament?

It’s a no-brainer; no GOP power, no progress on the things any of us, Paulbots and MCCLers and Jason Lewis fans and, by the way, me, believe in.

So what do all Republicans, from all corners of the party and every place in between, agree on, on a statewide level (meaning “things that state elected officials will ever have to deal with), that we can turn into a winning message?

Hint:  They all tie in with “Freedom” at the root of it all.  But “Freedom” is an ephemeral concept – a great, beautiful one that hundreds of thousands of our forefathers (and brothers and sisters, really) died to protect.  But one of the great political aphorisms is “it’s the economy, stupid”; people think in terms of tangible things that hit them where they live, day in, day out.

And for the Republican voter, and (more importantly) the non-affiliated voter who can be persuaded, there are three of these issues I’m going to suggest:

Prosperity.

Education.

Security.

We’ll address each of these – and why each gives the voter a reason to vote Republican, and why Republicans do have to agree on these – starting Monday.

To:  Congressional Republicans

From: Mitch Berg, mere voter

Re: Timing is Everything, peabrains.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the House and Senate GOP caucuses:

I’m glad to see that you, plural, are finally drawing the line and doing the right thing on spending:

I’ve received word that the Senate passed our current budget monstrosity 55-43. No Republican defections: we picked up Bayh and Nelson of Florida. Earlier, the House version passed 233/196 with no Republicans voting for it, 20 Democrats voting against it, with supposed fiscal conservatives (and European junketeers) Charlie Melancon (LA-03) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) singled out for special ridicule as being part of the group of Blue Dogs that signed off on a 3.6 trillion dollar budget. In short, the GOP Held The Line again.

Kudos.  I’m glad.

Now, if you’d managed a bit for of this sort of thing over the past eight years, you might just be in the majority today.

Winston Churchill said in the wake of Dunkirk “wars aren’t won by evacutations”.  Likewise, countries aren’t saved by rearguard actions.

Do try to keep this in mind.

That is all.

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 it was just a problem with leadership.  And there are problems there; I can’t count the grassroots GOP activists who’ve railed against the feeling that all the real decisionmaking took place in a smoke-filled back room weeks before they showed up at the district or state convention; that debate was tolerated as a ticket-punching exercise rather than a key part of setting party policy.

And there are signs that leadership is a big issue; the state and district GOPs seem paralyzed at the thought of devolving any power outward; they seem to want control at the expense of results.  A great example – the party’s “Voter Vault” voter ID database, which is mandated from the national party, but is reportedly so rife with data integrity and usability issues as to be nearly useless for, y’know, identifying voters.  Having sat in boilerrooms and made countless calls to people who had no idea why they were getting calls from the GOP, I’ll testify.

And control is, I think, the MNGOP’s big issue – but parliamentary procedure and technology are only the barest surface layer of the problem.

Closer to the core of the issue?  The party has a notoriously standoffish attitude toward Minnesota’s big, passionate, thriving center-right blogging community. Oh, there are exceptions; Michael Brodkorb and MDE is a big and important one.

But it seems the party is so fanatical about “controlling its message” that it doesn’t want anyone else to have access to that message.

At lunch with another center-right activist last week, I mentioned this; she responded (just before I would have continued with the same line) “they don’t even know what their message is!”

And therein lies the rub; what is the MNGOP’s message?  What does it stand for?

And that, of course, is where it gets complicated.  The MNGOP is a big-tent party, in which social conservatives, Ron Paul Libertarians, “Moderates” (think Ron Erhard or Arne Carlson), Jason-Lewis’ hordes of tax-hawks, 9/11 Democrats, and inner-city political homesteaders try to duke it out for control in an exercise that, at the moment, looks like Italian parliamentary maneuvering.

How does a party fashion a cohesive message out of this Babel?

More tomorrow.

NOTE: While I welcome all comments, this thread (and the threads in this series) are going to be by, about, and for Minnesota Republicans.  I’ll be a lot less tolerant of tangents than normal.  I reserve the right to edit and excise without notice.  Thanks!

It comes down to three words.

More on Monday tomorrow.

Conservative Utah is the happiest place in the country:

WASHINGTON – Looking for happiness — it’s family-friendly communities for some, tropical paradise or the rugged West for others. A survey of Americans’ well-being, conducted by Gallup in partnership with Healthways and America’s Health Insurance Plans, gives high marks to Utah, which boasts lots of outdoor recreation for its youthful population.

