Onward
By Mitch Berg
Fitz is gone. Long live Fitzsimmons.
Now, it’s time for libertarian-conservatives caucusing with the GOP to move on to the next crisis.
Republicans are still hashing over the Fitzsimmons/Lucero bout in Wright County last weekend. It’s in the blogs, and on the talk shows – mine included.
But that’s a die that’s been cast, and can’t be called back (short of a primary challenge that I don’t suspect FItzsimmons will launch) for two more years.
Barring that primary challenge, Eric Lucero’s the guy. Not only does he need to win this fall to keep the House GOP caucus at its current level – but we need to flip four seats to turn the House red.
And ideally these four flips (and hopefully many more) should be good, solid, Tea Party conservatives. But I have no say in that; that’s up to the candidates at the BPOU level, and the activists who support them.
And along the way – like, as soon as we get done with the various BPOU endorsement battles – the various factions of the GOP need to bury whatever hatches we’ve accreted over this past few months, and start pulling in the same direction. I’ve called for this – arapprochementbetween the “five families” of the MNGOP (the Tea Party, the Socialcons, the Moderates, the Chamber of Commerce estalbishment and the “Liberty” crew, or whatever’s left of them) to agree to disagree on the details until February of 2016, and quit the pointless fratricide and grudge-mongering that’ve made being a Republican such a trying thing this past five or six years, and work toward a much greater good.
A Liberty activist should accept that a Social Conservative is going to be a more sympathetic ear in office for liberty than any DFLer will be; a Chamber of Commerce “Good Government” fixer shouldn’t worry that a Tea Partier is going to make their life suck worse than a DFLer will; they won’t.
Don’t get me wrong; now is the time of the political season for the different flavors of Republican to go to the mat for their beliefs, to leave it all out on the mat in pursuit of exactly what you want in office.
But the time is almost here to put up for the greater good, or shut up. There will be chits to be paid in 2016. But unless the GOP is back in power, it’s all a pointless sideshow.
Conservatism needs to be back on this state’s policy center stage. After that, everything will be much easier to work through.
Nothing succeeds like being successful. We need to re-learn that.
February 27th, 2014 at 4:08 pm
In defense of the skeptical (of which I count myself) the GOP-at-all-costs gave us a “Republican” Governor that pissed all over private property rights (and in doing so emboldened every nanny-state liberal) is signing into law the Clean Air Act.
I consider myself a tea party/liberty type. And while I understand the tea party does attract a considerable number of socialcons, the tenets: Fiscal Responsibility – Constitutional Limited Government – Free Markets…make no mention of whom one loves, and personally I’d prefer Goverment stay out of the bedroom as well as wedding chapels (with the limited scope of defining contract law for the latter).
But I know I cannot possibly be the only one that could foresee the ill-timed idiocy…in this day and age…of proposing the opposite sex marriage state constitutional amendment…and that were it not for that we might not be dealing with dems controlling the house, the senate and a Governor that makes Vetura look brilliant.
February 27th, 2014 at 4:14 pm
I also believe that same gender marriage legalization was a direct result of the pushback from the failed marriage amendment.
February 28th, 2014 at 10:48 am
…..but we need to flip four seats to turn the House red.
Actually it’s seven flips since the DFL has a 73-61 majority. While more daunting than four, it’s still not impossible.
February 28th, 2014 at 1:29 pm
Brad – you’re half right. Flipping four would give us a 67-67deadlock. We need to flip five. My bad.
February 28th, 2014 at 2:15 pm
First off, I’m tired of having the marriage amendment being blamed for GOP losses at the state level. That was a 70% winning issue going into the election, and the big money DFL donors defeated it with lies and their usual propagandistic campaigning methods. Along with that putsch, they got a majority in the legislature. Looking at the misery they have visited upon us as a result, it’s a wonder that ANYBODY could vote for the DFL in the next cycle, but having GOP voters sit on their hands gets us the same thing– a fact some of us don’t seem to grasp.
And therein lies the problem. One might WISH that Republicans would act like they were rational human beings and knew that any Republican is better than any Democrat, or knew that Democrats have no problem with internal squabbles until AFTER they assume power, after which they all fall into lockstep regardless of personal promises or conviction, but not only is that not what happens, it seems we go to great efforts to MAKE it happen. The “circular firing squad” is no longer a joke, but Standard Operating Procedure. You can’t expect a contentious and dirty fight for endorsement to suddenly make best buddies at balloting time. You can win an endorsement battle and lose the general election, EASILY.
Our convention delegates are a pretty conservative lot, but “practical” they are not. Sometimes the best candidate for the general election is not the “purest” one, and many times the purest cannot possibly win, thus giving you exactly what we have now– Democrat domination. It would be a lot different if these endorsement battles were a logical debate over which of these candidates is the most conservative that can win, with all the facts known, but what we have now is an emotional brawl where facts don’t seem to matter, with the short-term goal of winning sacrificed for the longer-term greater good of not being ruled by idiots.
You are exactly right, Berg, that we need to come together and win elections. How do we do that when some are determined to rip us apart?
February 28th, 2014 at 3:51 pm
J. Ewing Polls may have sown it as a 70 winning issue. But a.) it’s entirely possible that the polls were off, and b.) It failed! Had the polls been correct, it would have passed.
My point was it doesn’t take a genius to realize the hot-button issue was destined to polarize, alienate and create pushback. I had predicted as much and I wouldn’t dare call myself any brilliant political strategist.
But it was VERY much like the more recent situation Arizona. This was a no-win scenario for Jan Brewer. Presented with a completely unnecessary bill that by all rights is defined by the US Constitution. If I didn’t know any better I would have belived the bill was a Dem product produced to torpedo her Governorship.
Now, again, this is only my opinion…there is no proof for nor against…but I believe the marriage amendment was ill thought out and ill-timed and I believe it cost Republican seats, and likely the Governor as well as the voter ID amendment.
February 28th, 2014 at 3:56 pm
“and the big money DFL donors defeated it with lies and their usual propagandistic campaigning methods.”
Shouldn’t the GOP have seen this coming? I’m certainly not defending it but we really should know better by now.
February 28th, 2014 at 8:14 pm
Well, yes. Republicans constantly fall into one of the two traps that spring naturally from liberal control of the media. They either a) pull in their horns and appear impotent or even complicit in the face of liberal insanities, or b) try to do the right thing and get hammered unmercifully for it. It wouldn’t be so bad except that often it is our own people– fellow conservatives– loading up the liberal cannons.