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!
“And therein lies the rub; what is the MNGOP’s message? What does it stand for?”
Foreigners, gays and taxes are bad.
Jesus, rich people and war are good.
HTH.
You forgot the guns. Criminy.
Pretty soon you’ll be writing for “MN Progressive Project”.
What’s the message? was the theme of an hour long conversation at my last BPOU meeting. Too often it revolves around stopping the DFL from raising taxes and mandating helmets for schoolchildren.
My two cents was this-the left does an incredible job of building coalitions of disparate causes and getting them to all work for the same candidate or goal. The perfect example of this was the RNC protest parade. Everything from anti-war to anti-business to anti-carbon to anti-9/11. But they all pooled their efforts together, even though they would have ended up at each other’s throats without supervision.
So I think the message has to be one that will bring all of the conservative/Republican groups in Minnesota together. As for just what that message is, that is for folks who are smarter than me.
What’s the message?
I’m not smarter than you, but I (and some friends) have an idea.
It’s coming soon
The central message is “just win, baby” – just as it is with the Democrats. Those who love the game (or business) of politics and devote their lives to it are all about getting and holding power. If they’re out of power they’ll promise whatever they think they have to in order to move the other group out of power so they can plop their own padded rumps into the still-warm seat.
Once there, they’ll promise whatever they think they have to, or posture in whatever way they think they need to, to stay there…hence there’s not much difference in the way they govern, only in the groups that get rewarded. And they get away with it because just about everyone else is too busy, too lazy or too ignorant to really respond. The problem isn’t that Republicans get in power and govern like Democrats, or vice-versa, it’s that whoever gets in power govens like politicians.
Issues are merely a tool for attracting those with the money and useful passion to support the cause – though these eager folks think they’re acting for principle they’re merely fodder serving the cause of power. The real leadership of both parties publicly cheers and privately fears such people and is careful not to let them get too much power. Every now and then you get a political convulsion that sweeps a representative of a “true believer” faction of a party into office – and that party’s real leadership spends the next term(s) moving back to the (very suspect) middle. I might work for a party that says it values what I value, but I’ll never trust it…even if it means that I’ll have my principals but never have power.
At my SD convention on Tuesday night, the dominant theme seemed to be that the Democrats win elections because:
A. They’re better with technology
B. They cheat
The lack of a coherent, consistent, easy to explain GOP message hardly came up at all. That was disheartening.
What the GOP message shoould be is “Freedom”. The other party wants to control every aspect of our lives. That’s called slavery.
A. They’re better with technology
B. They cheat
The lack of a coherent, consistent, easy to explain GOP message hardly came up at all. That was disheartening.
Yep.
Liberty, freedom, personal responsibility, limited government, security, and fiscal restraint
Problem is you can’t explain that in 7 words or less and it takes nice long debates to explain to people why they should want those things.
I’ve sat down with — well ok, I was working the Taxpayer’s League booth a couple years ago, and a couple of dirty hippies came by and the women, came up and said she wanted to know why we were there supporting this group. After about a 20 minute conversation she said that it made perfect sense and that we actually have some good ideas and possibly better ways to approach public policy.
You can’t do that with every single voter.
Mitch mentions blogs, and the war on them by the party. Don’t get me started…. too late.
They laugh at us, they fear us, heck they even try to shut us up with threats, blacklisting, or the hint of lawsuits or criminal charges.
They don’t even list blogs there anymore, but when they did, they were selective on which ones. People like me who believe in accountability of our own, were blacklisted. I know Micth mentioned Brodkorb as one of the best, but he has worked against bloggers. Well, we don’t get along, to put it lightly. But he has been very angry and bullyish to many bloggers who have dared not to toe the party line. Thankfully he doesn’t call at me screaming any more, but now we have a guy who has done that to not just me, is running for the Dep Chair of the party. Call it a pay back for all the rear ends he kissed over the years, or maybe compensation for all the activists he has hampered as a Delegate to conventions or via communications. He’s unfit for service in party leadership. You shouldn’t be able to climb to the top of a grassroots organization by simply stepping on toes and piling up demoralized activists to climb over.
OK
(Got cut off)
OK, that got out of hand, but people need to know the real guy.
So anyways….
He’s best buds with the people pulling the strings down at MNGOP HQ, who decided that bloggers were too risky and abandoned the use of us as a half back option to get around the press.
The people in power of the party whine about how they can only get 6 editorials a year from the paper, so they wait and wait and never just try to talk to voters. They could publish anything they want on their website, but it is just press releases with one line quotes from Carey about blah blah blah. They won’t share the access to the media and everything funnels through a very narrow office doorway down there. (how many times have you seen a story with an MNGOP official other then CHairman Carey in it)
Meanwhile blogger like me and True North and many others have offered them free space on our blogs so they can communicate with voters, and avoid the biased press which I know first hand doesn’t believe a word that comes out of our mouths as conservatives.
We have message problems, no doubt at all. But we have ample methods and outlets to spread our ideas and engage in the debate with people via blogs, talk radio, and alternative forms of communication. That is something that cannot be controlled, and unfortunately the attitude of the people involved is not going to help get blogs into the limelight.
We have one of the most active blogging communities in the country, and our own party leaders treat us like the enemy.
So before we get a message figured out, we’d better get rid of the bad attitudes who are controlling where and when the message sneaks out of the back rooms.
PS: I’m running for the state executive committee because I am tired of this kind of crap and it will never stop unless we get the people who support it out of those chairs. The grassroots has to take over the party, because the people at the top don’t give a damn about what we think. As Mitch Said, we just punch the ticket when we show up at conventions.