Oh, it’s not just a red-state thing:

In general, highest well-being scores came from states in the West while the lowest were concentrated in the South.

Still – combine this with the facts that conservatives have better senses of humor and have better sex lives, and – well, a pattern is forming here, isn’t it?

Four years ago, I and most thinking Americans had a field day, roundly ridiculing a couple of risible strains of “liberal” whinging:

• Stars who claimed they’d “move to France” if George W. Bush won the election.
• Vacuous lefty blog-gerbils who yapped about the Blue States seceding from the union and joining to form “The United States of Canada”, and leaving the red-voting “Jesusland” states to themselves (I had particular fun with this, as well as pointing out the political and historical illiteracy of the idea; most of Canada west of Ontario is as red as Montana).  I had extra-special fun with these morons.
• Acres of “He’s Not My President” bumper stickers.

These were many of the same people, by the way, who tearfully demanded that conservatives “stop questioning their patriotism”, by the way.

But I digress.  The vacuous snivelling hamsters got their president finally.

It’s the other side I’m concerned about now.

We got a call on the show last Saturday from a guy who’s question echoed one I’d heard from not a few people on blogs, on Twitter, and around about in recent months – itself a reprise of something I heard a lot back in the seventies and, just a bit, in the early nineties.

“When should we stop talking and start the active resistance?”

I often ask these people – why?

“It’s never been worse than this!”

I’m starting to lose patience with some of them.

Whenever anyone says anything is “the worst ever”, they’re almost always wrong.  They almost always really mean “the worst I’ve seen”.

Politics is not the dirtiest and nastiest it’s ever been (that’d be the Jackson/Adams contest in 1828, or any election where the Hearst papers uncorked their smear machine); this is not the worst unemployment since World War II (not even close, not yet)…

…and if you’re a freedom-loving American, the Obama administration is shaping up to be a bad one, perhaps a horrible one.  But it’s by no means the worst we’ve seen on any count.

Spending?  Roosevelt’s New Deal was worse.  So far.

Gun control?  While Obama’s record is bad, he hasn’t done anything yet; Democrats from FDR through Clinton all took their swipes at the Second Amendment, from Roosevelt’s prohibitory taxes on automatic weapons (which eliminated gang warfare!) to Clinton’s “1994 Crime Bill”, which did for many less-fashionable liberties what Bigfoot does to junked cars.

Civil Liberties?  Three words; J. Edgar Hoover.  FDR, Truman, Kennedy and LBJ got away with things that’d make any of the ofay gerbils that were protesting George W. Bush’s “Abuses” gag up their skulls.  Nixon invoked executive orders that gathered unprecedented “emergency” powers unto the executive – which has had libertarians chattering amongst themselves for almost forty years.  Obama bears watching; the Dems in Congress bear even more of it.  But so far, the threats are minimal (while still intolerable).

Repackaging vacuity as “change” and “audacity?”  OK, there Obama’s in a league of his own.

Overall demoralization of the parts of this country that matter?  The seventies were worse.  They had everything we have today and more – instability, out-of-control government, the Middle East going nuts, stagflation, Jimmy Carter – and a nation that was coming off of Vietnam, which, if you don’t remember it (and I only do through the prism of a 12 year old’s memory) was the most demoralizing thing to happen to this nation since the mid-thirties.  I don’t know if anyone ever ran the numbers, but Carter’s “Malaise Speech” must have prompted more population-wide suicides than any other single event in American history (shaddap about Oberlin undergrads popping too many Valium after Kerry lost).

And even that wasn’t the worst it’s gotten.  In my father’s lifetime – well within my grandparents’ early adult lives – there were those in the mainstream who seriously considered socialism, communism, even pre-war Naziism viable models with much from which we could learn, even much to emulate for our own good.  There were those in positions of great power who actively sought to incorporate “the best” of these ideologies into our own.

The point being that, so far, the Obama Administration isn’t the worst thing our constitution, our economy and our society has faced – yet.  And while the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the Founding Fathers well-recognized the possibility that Americans might need to throw off another tyranny someday, this isn’t it.

Not yet.

