Remember:  the goal is to find someone who agrees with you 100% on principle. Not 99%; if they fall to 99, you throw them under the bus. Electability is not only irrelevant, it’s a sign that they *could* compromise! Impure!

And if they’ve ever held office, and have ever compromised with the other side (or anyone!) on any issue for whatever reason (which every elected official in history has had to do, either publicly or privately – because that is the roots of the term “politics”), that’s prima facie evidence of impurity. Shun!

And if you lose the primary to someone you only agree with 80% (which is a zero, really), or the general to a candidate you agree with 0% – well, it’s irrelevant, because 99=0, anyway, and you can spend the next 2-6 years telling all the other rubes how what bovine sheeple (?) they are, and how screwed we all are for not listening to you.

Which is the real goal.

Clear on this?

There are times when “Republican” just isn’t good enough.  We need conservative Republicans.

I thought I’d drop in this Erick Erickson piece from RedState below the jump as a mental apertif.

The conclusion?  It’s a Ben Domenech quote:

The Republican Party needs to understand that shrinking its policy aims to more modest solutions is not going to be rewarded by the electorate. Yes, they need to tailor their message better and find policy wedges which peel off chunks of the Democratic base (winning political strategy is built on an understanding that every drama needs a hero, a martyr, and a villain). But what’s truly essential is that the party leadership rid themselves of the notion that politeness, great hair, and reform for efficiency’s sake is a ballot box winner, and understand instead that politicians who can connect with the people and deliver on their limited government promises – not ones who back away from them under pressure – represent the path forward.

Especially worth remembering as the media tries its damnedest to pound the GOP back into the “great hair/nice suit/benign reformer” box…

…they jammed us into from 1976-2002.

Read the rest of it below the fold.
(more…)

After eight years in office, Michele Bachmann is retiring from Congress:

A few questions for the audience:

Who Is Emanuelle Goldstein?: Extremists like the MNDFL has become need enemies.  The Minnesota Left will need to invent a new bete noir, someone on which to focus all their  insecurity and hatred, to keep them motivated.  Bachmann has served this role for over a decade and a half, between her Congressional, State Senate and educational organizing careers.  Bachmann bedeviled the local left by seeming to thrive on their hatred, turning it back on them with a wink and a smile and a dismissive quip.  So who does the MNDFL’s depraved, insane fringe pick as their new Demon?

Next?:  The Sixth is one of the few districts in the state with a deep bench of solid, polished GOP contenders.  Who should run to replace Michele?

Dead Air?:  With Michele Bachmann out of public life, what will Jack Tomczak talk about?

(I’m a kidder.  I kid.  I love Jack and Ben’s show.  But still…)

Tarry Not:   Does Tarryl Clark already have her U-Haul loaded up, or what?

Joe Doakes notes the MNGOP’s big problem.  I’ll add emphasis:

The DFL Governor and DFL Legislators have cut a deal to give more money to children and unions and have it all done by Tuesday. If only those pesky Republicans would agree.

Which they won’t of course, since this is the same pie-in-the-sky nonsense the DFL has been spouting all along, when not devoting the session to social issues such as gun control, gay marriage and bullying in schools.

And when Republicans don’t blindly sign on to the DFL program, why then the shut-down and special session and laying-off-of-cops will all be Republicans fault. Because Democrats had it all worked out, you see, and the Republicans ruined it.

We need better PR people, so WE can get ahead of the news cycle, for once.

Joe Doakes

I wonder if the MNGOP and the caucuses will ever figure that out.  The way they’re doing it just isn’t working.

To: GOP Senators Thst voted for the DFL’s Cash Grab
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re: Your vote

Take a Mulligan.

ASAP. Plead diminished capacity if you need to.

That is all.

Yesterday, we looked at the changes in voting in the 4th Congressional District after redestricting, and tried to give some context to what were, at face value, disappointing election results.  As I noted yesterday, the Tony Hernandez for Congress campaign had some big handicaps – fundraising was as terrible for him as it was for every other Republican, and a redistricting that was pretty benign for Betty McCollum – and a huge one, an epochal DFL turnout against the Marriage Amendment.

Most of those issues were writ larger across the river in the 5th Congressional District, covering Minneapolis and most of Hennepin County.  By all accounts, Keith Ellison was the biggest beneficiary from redistricting; the 5th CD became, on paper, even more strongly DFL than it was before.  And if anything, the 5th CD’s Republican party was even less functional last year than the 4th’s was.

But Chris Fields, the GOP-endorsed candidate in the 5th, brought the kind of game the GOP hasn’t seen in Minneapolis in way longer than I can remember.  Fields was a great candidate; he was elected Secretary of the State GOP last weekend, so hopefully he’ll be in a position to be one again soon.  He worked the district hard, had a small but highly-motivated staff, and raised a lot more money than Republicans normally do in the dismal 5th.

And so what happened?

Here are the vote totals and percentages going back to 2000:

But what does this mean in a larger historical context?

As yesterday:  the top two rows show how many more voters each party turned out in 2012 than in the year shown below.  The additional turnout for the DFL – and Ellison – in 2012 was staggering; 33,000 more than in 2008 (a great DFL year by itself), 43,000 more than in 2004 (a decent GOP year), 85,000 more than in 2000 (an excellent GOP year, outside the 5th anyway).

And as yesterday, the bottom two rows show a “rematch”; the DFL’s numbers in the listed year against Fields’ 2012 numbers.  Fields turned out over 30,000 more Republican votes than in most presidential off-years (2002 was a great year for the MNGOP), and 30,000 more than even in 2000, which was a very good GOP year throughout the US.

So what do these numbers mean?

Simply this:  the 5th remains a difficult district for Republicans.  But the combination of a strong GOP candidate, a motivated campaign that knows how to message the district (as Fields most certainly did, although the Minneapolis media was an even more bald-faced Praetorian Guard for Ellison than it was for McCollum) and raise money makes it possible for the district, as badly as it was gerrymandered, to edge closer to being a 60-40 district than a 75-25 one.  And as dismal as that seems, that’s at least within striking distance; Chip Cravaack overcame a 60-40 district in 2010.  It’s difficult – but not impossible.

