{"id":1588,"date":"2007-11-09T13:36:46","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T18:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2007-11-09T12:06:32","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T17:06:32","slug":"forfeit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1588","title":{"rendered":"Forfeit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, Pat Shortridge at TvM wrote one of the most insightful pieces I’ve ever seen<\/a>\u00a0on what ails the Minnesota GOP:<\/p>\n

The Right\u00a0side of\u00a0the spectrum\u00a0still doesn\u2019t get it when it comes to the importance of local elections.\u00a0 Our side\u00a0gets all hepped up about\u00a0the White House or a huge Senate race, over which we as\u00a0citizens\u00a0have relatively little control.\u00a0 But when it comes to the areas where we can have the most impact – electing mayors, city councils, school boards, etc, – we are just giving it away to the other side, barely even in the game, with a very few notable exceptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve kvetched about this for years; in my own district, the Fourth CD, the GOP barely shows up.\u00a0\u00a0But for the odd Tom Conlon (the only Republican on the St. Paul School Board) or Bill Poulos or Georgia Dietz (who got elected to executive positions on the Highland\u00a0Community Council), the Fourth CD is a wasteland for Republicans – even though the city and the first-ring burbs are clogged\u00a0<\/em>with people who should, by all rights, be amenable to conservatism; black parents disgusted by the collapsing educational system; Asians who\u00a0embody free enterprise and <\/em>\u00a0love of this country (how many of them or their forefathers crossed rivers under fire\u00a0and oceans on rickety boats to get here?); Hispanics whose votes the Dems court, but whose industry and vibrant Catholicism the party piddles on; working people who are seeing their taxes rise and rise, for no rational return.<\/p>\n

So why do Republicans not get that “government begins at home?” and that “politics is local?”<\/p>\n

Because the enemy sure gets it:<\/p>\n

Education Minnesota and\u00a0its allies clearly understand what\u2019s at stake.\u00a0 Beyond the policy issues of any given election, they are accomplishing two critical things: (1) control over virtually all of the official information that gets disseminated and that the public relies on for its thinking about education issues,\u00a0and (2) they are creating and constantly replenishing a political\u00a0farm team.\u00a0 Think about how many DFL\u00a0candidates for the\u00a0legislature in recent years have\u00a0been\u00a0involved in education policy making, either as school board\u00a0members, teachers, activists, etc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shortridge nails the solution:<\/p>\n

If the center-right is going to regain any standing, it must re-engage at the local level.\u00a0 It\u2019s all well and good for folks to engage in levy debates, but man, a whole lot goes on beyond that.\u00a0 Our side\u00a0– I include myself foremost in this – must start\u00a0attending meetings,\u00a0serving on committees, recruiting candidates, and running\u00a0for office in our own backyards.\u00a0 In\u00a0scanning the\u00a0election results,\u00a0far too\u00a0many races were uncontested\u00a0or the opposition was token at best.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “warm body on the ballot” syndrome that especially besets the GOP in the Fourth and Fifth CDs – where a token GOP candidate will try to spare the party the embarassment of an open slot – is itself a symptom of the problem; endorsing names to run for the Legislature (to say nothing of Congress) that have no political history with voters of any <\/em>party much less the non-political is a waste of time and effort at the very least – <\/em>and at worst a Potemkin approach to politics; “See?\u00a0 We have a party here!\u00a0 Honest!”<\/p>\n

The mere act of meeting every two years and endorsing a slate of candidates to stage hopeless, pro forma <\/em>runs for office doesn’t make a party, much less a movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Getting people – good, first-princples-based Republican people – involved at the grassiest of Minnesota Politics’ grass roots is where change really <\/em>begins; where the GOP will start to actually contest control of the cities without which this state will never <\/em>be in real contest.<\/p>\n

Which means Republicans have to start running for those grassiest-roots offices; in Saint Paul, that means the Neighborhood Coalitions that control so much of the “on the street” effect of municipal government.\u00a0 The GOP insurrection in Highland Park showed what can happen; Dietz and Poulos got Republicans to turn out, which in turn got a right-leaning council empaneled, which in turn uncovered epic rot at the district, a traditional DFL sinecure in “non-partisan” clothes.<\/p>\n

More – much more – on this in coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, Pat Shortridge at TvM wrote one of the most insightful pieces I’ve ever seen\u00a0on what ails the Minnesota GOP: The Right\u00a0side of\u00a0the spectrum\u00a0still doesn\u2019t get it when it comes to the importance of local elections.\u00a0 Our side\u00a0gets all hepped up about\u00a0the White House or a huge Senate race, over which we as\u00a0citizens\u00a0have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}