Chris Truscott is not a dumb guy.  Indeed, among regional leftybloggers, he’s one of the better ones (“in the land of of the blind, the one-eyed man knows enough not to write for Minnesota Progressive Project”)

But he does write for MPP in  this bit here – entitled hopefully “From Winning Elections to a Governing Majority, in a piece in which he seems to believe the DFL’s press releases (AKA Lori Sturdevant):

In recent years in Minnesota we’ve watched Republicans render themselves irrelevant through blind adherence to the failed policy of “no new taxes” and by placing the question of “who can get married?” ahead of things like “who can go to college?”Meanwhile, as the GOP mired itself somewhere in between the disproven Reganomics of the 1980s and the Salem Witch Trials of two centuries earlier, DFLers built sizeable majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.

Now, there is a useful point for Republicans buried in there, one I alluded to in my “What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP” series a few months back: the GOP, being the genuine big tent (Ron Paul supporters and pro-lifers in the same party? Hello?) needs to quit beating itself to death over the things it disagrees about, and learn to focus on the places where we do agree.  Because when we do, we win.

What were the only real bright spots for the GOP in Minnesota this past two elections?  Places where conservatives held the line.  It wasn’t a panacaea; Phil Krinkie lost, after all (by 50-odd votes, but there ya have it).  But in two election cycles, at a time when people were sick of earmarks and backpedalling on spending, who were the Republican candidates who did win?  Michele Bachmann, who ran twice as an unrepentant conservative, in a district (MN-6) that is very much in play; Erik Paulsen, in the MN-3, which the Conventional Wisdom said was “purple” at best; Keith Downey, a genuine fiscal conservative with more than a passing physical and political resemblance to Phil Krinkie, in a district that Lori Sturdevant said would require a mushy moderate hamster for the GOP to have a shot.

And, let us not forget…

There’s something wrong when opinion polls, with questions phrased in the neutral language of scientific study, indicate at least modest support for the party’s agenda, but we’re not seeing that transfer into actual political capital when it comes time to put pressure on Gov. Pawlenty and his legislative allies

….our governor,who won during a terrible mid-term for Republicans, and held onto superhuman approval ratings during the Obama surge last year and, while he’s still no darling to Minnota’s hard-core conservatives, remains the most conservative governor in memory, if only because he stuck to his no-new-taxes pledge.  And let’s not forget – sticking to the pledge won him his recent victories, and burnished his cred for whatever his future holds.   Not accomodation with some fictitious “progressive” surge.

For DFLers to parlay their success at the ballot box into the kind of sustainable governing majority needed to defend our heritage as a great place to live and do business and position Minnesota as a leader for the new century…

…the DFL will need to ensure that a not-very-conservative GOP with spend-a-holic Congress is always in power, to cause the conservative base to walk away in disgust.

Which – let’s not kid ourselves – is exactly what happened.  The conservative zeal of 1994 – which led Republicans to talk in exactly the same terms Dems are using today, about “permanent governing majorities” – dissolved by 2006 in Bush’s Democrat-like spending spree; his only pre-9/11 policy “victory”, his education plan, was the kind of thing only a liberal could love; he signed it with Ted Kennedy looking on approvingly!  Add in the rest of Bush’s domestic legacy – Medicaid part D, entitlement addiction –  and no wonder the Democrats won big in ’06 and ’08; the GOP didn’t present a credible alternative.

Pawlenty’s vetoes show Minnesota’s mainstreet that there is an alternative; conservatives, out of power, are starting to take back the GOP.  And it’s showing in the polls; there are more identified conservatives than liberals; if the GOP puts out a message that drags them to the polls in 2010, Truscott’s talk of “governing majorities” will look as quaint as the GOP’s talk of the same 13 years ago.

If “lack of conservative alternatives” is behind the DFL’s surge since 2006, then the DFL should pay attention to the example of the GOP in Congress tis past eight years in critiqueing their own party’s performance in Saint Paul.  Because they’re showing some of the same signs of befuddled complacency.

And I think some of the smarter DFLers know it.  Truscott:

It’s time to change the way we look at the world and talk about the issues that matter

But what does that mean?

We don’t want to “tax the rich.” That’s neither a good policy nor a good slogan. Everyone pays taxes and should. We just want to ensure everyone pays their fair share so we have the resources needed to support good schools, a modern infrastructure and universal health care. Nothing more, nothing less.

We have to understand the language of competition and speak it freely. Good schools, affordable college, solid infrastructure and health care aren’t just entitlements. Yes, there’s a moral component to our policies, but on the whole they’re not “feel good” initiatives or something we do to kill time during the annual legislative session. World-leading schools, 21st-century infrastructure improvements and affordable health care make Minnesota an attractive place to live, a better place to do business and a leader in a country in which too many states have long ago accepted merely treading water as opposed to boldly moving forward on these fronts.

In other words, the DFL needs to find ways to cloak statist, interventionist policies in terms that don’t make the slightly-conservative majority toss them en masse when the nation wakes up for the Obama hangover.  My words, obviously, not Truscott’s.

Look – the whole thing (and this is something I’ve never said before, and may never say again, about the MPP) is worth a read.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 7:39 am and is filed under Democrat Party, Minnesota Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.