And that is the mission for the GOP in both the 4th and 5th CDs; take their turf from “Impossible” to “Herculean”, and thence maybe to “Difficult”.

More candidates like Fields, like Tony Hernandez and Teresa Collett, will certainly help.

Better-organized District committees will also go a long way, as will a functional state party capable of raising money and – this is important – not undercutting the messaging of the 4th and 5th CD candidates.

And this last year, top-line percentages aside, was a decent start.

As Jack Tomczak wrote on Facebook on Saturday:

Racist and sexist Republican party of Minnesota elects woman and black guy into leadership.

It’s true.  The MNGOP State Central Committee elected Keith Downey as chair, re-elected Kelly Fenton as Deputy, and Chris Fields as secretary.

Some of the races were, themselves, vastly more interesting than normal.  Fenton beat Ron-Paul-camp activist Corey Sax.  I’ve locked horns with Sax not a few times, but the guy had some useful ideas for “marketing” the MNGOP that the party could do much worse than look into.  I hope Sax takes his cue from the many “builder” Liberty supporters who’ve stayed involved in the MNGOP, and have improved it – if frustratingly incrementally – over this past year.

The Secretary race was difficult, pitting as it did two fantastic candidates.  Ryan Love is one of the GOP’s sharper tacks, one its most incisive Tweeps, and one of the more notably excellent activists.  He ran up against former CD5 candidate Chris Fields, who ran a spectacular campaign against Keith Ellison last year, and has only stepped up his game since then.  Fields ran straight into the teeth of the DFL’s GOTV tsunami, but…well, more on that later this week.   The only pity is that they both didn’t win.

Of course, the new leadership – and the entire party – faces a stern challenge.  After a year of grueling work, sparse donations and activist fatigue, the party is still over a million-and-a-half in debt.  The task at hand – decrease the out-go, increase the income, and start making the party a contender on the state level – is herculean.

More about that in the coming week.

Anyway – congratulations Keith, Kelly and Chris.  And good luck.

Because it’s never too early to start the campaign season.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s announcement last week that he would forgo a challenge to incumbent Gov. Mark Dayton may be remembered in hindsight as the starting gun for the 2014 election cycle in Minnesota.  With Democrats holding all the offices of note, the only real interest among political junkies is which Republicans will make bids for statewide office.  Having only won two cycles in the past decade (2002 & 2010), the GOP cupboard is sparse, with many of the party’s once rising stars now out of office.

So who’s left to run for governor in 2014?  In the spirit of the upcoming NCAA Tournament, we’ve made our brackets (sort of) and started the ball rolling towards months of endless chatter on who should or could lead the MN GOP out of the statewide office wilderness: (more…)

A little bird sent me a copy of the proposed agenda.  It’s a copy of a meeting agenda for a meeting last night.  I’ve added emphasis to the bit that concerns me:

CARVER COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY

AGENDA

Full committee meeting

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Chanhassen American Legion Club

290 Lake Drive East, Chanhassen, MN

Call to order 7:00 p.m.

Pledge of allegiance and invocation

Recognition and welcome to first time attendees

Secretary’s report Vince Beaudette

Treasurer’s report John Kunitz

Annual Convention details and other updates Steve Nielsen

Comments by Rachel Horn, Political Director for Congresswoman Michelle Bachman

Comments by Keith Downey, Candidate for Chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota

Update on early happenings in St Paul by Representative Ernie Leidiger

Consideration of Resolutions

• Abolish the Met Council
• Reject the National Party Rules change that requires delegates be bound by straw vote results on the first ballot for President
• Ask Republican Legislators to rescind their “no new taxes” pledge and enter into a compromise solution in an effort to resolve the national debt crisis

Adjourn and socialize

A couple, of questions, Carver Party People:

1. Did the emphasized resolution pass?
2. Could whomever it is who’s putting this resolution forth kindly tell me if, when you’re buying a car, you start with the price that you’re willing to pay and then move up, normally?

Parts of the MNGOP seem to be stuck on stupid.  It’s dismaying that one of those parts is in bright-red Carver County.

On the one hand, the Minnesota Republican Party has just gone through its worst year since Watergate.  It’s way in debt (although reportedly plugging its way back toward daylight), it’s pretty completely out of power, and its influence outside the conservative Second, Third and Sixth districts is at a low ebb.

Stepping into – or over, really – that mess came Marianne Stebbins and the Minnesota “Ron Paul” campaign.  They played the caucus system like Yo Yo Ma plays the cello; they organized people down to the BPOU caucus level with a level of Operational Security cloaky-daggerism that’d put the Irgun Zvai Leumi to shame.  They won most of the BPOU and CD level offices throughout the state, and…

…accomplished, arguably, their only true mission; they sent delegates to Tampa to vote for Ron Paul; some of ’em were already bagging out on the Non-Paul parts of the party before the confetti was swept up.

To which some “establishment” Republicans replied “We need to eject all the Ron Paulites from the party!” – to which many others responded “well, not so fast”.  While some Ronulans were, indeed, at the party to stump for “Doctor” Paul and nothing else, others – particularly in many 4th CD BPOUs – worked hard with non-Paul Republicans to field good solid campaigns and create GOP activity in areas that hadn’t seen any in recent years.

More on that next week, I think.

Some Republicans – on both sides of the Ron Paul / Non Paul divide – divided the dispute up into “Builders” – people on both sides whose goal is to turn the MNGOP back into a vital force again – and “Destroyers”.

Oddly, a Facebook page called “MNGOP Builders” is, paradoxically, doing a bit of destroying; it’s picked at an awful lot of scabs, especially in the 4th CD (which just removed its chair elected last April on a Ron Paul-movement-approved slate that threw him bodily under the bus as the wheels came off his administration) and CD5 (which elected a slate of Ronulans that have essentially shut the party down in the district).  Oddly, in the battle between “Builders” and “Destroyers”, “MNGOP Builders” is doing plenty of “Destroying” itself.

Now that’s meta.

