Some thoughts about the 2010 MN GOP Convention.

Stoked: I made a pretty religious point about not “endorsing” anyone leading up to the convention, and I always will.  Part of it is that I’ve always felt it was the height of misplaced vanity for bloggers to “endorse” anyone – as if our individual votes are a matter of any public importance (I’m speaking only for myself here; all of you who did endorse, or just make your sympathies known, have your reasons, and I’m cool with it).  Even worse, since I do have some following out there, I’d be afraid someone would cast a vote because of something I wrote, rather than forming their own opinion.  I criticize news media for endorsing candidates; why would I be different?

But the members of my House District convention (66B) needed to know who they were sending to Minneapolis – so with them, I was open about supporting Emmer.  I stressed that I wasn’t voting against Seifert – indeed, choosing between Emmer, Seifert, Dave Hann (who dropped out of the race over the winter) and a potential candidacy by Laura Brod was among the toughest political choices I’ve ever made.  Emmer won my vote for two reasons; speaker points (he is, quite simply, the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today; at the gubernatorial debates, he will mow through whomever the DFL chooses, Kelliher or Dayton or Entenza, like a lawnmower through a cabbage patch) and his ability to show people in the middle why to move right, rather than moving himself to the middle to meet them.

Practically every commentator who’s written on the subject has complimented Seifert on his concession during the third ballot.  It’s hard to describe how important – indeed, stirring – it was.  He took the stage, introduced a motion to unanimously endorse Emmer, got 2,000 “seconds” and an acclamation voice vote that rattled the rafters.  The word “electrifying” is overused, but it fits.  This past weekend is among the very few times I can say the MN GOP feels not just unified, but mostly happy about it, in all my years of following the party.

The activists on the floor nearly shook with their desire to get on to November.  In the three State Conventions I’ve attended now, I’ve never seen the party this fired up.

Emmer Is King Cool:  If there’s a lesson for non-GOPers to learn from the convention, it is to put a lid on “conventional wisdom”.

“The CW” says that Tom Emmer is “angry”.  Not just in the “angry white male” sense, although that’s been slathered about promiscuously by a whole lot of media and “alt” media who have a vested interest in Emmer losing.

But in fact, the campaign showed that Emmer keeps his cool.  He was the target of an awful lot of low blows in the weeks before the convention; not only did he not overreact, he didn’t respond.  He didn’t take the bait.  An “angry” man would have at least gotten off a killer comeback; I’m not especially angry, and I love whacking down hecklers more than most things in life.  Emmer’s good at it.  And yet he kept his silence, his counsel, and his eyes on the prize.  “Never let them see you sweat”, says the famous showbiz bromide and deodorant ad.  “Never let them see you blow your top” is equally vital.  Emmer stayed his course.

Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Nothing!: The “Ron Paul Crowd” has established itself within the party; it’s not a “Kingmaker” faction, by any means, but the Liberty lobby in the MNGOP can not be ignored.  It’s hard to tell if it’s part of or distinct from the “Tea Party” faction – which was important enough that the party invited Toni Backdahl, the powerhouse who organized the past four Tea Parties in Minnesota, to speak, even though she and the Party emphatically do not endorse parties, much less candidates.

There was a curious diversion on Friday night, though; a group of “Liberty” candidates started bagging on Emmer’s “establishment” status, because Norm Coleman and Vin Weber were supporting him.

And I asked – in person, on the blog and via Twitter – what of Coleman’s “RINO” policies did Emmer adopt just because Coleman – who was an imperfect conservative, but voted correctly enough on the majority of issues – was supporting him?

I mean, we’re talking Tom Emmer, the guy who introduced the “Firearms Freedom Act” in the Legislature – which, title notwithstanding, is a bill to reinforce the Tenth Amendment more than the Second.  The guy who, when asked (in front of a live audience at the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the State Fair) what he believed about Gay Marriage replied “I don’t care” (he personally opposes it, but it’s not the governor’s job to decide) – he’s “anti-liberty?”

Because…Norm Coleman made phone calls for him?

I may be just a dumb unedumacated talk show host with a blog on a tiny station that nobody listens to (no, really – he says so!), but that just doesn’t make any sense.

Higher Callings: Sarah Palin’s endorsement seemed to make a bigger splash among Seifert’s people, and the thin-but-significant film of non-Palin-fans in the house, than among Emmer’s people.  I heard some chatter alluding to the rally that Rep. Bachmann had thrown sixteen days earlier in the same room, which was a huge morale boost for Bachmann’s campaign (not that she needs it; she’s going to crush Tarryl Clark this November).  They decried the obstreporously Christian nature of the rally.

Truth be told, I felt a little bit the same at the time.  The rally opened with a Christian “rap” group whose problem was less that their freshly-scrubbed boy-bandish style promiscuously mixed rap, country, arena rock and N-Sync-style R’nB than that they sang over recorded backing tracks, which is a huge pet peeve of mine.  It led off with an invocation from a very fundie minister that took, let’s just say, a less-than-inclusive tack.  Now, both Palin and Bachmann are fundamentalists; the minister may have reflected them adequately enough.