It’s a big government, and it’s getting bigger.  It’s a not-ready-for-prime-time government, run by a lot of very canny people who buffaloed a lot of our nation’s not-too-bright with a lot of breezy platitudes, and which rode to office on an almost-but-not-quite-unprecedented wave of discontent with the status quo.  It’s a government full of poltroons and ideological three-card-monte sharks.  But it’s not a communist dictatorship.

It was elected, for better or worse.  And we have three years and eight months to make the case that it should be thrown out of office and – this is the important part – nobody’s changing that.

If they do?  Well, get back to me then; it’ll be then you should think about putting on the camo and grabbing Grampa’s Garand and heading into the north woods.

Until then?  It’s still America.

As Douglas Adams said, “Don’t Panic”.

The Democrats, playing from the Chomsky playbook and using their hegemony in the mainstream media to shape opinion, have been trying to create a false choice in the minds of the vast, non-affiliated “middle” in American politics; asking “Is Rush Limbaugh the voice of the GOP?”, while quite deliberately setting up and glorifying non-conservatives (Chuck Hagel and Arlen Spector nationally; regionally, the likes of Lori Sturdevant burn lots of cycles setting up the likes of Ron Erhard as “responsible” Republicans, which translates to “indistinguishable from the DFL in every particular”).as an “alternative”.

The normally-very-sharp David Frum buys into the madness, playing the Dems’ game for them.

So who’s the voice of conservatism and the GOP in America?

Me.

I, Mitch Berg, am the voice of the Republican party.  My agenda – support growth, limit government intrusion, destroy the enemy (via violence, dipomacy or humanitarianism, it matters not), cut taxes, support the family, defend our culture – is what the party’s agenda should be.

Having an agenda, of course, is of little value if you can’t get it elected.  Republicans – conservative, moderate, whatever – need to get together, figure out the 80% of the message that 80% of us agree on, and convince the other 50% of this country (the ones that aren’t already either Republicans or lost causes) why it not only matters to them, but is a much better choice.  By this time next year, it might not even be all that hard – if we can stop letting the bad guys set us against each other.

So yeah.  I’m the voice of the GOP.

Of course, so are all of my True North colleagues.

And every conservative Republican in Minnesota who doesn’t write for True North, or write at all.

Also every conservative in America, from Rush Limbaugh and Tom Coburn through the guy in the plumbing supply store in Clear Lake Iowa who’s wondering how he’s going make ends meet.

There’s your voice of conservatism.

Note to the liberal media; I hope that settles this.

Speaking of which – I see Kathleen Soliah, the voice of the Minnesota DFL, is coming back to the state…

To: Michael Steele

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Limbaugh

Chairman Steele,

For starters, congrats on winning the chairmanship.

In addition; my condolences on winning the chairmanship.

A while ago, I introduced a metaphor I like a lot – the “Tug of War” – to describe politics at this stage of the race. There are two (or more sides) to every question, and each is a tug of war, and each of our job is to get as many people pulling our way as possible, knowing we’ll likely never pull the other team into the mud pit, but we’ll at least pull the rope – the issue – far enough to our side to make us happy enough which, in a representative democracy (either a government or a party) is as good as it gets.

Rush Limbaugh represents a lot of us who are pulling to the right.  You represent a lot of people who pull in different directions on a lot of issues – the fiscal right, perhaps, but the social center on a lot of issues, including some on which you and I disagree.

So don’t yap about Limbaugh pulling to the right; that’s his job.

Rather, try to sell the rest of us on what your vision is.  Convince us.  Show us where you have a better plan.  Because your last couple of predecessors sure didn’t do it.  The burden of proof is on you to show where you and your office have a better idea, especially inasmuch as Rush and all of us conservatives represent ideas that have worked, and a time that the party did conquer all in its path.  Rush – and all of us – represent the Gingrich and Reagan eras; too many of the hamsters we have in office now represent the Trent Lott era.

But this is your chance, Mr. Steele.  Show us what you’ve got.  Take the good ideas from the right – and there are an awful lot of them – and convince us on the rest.

You have a little less than a year before the race to contest Congress heats up again.

Don’t screw up – and by that, I mean “don’t do what the last two rounds of elections have done – whiz on conservatives”.

That is all.

I don’t read the “City Pages” all that much – while ten years ago it frequently did better long-form reporting than the dailies, today it’s a glorified college paper/ad handout.