My friend, Nancy LaRoche – of True North, Freedom Dogs and a longtime CD5 GOP activist – broke the story of the vandalism in CD5.

One of Nancy’s targets, Corey Sax, responded with a blog post attacking “MNGOP Builders” and, oddly and mostly, Nancy.  To which Nancy responded with an acerbic riposte.

So to sum it up:  A party with little money got taken over by a movement with little popular traction, which took over a couple of districts with no GOP tradition (which led the GOP to perform better than expected in a number of districts with little GOP hope – again, more next week), which led to them being attacked by a Facebook Page with no identity and a lady with nothing in her record as an activist to be ashamed of, which led to a counterattack by a District Vice Chair with a long record of activism but representing a slate with little to show for its’ ten months in office, which led to a counterattack by Nancy, who has little patience for this kind of thing.

I think that covers it.

Me?  I’m going to find some Republicans – regardless of who they supported for President – who want to focus on the real enemy.

The Saint Paul City Committee.

No, that’s a joke.  The real enemy is the DFL who, in case you haven’t noticed, are hard at work f****ng up our state.

And in the GOP right now there are a slew of factions:  the Ronulans, the Tea Partiers, Fiscalcons, Socialcons, “Moderates”, pragmatists, Security Republicans and a few others.  And none of them – not even the Ron Paul faction – are strong enough to both change the party and win elections.  None.

One way or another, this party is going to be run – and this state is going to be saved – by a coalition of people from any and all of those factions who are focused on getting stuff done.

Or, y’know, not; it’s entirely possible the GOP will be taken over by people who argue to the death over the inconsequential as the state follows Greece and Portugal and California straight to hell.

I’ve had a few people ask me what I thought about Frederick Melo’s piece in the PiPress the other day about the 4th Congressional District ousting its chairman.

Well, Melo did have one quote – where the ousted chair “…characterized the vote to remove him as a split between “old guard” Republicans and younger supporters of Libertarian figure Ron Paul” that was just plain untrue.

The group that moved to oust the former chair included Ron Paul supporters and “old guard” activists (the scare quotes are intentional; many of the “old guard” were Tea Partiers, some were considered “insurgents” two years ago).

In a body that had been largely taken over by Ron Paul supporters, it is utterly impossible to view the constitutionally-mandated 2/3 vote for removal as a “Paul Versus Establishment” factional issue.  Everybody joined in.

———-

But those are the facts.  The question was my reaction.

My reaction is “who cares?”  It’s a week old, and it’s already ancient history.  And it’s more of the same tail-chasing that has helped make the 4th CD GOP what it is.

And it’s just plain wrong to focus on this sorry little incident, when there is actually reason for hope buried under the headline.

The Fourth CD GOP has been through a rough 65 years or so.  The past seven months  fit into the district’s long-term tradition as the sad sack of Minnesota politics.

And the elections this cycle were pretty uniformly dismal for the 4th CD GOP – although we were far from alone.

And yet there are some signs of hope in this past seven months, in the past election cycle, in the ousting of the chair, and in the cards for the near future.

Fractions Of Factions:  The big story in the GOP statewide this past year, right up there with the state GOP’s financial travails, was the virtual takeover of the state’s BPOUs and Congressional Districts by Ron Paul supporters.  This takeover has manifested itself differently in different districts; it had little visible effect (to an outsider, anyway) in the 3rd or 6th CDs; it led to a fractious primary in the 1st; the 5th initially ceased to exist, and then resurfaced as an intellectually-onanistic vanity project run by a group of autocrats in “liberarian” clothing.

In the 4th?  A sizeable group, maybe a majority, of Ron Paul supporters realized that you have to back your ideology up with some shoe leather.  The “new guard” largely sacked up, buried the hatchet with the “old guard” (har di har) and learned how to write, print and drop lit, pound signs, and the zilllion other non-ideological, non-rhetorical bits of blocking and tackling that you gotta do to run elections and, one day, win the big prize, affect policy.  And while the result were disappointing, it’s worth pondering how the races would have turned out had Ramsey County not been the epicenter of the state’s DFL turnout effort (with ballots cast totaling over 99.5+% of election day registrations, six points above the state average, almost all Democrat).

But that’s for another day.  The big takeaway is – for once, the 4th CD GOP managed to bury hatchets in something other than each other’s foreheads.

At the campaign level, at least.

Buyer’s Remorse: While the various factions in the 4th CD GOP don’t agree on everything, they did manage to agree that the district’s current direction, as of last Tuesday, was not the right one.

And that’s something.

Forward Motion:  Republicans in the Fourth CD have a chance – almost unprecedented in recent history – to have a role in rebuilding the party into a credible, and perhaps one day formidable, force to be reckoned with.  There is talk, for the first time since I’ve been involved in the district, of trying to agree on a long-term plan, on a message that resonates with people in Saint Paul andand , of reaching out to people who may be conservative but don’t yet know they’re Republican, and who may have been told that they were shut out of the GOP…

…all of which are things the 4th CD GOP has badly neglected ever since the last time a GOP candidate was a real contender in the district (1994, when the late Dennis Newinski came within six points of toppling the sainted Bruce Vento).

It’s easy to say “the past is passed”.  When you’re a 4th CD Republican, it’s absolutely vital; there has been, for 18 years, virtually nothing good about the district’s recent history.

And it may sound pollyannaish to say “let’s focus on the future”.

But this is one of those rare moments in life when a group can literally say it has nothing to lose by going forward – that, indeed, tossing the past aside can be purely a liberating thing.

So here you go, 4th CD History:

Onward!

To: The GOP Leadership In The Legislature, Whoever You End Up Being
From: Mitch Berg, Schnook Peasant
Re:  Upcoming Session

All,

It’s two months ’til what is going to be a couple of very grueling sessions.

Now, Governor Dayton is an addled bobblehead who is nothing but a marionette for Alida Messinger and the unions that bought the office for him.  Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen are not much but capos for two bodies that are, let’s be honest, more of the same.  Our entire legislature will be owned and operated by Messinger, the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, the unions, the non-profits, and the media that serves as their PR wing.

The calls will go out; “time to be “bi-partisan””.

Don’t do it.

