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.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.