But there’s a good point there; while I am an unapologetic Christian (a militant Presbyterian), I’m in a city where I’m surrounded by people who should be Republicans; Asians who live and breathe free enterprise; Arab and Farsi businessmen who treasure capitalism and liberty (including my neighbor on the floor in my district); Latino Catholics who are disgusted with the education system and are every bit as socially-conservative as Mac Hammond’s flock, and have a work ethic that’d make an Edina realtor blanche nod with respect.   So should they feel for a moment excluded from the party because they are Buddhists, Taoists, Moslem or even just non-evangelical?

For that matter, do we want to turn gay conservtives away?  Because they’re out there, and their votes, checks and energy count just as much as yours do.

I no more want my candidates to preach to me (outside the context of an individual conversation on the subject) than I want the government to tell me what to believe – even if I am a Christian, and even if most of the people in my party are too.

In Living Colour: Some of my snarky lib pals have asked “what color were the attendees?”

Simple.  There were almost 2,000 Red, White and Blue people there.

But since we’re talking to a liberal audience, who obsess over (and prosper from) race and class divides – there were more non-white delegates than I’ve ever seen. Quite a few Asian delegates, a few Asian/Middle Eastern (including the guy in the seat next to me), and more African-Americans than I’ve ever seen.  Many were younger guys – they looked like college kids or or recent grads.  But there were plenty more – a fiftysomething gentleman in full VFW regalia who clearly wanted to be identified by more than his skin color, and a good contingent of guys who looked…a lot like me.  30-40something family guys with kids.  And I can’t imagine why anyone of any ethnic background with kids in the schools and half a brain would vote DFL – but it’s a matter of empirical record the schools fail black kids the worst.

Pardon an observation – and that’s all it is – but I think Barb Davis-White’s candidacy made it safer for black conservatives to come out, especially in places like North Minneapolis, which are testimonies to the failure of DFL policy.  More than that, I think she made it safe for Afro-Americans in Minneapolis to look past the party divides and take a fresh look at conservatism.

I wonder if the Central Corridor – which will target Asian businesses in Frogtown like a heat-seeking missile targets jet tailpipes – will do the same in Saint Paul?

Nothing To Stand On: One of those black conservatives, Walter Scott Hudson, writes Fightin’ Words, one of the better new blogs I’ve read lately (note to Walter; you should join the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers).  Hudson observed the battle over the platform that I’ve been writing about, the struggle to make it shorter and more accessible.

As I noted on Friday, while the CD3 GOP passed the “Statement of Guiding Principles” that Derek Brigham, John LaPlante, Rick Weibel, Jan Schneider and I wrote a few weeks back – a simple one-page, ten-item list.  It passed CD3, but got held up in the Platform Committee.  It got reintroduced from the floor.

Hudson picks up the story:

Having been adopted at the CD3 convention a few weeks prior, the Republican Guiding Principles and Values Statement came before the state convention on Saturday. There were vigorous arguments against the document which provoked reflection upon the entire platform building process.

One delegate rose to argue, “Principles are like posteriors. Everyone has them. None are good to look at other than your own. And God made it so we can never see ours.” The line got a hearty laugh and some applause from the crowd; but I’m not sure how to derive anything meaningful from it. In point of fact, the principles articulated in the statement are universal to the party membership. Consider points 7-9:

7)  The Pursuit of Happiness is essential to our existence; we support equal opportunities not equal results.

8)  Charity comes best from the heart of individuals and cannot be forced or coerced via taxation and regulation.

9)  The law must be applied to everyone equally; no one is above the law.

Are these really statements of biometric specificity which no two people can share? I think not. I think they are pretty dead on representations of beliefs commonly expressed and acted upon by Republican candidates and public servants.

Many delegates seemed territorially indignant, expressing concern the platform was being usurped, or that something was being taken away from them. One rose to extol the virtues of the specificity in the platform (i.e. aforementioned Eddie Eagle language) as both representative of the grassroots and necessary for holding the party’s elected officials accountable. These concerns seemed plainly unfounded. The document was clearly submitted as new and distinct from the platform. The grassroots, best represented in individual precinct caucuses, have their submitted resolutions thoroughly eviscerated by time the platform draft makes it to the convention floor. Finally, nothing binds any Republican elected official to abide by the party platform. In short, a platform is not legislation.

The process of going through resolutions seems to occupy the time of people who don’t understand the process all that well; the platofrm isn’t, as Hudson notes, legislation; indeed, something as long and occasionally contradictory as the Platform scarcely serves as a guide to the legislators we have.

The statement, however, apparently passed, so that’s all good.

It’s troubling, though, that so many Republicans are so unclear on the idea of what “princples” are.  We had some big laughs at some of the rules debate, when people who clearly had not been to state conventions questioned “roll call voting” that had, in fact, been practiced since the Civil War (at least – I mean, I dunno); it turned out that the BPOU by BPOU roll call vote was the hit of the convention, giving an unprecedented level of transparency to at least the first ballot; each person in each BPOU had a fair idea of who’d voted for whom, and the whole convention could stink-test the results in real-time.

But that’s just education.  It’ll come along.