The DFL will be trying their best to give an air of “bipartisan” legitimacy to what is going to be an orgy of tax-hiking and spending.

Resist the temptation to try to go for the Lori Sturdevant seal of approval.

They are going to plunge this state into an orgy of spending, an taxation to support it.  Major Minnesota business are going to ship jobs outstate or overseas as fast as FedEx can jam them onto the plane.  Minnesota’s medical device industry is already evacuating; there will be more to follow.

You need to keep your fingerprints away from the scene of the crime.

If the Minnesota GOP has proven one thing, it sucks at messaging.  You’ll need to learn it, and pronto – because the media will try to portray the upcoming disaster as “a result of GOP intransigence”, notwithstanding their complete control over government for the next (sigh) two years.

This morning, we addressed Aaron Brown’s look at HD6B, up on the Iron Range, where political newcomer Jesse Colangelo is running a helluvva race against DFL/union kommissar Jason Metsa.

Today – some older but equally intrigueing news that I just haven’t had time to get to; there is one precinct in Saint Paul that is ever-so-close to voting Republican.

The Pioneer Press’ Frederick Melo reported on this a few weeks back:

The intersection of Cretin and Selby avenues is the heart of Ward 4, Precinct 6, a precinct that, like the other 96, mostly has long favored Democrats in local, state and national elections.

But in this precinct, Republicans have managed to trim the Democrats’ lead by larger and larger numbers in the past 10 years and even chose Republican Sen. Norm Coleman over Democratic challenger Al Franken in 2008.

Looking at the results at the SOS site, it’s one precinct where Tony Hernandez’ 2010 campaign came within eighit votes of Senator Dick Cohen.

Read the whole fascinating thing, assuming you didn’t a few weeks ago

And then ask yourself – if a precinct in a moldy blue one-party city like Saint Paul – aka Pyongyang on the Mississipi – turns red, what does that mean?

I mean, the fall of the Soviet Union started with protests in Gdansk – the Thunder Bay of the Baltic.

From small things, big things one day come.

(Optimistic?  If you’re not fundamentally an optimist, then there’s no point in being a Republican in St. Paul).

There has been much sturm und drang within, and especially outside of, the Minnesota GOP over last spring’s coup de main by the Ron Paul campaign in Minnesota.  Paul activists, organized as tightly as a Marine basic training company, swarmed the precinct caucuses, the BPOU conventions, the CD conventions, and finally the state convention.  They completely took over some districts (including the Metro 4th and 5th CDs) and took the lopsided majority of the state’s delegates to the national convention.

Now, unlike my friend and longtime activist John Gilmore, I’m doing my best to see a silver lining to the takeover, especially in the 4th CD in which we both live.  Gilmore is the lightning rod of the anti-Paul faction in the 4th and the state, of course, and pulls no punches on the subject, and makes it clear he’s not in the business of finding silver linings.

Being a mere foot soldier, all I can do is note that whatever the problems the Paul takeover has brought at the leadership level (and, as I’ve noted, there are most definitely problems), the takeover has had a few benefits, at least at the grassroots level.  There are fewer “warm body on the ballot” candidacies this year in the Fourth CD than any year I can remember.  More of those races hit their number to get the state funding match than in any recent year.

That’s all to the good.

On the other hand?  I’ve documented some of the problems that we’ve had in the 4th CD from the top down rather than the bottom up.

And compared to the 5th CD, we’ve got it good.  Nancy LaRoche – a longtime activist in CD5 – chronicles the disintegration of the leadership in the CD5 GOP under the “watch” of some especially cynical Ron Paul personality cultists.

Nancy’s been trying to find if there’s even a faint sign of life among the elected “leadership”.  Money quote:

None of the executive leadership have responded to the web site bill as of today. Then I wondered, was the 5th District organization as a whole part of their kill plan? There has been no fundraising, no full committee meetings, and no sign of leadership since their election. Mitch Berg wrote about similar issues of idle hands in CD4.

Jason Lewis talked about the misled direction of some Paul supporters who can’t see the forest for the liberty trees. They refuse to elect a better President now to buy the country time for more liberty-minded candidates later. 5th district leaders appear to have no intention of shaping the party, only destroying it. I tend to agree that these Libertarian “tributes” are happily exploiting the Republican party only to advance their sponsor, Ron Paul — then trashing the vehicle they commandeered.

This, of course, was the big concern many in the “establishment” – including this former “establishment” member who in 2010 was one of those pesky Tea Party insurgents – had with the direction of so many of the Ron Paul crowd.  While many – including the vast majority in my own SD65, including its leader, Joe Schultz (who writes an excellent blog, by the way) came to stay and make a difference within the party, there are not a few that quite clearly did not, and have no intention of it.   And plenty of people are not amused.  And in a year when the Fifth CD fields one of its strongest candidates ever – Chris Fields – it would have been spectacular to have had him backed with a functional district.  (Likewise with Tony Hernandez in the Fourth).

On MPR this morning, I heard a bit by Mark Zdechlik comparing the reactions of the “mainstream” Republicans in the party and the Tampa delegation with those of the “Ron Paul”-faction, who were the majority of the delegates.   Zdechlik quoted a Mark Zasadny of Roseville.  I’ll add emphasis:

Minnesota Ron Paul delegate Mark Zasadny of Roseville said if the election were held right now he would vote for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president.

Mr. Zasadny: thanks for hammering home every stereotype the “establishment” had of the Paul movement; that you had not the faintest interest in the GOP, but hijacked it to serve as a vehicle for the Ron Paul Personality Cult.

(Yep, I said “Ron Paul Personality Cult”.  Anyone who doesn’t honestly think that a Romney/Ryan presidency won’t be better for the prospects of liberty in this country, especially and even if only economic liberty, but also the rest of the First Amendment, than a second Obama term seriously needs to get a grip.  Incrementalism is not a dirty word, if it’s incremental in the right direction, especially if that’s a springboard to further bigger increments.  Increments are better than excrements).