Still, it’s good for the occasional laugh.

We’ve discussed Emily Kaiser before.  She seems to have inherited the political beat from the likes of GR Anderson and Mike Mosedale (themselves guys with, let’s say, opportunities as political reporters and commentators).

And like a lot of inheritances, it’s not working all that well, in this piece entitled “Republicans Don’t Really Like Pawlenty”.  See if you can figure out the problem with that premise before Ms. Kaiser does.  I’ll add emphasis for the benefit of anyone who takes the City Pages seriously:

The Conservative Political Action Committee straw poll must have been a real blow to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s confidence this weekend. It turns out Republicans don’t like him much. He was seriously beat out by real winners in life: Gov. Bobby Jindal (Kenneth the Page) and Gov. Sarah Palin. That really hurts.

At CPAC’s annual conference Saturday in Washington, Republicans participated in a straw poll of potential 2012 presidential candidates. Pawlenty received just 2 percent of the vote, was second to last, and only beat out Charlie Crist.

Kaiser misses the blazingly obvious, even though she write the answer in black and white.

Emilyi It was the Conservative Political Action Conference!  Not the “Republican Political Action Conference”. Many Republicans are not conservatives.  Many – Chuck Hagel, Jim Ramstad, Ron Erhard, Olympia Snowe – are indistinguishable from Democrats.
And while you, Emily, are a Minnesota liberal who would seem to have trouble telling Arne Carlson apart from Rush Limbaugh, Pawlenty is no doctrinaire conservative.  Oh, he ran to the right to get nominated in 2002; he’s tried, against increasingly long odds, to hold the line on the the DFL’s psychotic spending.

But – and I realize this is tough for you, Emily, who have no doubt been trained to think that Republicans and Conservatives are monochrome thud-wits – Pawlenty is not seen as a movement conservative.

So the “Conservative Political Action Conference” might be expected to vote for…

…what?

Conservatives.

Like Romney and Jindal and Palin, and not the likes of Pawlenty and Crist.

It’s not a sign that Pawlenty’s in trouble with Repblicans.  It’s a sign that he either has to burnish his credentials among conservatives (and I think conservatives sell him short) or hope that there is a sea of disenfranchised moderates out there.

Anyone else find incredible irony in a “Republican” governor that has run his state into the ground, and is now lauding the stimuless bill?

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Schwarzenegger said he welcomes his state’s share of the massive $787 billion package, believing it could create as many as 400,000 new jobs.

“We welcome this economic stimulus package. I think it’s terrific and will help us,” the California governor said. “We were happy even though there’s…people complaining. It’s not what they envisioned, but what is? The people will give you 1,000 different answers.

“It was Obama that got elected. He put the package together, so let’s support it,” he also said.

Ahnold, I loved you in True Lies but in real life you are an “ee-dee-yot.” There is nothing “terrific” in the rest of us bailing you out after years of deficits and mismanagement of your state.

What a sad artifact of a bygone era that moniker is. Arnold Schwarzenegger circa the 2003 “total recall” election was going to sweep all before him as California governor, bringing the same élan and toughness he had on the big screen to fighting special interests and restoring his beloved state to competitiveness.

With no screenplay to save him, the much-reduced Governator simply buckled and switched sides.

Sadly, California may serve as a model for the rest of the nation, now following in California’s footsteps.

California Democrats are only slightly ahead of national Democrats, so the country’s fiscal future may be in preview in Sacramento.

The state has been buffeted by the housing crisis, but the ultimate cause of the mess is relentless, heedless overspending.

Sound familiar?

Sorry Mr. Kennedy-Shriver, its time to cut the mooring lines and let Caleefohnia float out to sea.

Senator Judd Gregg disses Obammy and makes it crystal clear why he said “Thanks, but no thanks” withdrawing his nomination as Commerce Secretary for the Obama Abomination Administration.

“It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me.”

Gregg’s withdrawal is yet another in a string of embarrassments for Mr. Jimmy’s team of fools and serves to underscore the utter folly that is the “Stimulus” bill and portends a brewing census scandal.

At least a dozen candidates turned the prestigious commerce secretary’s post down before President Obama came up with Gregg, after assuring him that the Democratic governor in his home state would appoint a Republican to take his seat. Obama even joked about the difficulty of “finding a commerce secretary” to the media.