That’s BS!
I encourage all CD6 Delegates to vote for Andy Aplikowski for CD6 State Vice Chair on May 2nd.
I’m Andy Aplikowski and I approve this message.
Regarding the freedom issue and how hard it is to get the message out on what that means…..how do you explain to someone who wants to vote for “change”, that the judges Obama is putting in place this year, like his new nomination Hamilton, will be taking away your rights and freedoms for the next 30 years.
Or what happens to a nation where at least 50% of the working population pay no income tax, or where you have more people working for the gov’t than in manufacturing. But hey, we got “change”.
Mitch:
“what is the MNGOP’s message?”
Smaller government, lower taxes, traditional morality and a strong military. I know b/c we spent years admiring the concision and uniformity of its delivery.
The problem is that lower taxes (which you did deliver) did not lead to a smaller (or more effective) government, which left you unable to deliver the government services people do want. Traditional morality is not that popular anymore and you lost a war (or two).
The problem is that lower taxes (which you did deliver) did not lead to a smaller (or more effective) government,
Yep. As a Forbes guy in 2000, I tried to warn the GOP…
which left you unable to deliver the government services people do want.
Er, what “service” that people “want” was not delivered? I mean, leaving aside that Bush increased spending on pretty much everything a Democrat would, what were people allegedly missing?
Traditional morality is not that popular anymore
Perhaps – it’s cyclical, actually. And, for purposes of my larger purpose, irrelevant. But you wouldn’t know that until later in the series.
and you lost a war (or two).
And I DO hope you (plural) keep that line going when Iraq is won and all the veterans come home!
We won the war in Iraq and last year we won the peace in Iraq.
Mitch:
“what “service” that people “want” was not delivered?”
No need for me to horn in on an intra-GOP debate. Lets just settle for agreeing on two of four points. See Obama is already bringing about a new age of bipartisanship.
I don’t know, Mitch, if a state party can have a message when the national party doesn’t. If it would like one, let me suggest picking up where we left off, by taking Reagan’s farewell address. He says what you say — you can master Facebook and Twitter, but what good is it if you don’t know what to say. A taste:
“And in all of that time I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation–from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries. They called it the Reagan revolution. Well, I’ll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the great rediscovery, a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.”
http://www.ronaldreagan.com/sp_21.html
Reagan also said,
“Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection.”
I’ll note that RickDFL is closer to that point than the other posts. Often you need someone standing outside to see what you can’t see from within.
There’s that “freedom” thing again. Thanks, King.
I do have to correct Rick on one vital point. Those wars are Obama’s to lose. The buck stops there, right on His desk.
I think the problem with the MNGOP is the same problem faced by the national party. The membership rose to power in ’94 or afterward and then fell victim to success. All of a sudden, it wasn’t about the Contract with America or continuing the Reagan Revolution, it was about getting re-elected, and to do that, you’ve got to bring home the bacon.
In the last ten years, Republicans have signed off on spending that even LBJ would have been too ashamed to submit to Congress. What possible reason could there be for W’s support of the prescription drug benefit (without means-testing) other than to triangulate the Dems and take that coup away from them? That’s Medicare, a waddling, inept, transfer payment money pit. Would Reagan approve? Would Goldwater?
But the current leadership are not the heirs of Reagan; more like the step-children of Reagan. They’re more the heirs of Bush I, who promised no new taxes, but backed down when his poll numbers fell.
True, Republicans need to talk about freedom, and economics, and they need to lay down the basics, because people are starting to think you can borrow your way out of debt, that the Bill of Rights is open to a majority vote. But they also, while they’re doing that, need to start being fearless. They have to trust voters to recognize their courage, should they choose to show it. You don’t need to organize a grassroots movement if your actions speak for themselves. If I had the chance, I’d vote for John Klein every chance I got, because of his actions. I wish I hadn’t moved out of Michele Bachmann’s district, because I’d vote for her again, because of her actions.
And if the risk is losing an election, the Republicans should take that risk. If the voters are that far gone, then it should be a proper Viking funeral. Republicans should start defending the “undefendable.” They should say, “Here’s why a CEO deserves whatever bonus he can get, because it help you in your life, too.” They should say,”Here’s why price is best determined by the market, rather than by the government.” They should say, “Congress can’t make a law creating a state religion, but they also can’t restrict its free exercise. Let me tell you what that means.” And they should say, “No, President Obama’s not evil, but we disagree strongly with him on the economy, and it’s because too much government intervention interrupts the creative destruction that makes our economy so vibrant.” And they should explain how life cannot be made risk-free, insult-free, sickness-free. They should explain how we support a government of laws, not people, because humans are flawed.
And when the Dems shout them down, they should not follow suit, but remain calm, and show people what real debate is. They should argue with out snide jokes or sound bites. When they do that, and show courage, and not back down a la Michael Steele (who was wrong, but he should have stuck to his guns), people will see who the grown-ups are, and who the spoiled children are, and they will make their choice.
Hopefully it won’t be too late.
Mitch: “what “service” that people “want” was not delivered?”
Dicky”No Morals”DFL: “No need for me to…”
…back up your words.
Dicky”No Morals”DFL, your talking point makes you look like a loser.
“morality is not that popular anymore”
Thanks for showing YOUR true colors, Dicky”No Morals”DFL.
K-Rod:
Thanks for proving my point. I suppose if you can not distinguish traditional morality from morality, there is no hope for you.
Thanks for once again not being able to back up your words, Dicky”No Morals”DFL.
My Karma just ran over your dogma