“It seems like the clear message was like the grassroots movement is not really welcome in the Republican Party. So that’s kind of hard to swallow when they come around and say, you know, ‘OK, are you ready to unite behind the Romney campaign and the RNC,'” Zasadny said. “And it’s like, ‘well you just tried to cut our throats.’ So how are we supposed to respond to that?”

Well, you can respond in any of a number of ways, Mr. Zasadny.

• You can come back for the next round of caucuses and conventions, and try to consolidate your control of the MNGOP.
• You can replicate your Liberty movement organization that suceeded so wildly – at least at conquering the party organization – in other states, and take over more states, to gain more control of the party apparatus so that the next time the rules fight comes up, you’ll fight the battle with more than just a thin rump of delegates from Minnesota and Nevada.
• You can learn the lessons that every spunky class of political newcomers does; that politics is a marathon, not a sprint.  And all of you Ron Paul supporters that got into the game last February at the caucuses?  You’ve just been sprinting.  You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Or you can react to the perceived “throat cutting” (which wasn’t; the party has every right to organize itself to present its winning candidate in as monolithically-positive light as possible, free of the yelping of what is, let’s be honest, a small minority of the delegates) by doing what Mr. Zasadny and the “leadership” of CD5 have done; taking the knife out of their throats and jamming it into their eye sockets, and twisting it 720 degrees.

Mr. Zasadny:  You were sent to Tampa to represent the Republican Party.  Part of being a delegate to a Party convention is supporting The Party.  Whether you agree with it or not.  That’s not to say you can’t be a principled dissenter – I’ve done that myself – but not   while speaking as an elected delegate at the party’s convention.

The MNGOP is, and should be, a big tent.  It should have room for fiscalcons and libertarians, and even the odd “moderate” who doesn’t screw the rest of the party on taxes and regulation.  As a Tea Party libertarian conservative, I’m more than sympathetic to the Libertarian cause; I came back to the MNGOP in 1999 mostly to try to push the libertarian-conservative cause in the GOP.  So not only am I a sympathetic ear – I was pushing the Liberty cause long before most of you were involved in the MNGOP.

But when you betray the party while serving as a party delegate?

The question isn’t “should Mr. Zasadny and those who think like him make themselves absent from future GOP events”.  The question is “how badly have people like Mr. Zasadny and the CD5 “leadership” hurt the cause of the genuine Liberty supporters that have come to the GOP to do some good – and in many cases, have delivered on it?

Because there are a few babies among the bathwater.

…is someone who, given a choice between being killed or living, says “Let’s compromise on massive internal bleeding or some mid-level brain damage”.

Representative Steve Smith, tossed in the primaries, gave his last speech as a legislator the other day.  Go to the Strib, which cries its crocodile tears at the loss of a “moderate”, to see his remarks.

Rep. Smith:  Thanks for the good things you did do during your 22 years in the Legislature, including your solid support for the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

As a personal aside, as a Republican who’s been a union member? Supporting unions who actually do, as you say, “negotiate for safer working conditions, reasonable benefits, and fair pay in return for their labor”, is a perfectly fine thing.

But government unions “negotiate” with the people that they paid to have elected.  That’s a little different.  And it’s a distinction you seemed pretty unclear about.

And that cost you.

The other day, we mentioned 4th CD GOP chairman John Kysylyczyn’s canceling of the only meeting scheduled for the district’s full committee before the election.  Under district rules, the full committee is the only body that can authorize the district to donate the second half of the district’s customary $10,000 donation to its endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.

The committee did, in fact, vote last May to donate the first $5,000 installment to Hernandez.

The vote on the donation passed…:

VC6 Brown : Yea

VC5 Mueller: Yea

VC4 Windsor: Nay

VC3 Taylor: Yea

VC2 Grinols: Yea

VC1 Williams: Yea

State Exec VC Regnier: Yea

Secretary Overlander: Yea

Deputy Chair Boguszewski: Yea

Chair Kysylyczyn: Nay

So back when the district did, in fact, vote on donating money to Hernandez, Kysylyczyn voted no.

He had a reason, of course:

Chair Kysylyczyn: While I supported the donation of $5000 to the Hernandez campaign, I vote NO on the motion before the committee because I support the idea proposed by Mr. Boguszewski of disbursing funds through a matching funds donation process as he has done in his BPOU for their endorsed candidates. A portion of the funds would be provided up front, and the balance provided on a one to one match with private dollars, up to a $5000 cap. Calculations for the matching funds process would start the day the candidate was endorsed. It is my hope that a matching funds policy can be adopted in the future.

The point  of making your district donations a “match” is to provide an incentive for the candidates to work hard at fundraising.  It works just fine when you’re a BPOU trying to get a new, or recalcitrant, candidate to raise funds on a somewhat level playing field.

When fighting for a Congressional seat in a district that hasn’t sent a Republican to Washington in 65 years, with a party unit that can be fairly said to be “rebuilding”, and where Betty McCollum will have a million dollars coming right out of the gate?  While I get the idea, it seems at best to be just a little overelaborate over $5,000.

So what does it say to future candidates?  “We’ve just endorsed you to spend the next seven months of your life working pretty close to full time, putting your job, family and real life on the sideline to take a run at one of the most difficult assignments anywhere in American politics, running as a Republican in CD4 against an incumbent candidate who sleeps on a king-size bed made of union money and will, if you are lucky, only outspend you 20-1.  So here’s a few hoops you gotta jump through.  Oh, you’re welcome!”

Of course, that was then – in May.  Now, there’s the little matter of getting another meeting called to get the second $5K installment voted on.

Last spring, this blog got into a bit of a flap with the sitting leadership of the MNGOP’s Fourth Congressional District over airing out a report that the district’s chairman, John Kysylysczyn, was pondering not getting involved in the district’s various legislative elections or, for that matter, the CD4 Congressional race.   The evidence?  An email from Kysylyczyn to a BPOU chair which circulated to a much, much wider group.

Along with that came a report – from a source inside the district’s leadership who asked for anonymity to protect themselves from reprisal – that Kysylyczyn was pondering not making the customary donation to the district’s endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.