But the real reason why Gregg pulled out is probably that he found there isn’t any real place for commerce in the new administration. With President Obama saying things like “only government” can save the economy, Gregg learned quickly he was unlikely to have any power or influence on behalf of the private sector.

The current approach has been to use business and bipartisan Republicans like Gregg as window dressing. But no one’s fooled.

Well, actually, about 52.9% of us are still being fooled. Meanwhile Obammy’s back to begging someone to take the job.

Prestigious commerce secretary post? Not so much. In another time and on another team, maybe. It appears no Republican is willing to go down with the bipartisanship.

At President Obama’s El Grande Stimuloso Tour Del Mundo  New New Deal Road Show  Socialist Party Recruitment Tour Town Hall meeting in Florida this week, a downtrodden Henrietta Hughes stepped to the microphone and asked for an extra helping of Hopey Changey^© from the Messiah.

“I have an urgent need, unemployment and homelessness, a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in,” she said. “The housing authority has two years’ waiting lists, and we need something more than the vehicle and the parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.”

Now, why didn’t she ask for help getting a fricken job? Why does she expect the government to skip to giving her the fish instead of helping her to catch one?

Who could be giving people the idea that that is how America works?

…I don’t even have my own bathroom – I have to share it with Mrs. Roosh – and Henrietta just got…three? Plus a study, a library, a jacuzzi, a three-car garage, and a big-screen telly-vision.

Supplied by Obammy’s handlers?

Nope.

A Democrat breaking rank and actually giving his/her own money?

Nope.

Chene Thompson, the wife of state Rep. Nicholas Thompson, R-Fort Myers, is letting Henrietta Hughes and her son stay in a house she owns in nearby La Belle rent free until they get back on their feet.

“You don’t have to be a politician to put forth a stimulus package,” Chene Thompson said during a joint interview with Hughes Thursday on CNN’s “American Morning.” “This is our own little mini-stimulus package for a person who was a stranger and now is a friend.

What? The guvment isn’t coming to the rescue?

Republicans…one voter at a time!

Now if someone could help find her a job…

GOP taps Bobby Jindal to give response to Obama’s address:

Jindal a former congressman and first term governor, was widely believed to be on then-Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s shortlist for vice president, and often served as a campaign surrogate on the Arizona senator’s behalf.

The 37-year-old son of Indian immigrants was also given a prime-time speaking slot at the GOP convention last September, though he ultimately decided not to attend the four-day event as Hurricane Gustav headed for landfall in his state.

This is good.  The GOP’s needed to pump up its “bench” for over a decade, now. 

And it’ll get the Dems started on their counterstrategy – making “Apu” jokes politically correct.

I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the Republican National Committee chair race – life pretty much got in the way.

However, I was overjoyed to see that Michael Steele won the seat after a zillion ballots.

Steele’s unobtrusive but reliable bass work and solid low-end background vocals were a key part of the Bangles’ success back in the ’80s; she also helped launch The Runaways back in the late ’70s, giving us Joan Jett and Lita Ford as well.

Hopefully she’ll do at least as well for the GOP!

UPDATE:  Oh, sorry – they meant this guy:

My bad.

I wrote earlier about David Brauer’s observing a “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted McCain” bumper sticker.

Well, while I join most of my readers in believing Mac would have been a better president, that sticker doesn’t really sum things up all that well.

Let’s try this:

Or in convenient button form:

They’re available at my Cafe Press store.  Like all the swag @ CafePress, it’s too friggin’ expensive, but that’s what I got…

More to come, if I’m bored enough.

From David Brauer’s Twitterage over the weekend:

Saw, for first time, “Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain” bumper sticker. Shoe, meet other foot.

I have a hunch someone could make a buck or two with…

…hm.

Wait just a doggone minute.

More on Monday in a few minutes.

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 share a big tent, and disagree about a few things here and there – need to focus on the things we agree on -the 80 or so percent of conservative/Republican belief that most of us have in common.

Unfortunately, Minnesota Republicans tend to beat each other to death over the other 20%.

I’m not talking about the Override Six – because hammering out differences in opinion is for the run-up to elections and sessions.  Once your party’s governor has stepped out onto the high wire is no time to untie one of the wire anchors.  Screw the Override Six; two of them retired from politics, two got fumigated at the polls, and here’s hoping the other two get religion.