While that idea apparently never got past the pondering stage – the donation did in fact pass the full committee – if current plans remain in effect, the district’s leadership apparently still doesn’t believe there’s a role for the district in the campaign (the flap also earned me a stern tongue-lashing from Kysylyczyn, who in a move unprecedented in CD4 politics, used the district’s website to tell the membership that he wouldn’t talk with bloggers because, apparently, the mainstream media is fairer to Republicans or something).

In a couple of announcements on the CD4 GOP website and the district’s Facebook page, the district’s leadership cancelled the October meeting – the only meeting remaining before the election.

And while under normal circumstances it’s just another meeting, these aren’t normal circumstances.  It’s election season.  CD4 endorsed a candidate for Congress, Hernandez, who is running an aggressive and active campaign.  Campaigns take money.  The Fourth CD reportedly has a decent little chunk of cash, in its “federal” account – $6139.48, as of the August committee meeting – which has to be spent, by law, on matters pertaining to federal races.  It’s a broad category; it can be spent on training, software, computers, consulting…

…or, naturally, the race its endorsed candidate is running.

The district can donate a maximum of $5,000 from this amount (on top of the earlier donation) to the Hernandez campaign – but not without a full committee vote.  Which requires a full committee meeting.

Which has just been cancelled until after the election.

Is this what the 4th CD GOP is supposed to be doing with its mandate?

(more…)

We have one in Saint Paul and the Fourth CD.  There’s a primary challenge for the Fourth CD Republican endorsement to run for Congress.

Tony Hernandez is the endorsed GOP candidate.

Tony won the endorsement at the April convention by a 195-5 margin over his challenger, to whose name recognition I will not contribute here.  The other candidate agreed – according to a couple of sources  – that he’d not challenge Tony Hernandez in the primary.  And then he promptly turned around and filed to run in the primary.

Anyway, while the other candidate has not had any sort of presence at all in the race so far – after reportedly promising he could raise DFL-sized money for the general election – I don’t expect that he’ll be much of a challenge for Tony Hernandez.  But it is hypothetically possible that the other guy who is not Tony could spend $30,000 between now and Monday night trying to build instant name recognition over Hernandez.  It’s happened – Arne Carlson did it, more or less.

So I’ll just give you a little reminder, for yourself and your Republican friends, family and neighbors in the Fourth CD:

Vote for Tony Hernandez, not the other guy, on Tuesday.

By the way – Tony is fundraising in a tough district; if you can peel off a few bucks to fight Betty McColllum’s juggernaut, that’d be huge.   And if you’ve got an afternoon to spend lit-dropping, or an evening for phoning, please hit Tony’s volunteer page.

Disclosure:  I am a volunteer for the Hernandez campaign.  As if you couldn’t tell.

The other day, my friend and moderate alt-media gadfly Marty Owings left a note in the  comment section of my original post on Steve Smith to dispute my notion that Rep. Steve Smith is a “RINO”.  (Similarly, I got a few emails from Republcans – and yes, conservatives – saying that I was unfair to Connie Doepke – or at least about her political record.  I’ve found few defenders of her apparent potemkin endorsement from Erik Paulsen).

As a former boss of mine used to say, “From Salt Lake City, “Way out East” is Denver”.  People bring different perspectives to the table; it’s a fair point that Smith had a Taxpayers League rating similar to Kurt Zellers’ (and it’s ‘fair to point out that an awful lot of fiscal conservatives’ TPL ratings were lower than you’d think they’d be).

Still, I do go with Buckley’s commandment – vote for the most conservative candidate who can win (or do so if you live in SD33 or HD33B, which I do not).

Is there any question that Cindy Pugh is more conservative than Smith?  There was no doubt before – and there’s less doubt after reading the GOP’s release yesterday about Smith:

St. Paul – Earlier this week, the Republican Party of Minnesota asked what Steve Smith was hiding by not submitting his 15th day pre-primary report to the Campaign Finance Board. Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Pat Shortridge issued the following statement regarding campaign contributions received by Steve Smith:

“There is serious concern about Steve Smith’s priorities and voting record in St. Paul. Instead of fighting for our conservative principles, Smith’s voting record has gained the backing of union bosses. That’s not surprising given that, according to a new non-partisan study, Smith voted in the interest of taxpayers barely half the time.

“While Smith has ignored the law and refused to file his Campaign Finance Report, which costs him $50 per day in late filing fees and could trigger future civil penalties, GOP voters can gain some understanding of who is funding his campaign by looking at his 24-hour notices.

“He has received $500 from SEIU, $500 from Laborers District Council of Minnesota and North Dakota, and $500 from Minneapolis Municipal Retirement Association, a clear sign that union bosses in St. Paul are trying to buy the Republican primary for their handpicked candidate.

“Smith failed to fight for conservative legislation in St. Paul and thus, failed to secure the Republican endorsement. Now, he is deceiving voters by not releasing his fundraising numbers and allowing the voting public a clear picture of his priorities. He should follow the law, file his report, and let voters evaluate who’s funding his campaign.”

If the GOP’s charges are true – and I do in fact solicit any response from Smith’s campaign or defenders if it’s not – then that answers that “is Pugh more conservative” bit.

And it’s clear if Pugh wins the primary, she’ll win the election.

I don’t live in SD33, but I like going there.  Living in Saint Paul – a one-party city where the miasma of stagnation and failure has been welling up from every storm-sewer grate since Randy Kelly left office – it’s always kind of fun to go to a place where you can smell prudence, frugality and just-plain success in the air.

Last spring it was my pleasure to drive out to Wayzata to give a nominating speech for Dave Osmek, conservative Mound city council budget hawk and long-time friend of the Northern Alliance.  I don’t live in 33, naturally, but support is support.

And it’s good to see I’m not alone: Rep. Erik Paulsen is apparently sure-footed enough in the districts newer, redder nature that he came out and endorsed Osmek.

It’s likely little surprise that Osmek’s primary opponent, Connie Doepke, has been endorsed by fellow Jamestown ND native but so-moderate-he-could-be-mistaken-for-a-sensible-Democrat former representative Jim Ramstad, as well as long-time Carlsonite GOPer Barb Sykora.

A little less intuitively, perhaps?  One of Osmek’s old opponents on the Mound City Council, Peter Meyer, is sounding off:

Many of you might be surprised by this letter. After battling with Dave Osmek for over three years on the Mound City Council, I’m probably the last person you might think would endorse him for state senate. But I’m here to tell you, Dave is exactly the kind of senator we need in Saint Paul.

Our nation and our state need leaders. While Dave and I disagreed over many issues, I have come to respect the work and effort he has made to keep Mound on a solid, fiscally conservative track. He actually has tracked every dollar spent since 2000, in every department, and holds staff accountable each year. And Mound has one of the highest bond ratings, a reflection of the success that saves us money every year.

Mound is one of those cities that, with the help of years of difficult fiscal discipline, have managed to wean themselves off of “Local Government Aid”, and do it fairly gracefully.

Why Dave now? Because we need a state senator that will fight to protect our freedoms, our liberties and our wallets. Dave’s opponent has experience, but isn’t the kind of strong advocate we need to make Minnesota great.

Dave won the SD33 endorsement over Doepke, who is a current Representative from the district.  I’ve had Doepke supporters in the area ask “What do you have against her?”  The answer is “Nothing – and I wish she’d stuck with keeping her endorsement in the House, and waltzing to an easy victory”.   I’m going with William F. Buckley philosophy – I support the most conservative candidate that can win.

And whatever Doepke’s merits as a conservative – and she has some merits as a conservative, and a few demerits, and we can debate the substance of each at another time – the fact is that Osmek has a more-solid conservative track record in the Mound City Council, and is running in an R+20 district that isn’t quite a mirror image of my own district in St. Paul (where the DFL could nominate Jerry Sandusky and win 60-40); Osmek’s more conserative, and he can and will win.  And after this last session, the proof is right in front of you; the Senate needs more honest-to-pete conservatives to backstop the likes of Dave Thompson, Dave Hann and Roger Chamberlain.

So while I have never intended any specific disrespect to Connie Doepke, I am doing what Buckley would do; supporting that most conservative candidate who can bring home the seat in November.

Because when the gavel rings down on the next session, the more of them that are in that chamber, the better.

“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.” – Abraham Lincoln.

As a matter of full disclosure, I’m a worker-bee volunteer at the Tony Hernandez for Congress campaign.

When I mention this to people in my relentlessly-DFL neighborhood – and among some of my stalkers on Twitter – I get some fairly predictable responses:

• “Wow.  Sounds like a difficult race“.  Stipulated!
• “You are teh looser! Bettty MacGolum will win teh race, and you shoud not even try two stop her!” More below.
• “Why?”

The “why” is easy; to win.  To send the first Republican to Congress since the 1940s from CD4.  Not to “move the needle”, or to make the DFL spend money to keep Betty in office, although both will be byproducts of a campaign to win the Fourth CD.  But this isn’t about half-measures and consolation prizes; it’s about winning.

Of course it’s a difficult race.  In 2010 – as good a year for the GOP as we’ve seen in recent years – Betty McCollum trounced Teresa Collett by 2:1 which, ironically, is the same margin of IQ that Teresa had and has over the Congresswoman.  Name every candidate in recent memory in the Filthy Fourth – Ed Matthews in 2008., Obi Sium in 2006, Patrice Battaglia in ’04, Linda Runbeck in ’00.  Every one of them would have made a better Congressperson than Betty McCollum who, near as we can tell, serves no purpose other than pom-pom girl for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

(No, seriously – read and listen to her.  She talks like a junior high kid trying to get through a civics class presentation.  Look at her website sometime; she seems inordinately proud of having rid America of the scourge of National Guard ads at NASCAR events – which seems to be her signal accomplishment.  Or something).

Nobody doubts that this is going to be a very, very tough race.  Just as the CD8 race in 2010 and the CD6 bout in 2008 were very, very tough races.  Nobody doubts that the DFL considers CD4 “their” turf.  And for the next ten years – until the next round of redistricting, with ten more years of DFL mismanagement driving more and more people out of Saint Paul and its’ more DFL-addled inner ‘burbs – it may well stay that way.  That’s life.

But CD4 isn’t the same district it was in 2010.

The way I see it, there are five paths to victory for Tony Hernandez.  And he is going to need to take all five of them for this to be a victory, or even an especially close race.

It’s Not Your Grampa’s Fourth CD – Redistricting didn’t do Betty any favors this time.  Where the old Fourth was as solidly DFL as could have been designed – Saint Paul and a bunch of DFL-addled inner ‘burbs – the New Fourth includes the entire swath east of Saint Paul all the way to the Saint Croix River, including Woodbury, Lake Elmo, Stillwater, and a slew of other suburbs full of people who, in many cases, fled the blight that the DFL brought to places like Saint Paul., Roseville and Maplewood.  They’ve spent years working hard, building communities run in many cases by good, solid, thrifty, competent conservative GOP city and county governments – working far to hard to see it all dumped in the sewer of incompetent, spendthrift, venal DFL perfidy that seems to have chased them down.  This is especially true of the wave of minorities who’ve moved to places like Woodbury, seeking decent schools and streets safe from that most noxious DFL constituency, petty criminals.

This is especially vital for Asian-American voters – those who moved up and out of Saint Paul to Woodbury because they were tired of a school system that marginalized their young men, and the ones who still live there and whose businesses along University have been sacrificed by the New Mandarins of the Met Council.

And for Latino voters, who came to America to find the kind of opportunity that McCollum seems to think awaits them only by dint of Government favor.

There’s also the little matter of all those Stillwater people sitting in endless traffic jams all summer because of the years McCollum spent opposing a new Stillwater bridge (before shamelessly flip-flopping).

It’s possible they may vote DFL.  We’re going to try to fix that.

Betty Is Long Past Her Shelf Date – McCollum has been in Congress for what?  Ten years?  And the interesting thing is this – election in, election out, her numbers just keep dropping.  Wave year or slow year, fewer and fewer people turn out to vote for her.  Oh, the unions keep funding her, and lavishly so, but when it comes to actual voters, even in landslide Democrat years, people just don’t care about her that much.