I am talking about how we hammer out consensus – almost a dirty word, in some GOP circles – among each other and, more importantly, how we proceed forward against the bad guys.  And it’s something we need to wrangle out, because the next time I hear a “conservative” say he’ll never vote for Tim Pawlenty (as good as giving a vote to Mike Hatch or whomever) because he “isn’t a conservative” and ignoring the fact that he has done more to limit government growth and hold the line on taxes than any governor in recent history, I might not be responsible for my actions.
We know the things that separate us:  some of us are spending moderates, others are tax hawks; for some gay marriage and abortion are the biggest issues, and for others they get nodding points; there are ideological purists and political pragmatists.  We are a “big tent”, all right – and that’s not a good thing.  The Democrats are a small tent in that you can be of any race, orientation or class, as long as you believe in redistribution and big government.  We have to satisfy a lot of different demands – or resign ourselves to being like the Independence or Libertarian Parties.

What we need to do is find the things we agree on.  And unite behind those things.

So what are those things?

A long time ago, True North posted our “manifesto“; we focus on:

• Liberty: lower taxes, less (and more sensible) regulation, and a focus on freedom, whether economic, intellectual or political.

• Prosperity: the promotion of the freedom of the market to bring the most opportunity to the most people, and the promotion of merit that drives this prosperity.

• Security: the defense of this nation from enemies abroad, the protection of its citizens from crime and criminals at home, and the security of our borders.

• Culture: The recognition that America is a melting pot that welcomes newcomers who come with a desire to join in our novel experiment, enjoy freedom, wealth and a brotherhood of common principle, rather than view it as a candy store to be plundered.

• Limited Government: A government that is focusing on whether you’re smoking or eating Big Macs is a government that has too much time, money and power on its hands.

• Family: the belief that government needs to uphold, rather than undercut, the basic building block of all healthy societies, the family.

Of course, True North is conservative, rather than Republican – so those are the things that we agree on.

So how about the party at large?  Especially you pragmatists, all you moderates, and those of you who are more motivated by party than ideology?  What do you agree on, to the point where you’d downplay your differences over other points for purposes of presenting a unified party with a positive message the voters?

What, in biblical terms, would it take to make the hawk lie down with the RINO?
No, I don’t expect this thread to drive any discussion in the GOP.  But it’s something the party needs to think about.  Short, positive messages sell – and Reagan showed that that message can be more robust than “yes we can” and still spark the imagination.

Which is what we need to do next year.

Note: Thread is restricted to Republicans – or at least to parties interested in this discussion  Snarks will be expunged sooner than later.

Back in 1994, I left the GOP.   A large part of the reason was the party’s caving-in on the 1994 “Crime Bill”, which served as sort of a high-water mark for gun control  legislation.  It (along with the 1996 Counterterrorism Act) was an attack on civil liberties like George W. Bush never attempted in the lefties’ most fevered deliria; sweeping-yet-irrational gun bans, wiretaps, property forfeiture and a shopping list of other atrocities against liberty.

The Republicans – as opposed to conservatives – went along with it.  So I left.

“The GOP”, I told people who cared – which in those pre-blog days was pretty much nobody, “is perfectly happy to take us gunnies’ contributions and use up our shoe leather.  But turning around and gutting the Second Amendment?  Huh?”

Larrey Anderson at AmThink is finding the same problem with conservatives and the GOP in general.

Conservatives are the engine that drives the party…:

The GOP heavily (almost exclusively) relies on conservatives for grassroots campaign workers and financial support. But the Republican Party has a long history of exploiting conservatives’ efforts and misusing conservatives’ financial contributions. In many ways, the situation is reminiscent of an abusive marriage. Is it time for conservatives to finally recognize the lies and abuse and move out of the house? Or is some sort of reconciliation still possible?

Anderson notes that there’s really only one answer to that question:

I will make my position clear from the outset. A divorce by conservatives from the GOP would be a disaster for all of the parties involved. Just like most marriages, the grass may look greener on the other side of the fence — but it almost always isn’t. This is true for the GOP and for conservatives.

Conservatism is the heart, the muscle and the feet of the party.