And they don’t have to – in a “safe” district where the DFL can traditionally run a set of wind-up chattering teeth and count on 55% of the vote.

But the Fourth isn’t like that any more.  It used to be a 70-30 district, maybe 65-35 in a bad year.  Now it’s probably more like 60-40.  Which is still a tough race – but it’s also about where the 8th CD was two years ago.  And we know how that turned out.

No Coattails:  The DFL can usually count of 40-odd percent of Minnesotans voting for whatever piece of crap the Democrats endorse for President, Govenror or Senate.  It’s a fact of life.

But Americans are much worse off than they were four years ago.  And to the extent Minnesotans are better-off, it’s because of GOP policies held to by Tim Pawlenty against the DFL’s best efforts, and by a GOP majority against Mark Dayton’s obstruction.

Now, the DFL’s paid PR arms – Common Cause and Alliance for a Better Minnesota – will be doing their best to try and obscure and confuse that fact.  It may even work – the 2010 gubernatorial election showed that 43% of Minnesotans are ill-informed, incurious, or just gullible – but they’ve got their work cut out for them, because in this election, Barack Obama is going to have all the coat-tails of a Daisy Duke tube top.

It’s Not Your Grandfather’s GOP:  While the Fourth CD GOP seems to be planning to be irrelevant in the coming election, it’s a different GOP than in previous years.  The Ron Paul surge brought a flood of new, passionate voters, activists and candidates to the fore.  In the past, I’ve challenged them to make sure they express some of that passion down-ticket from Ron Paul and Kurt Bills – and to a gratifying extent, many of them are.  There are more young Republicans running credible campaigns this year than in any year I can remember; unlike previous years when half the GOP legislative candidates were “warm bodies on the ballot” that didn’t fund-raise or door-knock, every single Republican race in CD4 this year is a real effort.

And that’s not all.  Four years ago, when it came to outreach among New Americans and minorities, the GOP had nowhere to go but up; it couldn’t have gotten any worse.  But over the past two years, conservatives – especially Dan Severson and his crew – have been actually doing the long-neglected work of building relationship among all those New Americans.  Will it make a difference in this election?  Perhaps – and the effort is as much about 2020 as about 2012.

So will the combination of newbie fervor, outreach and Obama and Dayton’s underwhelming record make a difference?

We’ll see.

Just Plain Passion:  Tony’s running a hard, aggressive race.  He’s got some good people working on his campaign – one of the fruits of the previous 4th CD GOP “establishment’s” effort to find and train campaign-management talent.  The campaign has nothing to lose, everything to gain, and is doing something the GOP in the 4th has tried before – taking the battle to the enemy – but hasn’t had the resources to pull off.

Will those five paths lead Tony to the Capitol?  Well, if I, a simple volunteer, have anything to say about it, absolutely.

Will it be a brutally tough race?  Absolutely.  But I’ll send you back to the Lincoln quote at the top.

And of course, these races don’t happen without help.  Tony’s campaign needs volunteers – and unlike some previous campaigns in the district, if you volunteer, you will be put to work!

And of course, money.  Betty McCollum can count on her masters, the government unions, to prop her up with close to a million dollars this cycle (because “Money in politics is evil”, as long as it’s not Democrat money).  If Tony’s gonna win – or qualify for any of the big national donors – he’s gotta earn money here at home.  If you can pony up a few bucks, please do.

Jesse Ventura was nothing but a fraternity prank run amok.  If you want to really shock the world – as in, make Chip Cravaack’s victory look like a fart in a tornado – let’s give Tony’s campaign a push.

I posted about this yesterday – but it came out in the afternoon, after most people have read my blog for the day.

So I’ll try this again:  I would like to ask you a favor.  Get out on Twitter and “Follow” Tony Hernandez’ Twitter account.

Tony’s running for Congress in Minnesota’s Fourth CD – my district, the district of Betty McCollum, who has been taking up space in the US House for a long, long time.

Conventional wisdom says the race can’t be won – that the 4th is just tooooo Democrat.

It’s not true, of course; it can be won.  Redistricting shaved down the DFL advantage from 70-30 to maybe 60-40.

And the Dems’ ugly secret – Betty McCollum isn’t even that popular among DFLers.  Her vote totals just keep dropping.  Oh, she raises all sorts of outside money – but her “passion index”, even in 2008., was pretty low.

I live in CD4, and I’m not going to lie – I’m ready for it to take ten years to make the GOP in CD4 a viable party.

But with a little help, we juuuuust might be able to jump-start things a bit.

Whaddya say?

Found Wednesday’s Stillwater Gazette story about candidates filling in the Stillwater and Washington County area; I’ll add some emphasis:

In District 4, U.S. Rep Betty McCollum is challenged in the Democratic primary by Diana Longrie and Brian Stalboerger. The winner of that race faces Republican Ron Seiford and Independence Party hopeful Steve Carlson.

Huh?

Missing someone?

The GOP’s endorsed candidate is Anthony Hernandez, who b eat Seiford 195-5 in the endorsing convention.  Seiford is going to take that seething pot for Ronmentum to the primary this August, not that anyone cares.

Now, I’ve always believed in Hanlon’s Razor – never chalk up to malice what might better be explained by laziness, overwork, under attention or whatever.

I’ve notified the editor.  We’ll see if there’s a correction today.

What this does tell us is that we Republicans in the Fourth CD have to have our own media.  Please “follow” Tony on Twitter.  Check out his website.  If you can donate a few bucks, or volunteer, so much the better.

The Fourth CD is always a long shot.  But via a combination of…:

• Redistricting making the district a lot more competitive
• Betty being a terrible candidate
• Tony being a great candidate
• All of that “Ron Paul” energy boinging around the 4th CD
• All those Stillwater and Washington County people who are wondering what Betty was thinking, voting against the new bridge…

…this is actually doable.  Provided we get a 150% effort from everyone, of course.

The Tony Hernandez campaign is holding its Taco Party fundraiser.

It’s $30 per adult for homemade tacos and beer (for those over 21, naturally).

It’s from 5:30-7:30 this evening.  Details are available at the Hernandez Campaign website.