The problem lies with too many people at the “Brain” (scare quotes intentional) level:

The “big tent” speeches may be staple rhetoric of the GOP hierarchy; but, if conservatives pack up and leave, the GOP will be a big empty tent. (This mass migration would include the growing number of black and Hispanic conservatives in the GOP. These good hard working people are in the GOP because they understand and live by conservative principles — not because they are part of some equal opportunity RNC scheme.)

There’s a great point: minority conservatives are like Minneapolis and Saint Paul conservatives; they have to swim upstream, and hard; the black, hispanic and asian Republicans I’ve met have been intense and very, very considered in their conservatism.  Most of the dimmest RINOs seem to be the same crowd that makes the most obnoxious liberals; as white as a Bachman-Turner Overdrive fan club.

The GOP needs to understand, and it needs to understand this soon, that there is no Republican Party without conservatives — and conservatives need to start acting on this fact…Here are some tough love suggestions for how this can be done:

(1) No more money. The first thing conservatives must do is stop giving any money to the GOP. All contributions must stop — at least for the short term. We have all received letters from the RNC that ask for money to help fight “liberal tax and spend Democrats.”

Heh.  The joke’s been on us.

(2) No more excuses. Conservatives must stop making excuses for the GOP and start demanding change. I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of defending the lightly veiled socialist policies of “compassionate conservatism.”

I’m gratified to see some conservative GOP activists actually following through – moving to hold Republicans’ feet in the fire.  The shredding of four of the “Override Six” at caucuses (four were denied endorsement; two retired, two lost at the polls) was, for all of Lori Sturdevant and the Sorosphere’s caterwaling, a wonderful sign.  The rank and file does get it.

They just have to follow through.

(3) No more manipulation. Republicans have manipulated conservatives for far too long with empty promises of governmental reform. John McCain received a standing ovation from the delegates at the RNC when he proclaimed the end of big government spending. In less than two months he suspended his campaign to fly back to Washington so that he could work and vote for the first bailout bill — the largest single government expenditure in peacetime history…

Senatitis kills.

(4) New leadership now. The GOP must dump its current crop of congressional leaders. These men seem to be comfortable being in the minority. They know how to say “bi-partisan” and “compromise” — but they have no clue about how to say the simplest of words: “No.”

Listen to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s take on his recent meeting with then President-elect Obama on the next trillion-dollar bailout. Listen to the words from his own website. Boehner wants “to craft a plan [trillion-dollar bailout — the sequel] that can pass in a bipartisan fashion.”

Here, I’m going to differ from Anderson – but only for a moment.

Boehner’s a legislator – and he’s in the minority.  The very word “politics” at its root means to compromise.  While Boehner isn’t necessarily my choice to lead us in the House, it’s not his fault that the GOP fell flat in two straight elections – at least, far from his fault alone.

It is the GOP’s fault that over the past four years it has, at most levels,marginalized conservatives.  Boehner is the symptom.

(5) Finally, let’s take this bull by the horns. Conservatives need to start running for office. I know. I know. This is a daunting idea. But stop and think about it for a moment.

And not just Congress.

That’s been my big push this past year,and will be a bigger one this year; conservative Republicans need to get involved in local politics, especially in liberal gulags like Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  They need to run for community councils, school boards, library boards, whatever is available.  They also need to seek and accept the myriad appointed positions that abound at all levels of government; sitting on budget boards, community planning and zoning councils, library boards, school board advisory committees, and on and on.  This is not only how conservatives get to control parties; it’s how communities led by generations of intellectually corrupt fearmongering ideologues (I’m looking at you, Twin Cities) realize that conservatives don’t drink the blood of infants, sacrifice old people, and light their cigars with bills pilfered from the poor.

If Nancy Pelosi is fit to be the Speaker of the House, then at least 90% of the rest of America’s citizens are qualified to run for some public office. (This includes 99.99% of America’s conservative stay at home moms. Run ladies run!)

Of course, then there’s the little matter of helping them withstand the character assassination that faces any woman or ethnic or social minority that comes out as a conservative

But that’ll be a “smile problem”.

In his annual State of the City address, Mr. Bloomberg described New York as “shaken” but “not broken,” and he put forward a nine-point plan to preserve and create 400,000 jobs, which he said he could accomplish without new government spending.

Did you hear that Jimmy Obama?