{"id":24714,"date":"2011-12-06T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T18:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24714"},"modified":"2011-12-06T13:15:27","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T19:15:27","slug":"what-the-hell-do-we-do-about-the-mngop-now-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24714","title":{"rendered":"What The Hell Do We Do About The MNGOP Now: Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember going to my first Fourth Congressional District convention. \u00a0It must have been in 2000; it was long before I had a blog. \u00a0I had been elected as a delegate from House District 66B; this was my first Congressional District convention, and my second convention of any kind at all.<\/p>\n

And I sat in my chair, and waited for all the democracy to kick in.<\/p>\n

And it did. \u00a0We listened to about two hours worth of speeches, if I remember correctly, before we got down to business. \u00a0Which was…<\/p>\n

…about two hours of debating rules and picayune aspects of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Not the US Constitution, or even the Minnesota one. \u00a0The Fourth Congressional District COP Constitution. \u00a0And a group of three or four people, who seemed to live for this sort of thing, basically alternated back and forth on the microphones as the chair and parliamentarian fielded, processed and wove an ever-expanding web of motions, sub-motions leading to amendments, amendments to amendments…<\/p>\n

…all to answer a question on the order of “do we allow the rules to be suspended to move the treasurer’s report in front of the teller’s report on the agenda?”, or something equally earth-shaking.<\/p>\n

Of course, two things became clear:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This wasn’t entirely about convention rules; there was some subtext at work; old feuds, the detritus from years of people doing politics together resurfacing in the form of a squabble over some picayune aspect of parliamentary procedure or other.<\/li>\n
  2. But for some of them, it genuinely was <\/em>about convention rules. \u00a0There are people on this earth who genuinely get exercised about that kind of stuff.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    I was not one of them. \u00a0I’m still not. \u00a0I want to talk policy, and candidates, and get down to the business of subduing the DFL and putting their toxic policies on display in the “Museum of Stupid Ideas” where they belong. \u00a0Squabbling over convention rules gives me nothing but a numb butt and a craving for caffeine – and eventually cocaine. \u00a0 That’s what I’m there for<\/em>.<\/div>\n

    Judging by the utter boredom on the faces of the first-time conventiongoers around me – many of them last-time conventiongoers – I was hardly alone.<\/p>\n

    People who are drawn to the GOP don’t tend <\/em>to be people who enjoy sitting in meetings, much less arguing about picayune parts of parliamentary procedure. \u00a0They – we – tend not only to be goal-oriented rather than process-oriented people, but to be the type that actively eschew politics for its own sake, preferring to actually change\u00a0<\/em>society for the better. <\/em>It’s the same sort of things that draw people to the Libertarians or the Constitution or Green Parties – the urge to actually get out there and solve problems <\/em>rather than sit in rooms and argue procedure until your butt falls asleep.<\/p>\n

    And yet to any party – the sheep-like DFL, of course, but the GOP too – are drawn people who do <\/em>just love the whole “being a party” thing; people who love navigating the bylaws and codedils and playing politics, on the most venal possible level, for its own sake.<\/p>\n

    The rift over the weekend between Emmer Campaign and the Seifert\/Party Establishment crowds was a bit of deja vu. \u00a0There may be no more beaten-down organization in this country than the Saint Paul Republican City Committee and its various wards and districts. \u00a0So nobody, perhaps, was more surprised than Saint Paul Republicans a few years back when, hard to the heels of two devastating electoral losses state and nationwide, Republicans captured a community council deep in the heart of stereotypically-DFL-dominated Saint Paul…<\/p>\n

    …and promptly proceeded to watch the victory dissolve in infighting, squabbling, backstabbing – the kind of stuff the Saint Paul City Committee is usually known for.<\/p>\n

    Too many Republicans seem to have forgotten Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment; duke it out with Republicans, but keep it in the house. \u00a0Never, ever bag on fellow Republicans in public. \u00a0Even ones you disagree with. \u00a0Even ones who you detest. \u00a0 Especially not to the media<\/em>, who are – never ever forget this – working for the other side.<\/p>\n

    (Some leftyblogger will chime in here with “what about the Override Six? \u00a0What about Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger?” \u00a0Only half of that chime-in is dumb; Carlson and Durenberger endorsed Democrats and used their remaining political capital to attack the GOP; while as a Norwegian-American I might not have used the term “Quisling”, Tony Sutton was absolutely right to toss them from the party. \u00a0As to the Override Six – it was endorsing activists that got ride of two of them, and the voters that got the others).<\/p>\n

    A fair chunk of the GOP – the part of it that is into the “party” stuff more than the “getting government off our backs” bit – needs to remember what the actual goal of all this party-mongering is. \u00a0It’s not more party-mongering.<\/p>\n

    Much more later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I remember going to my first Fourth Congressional District convention. \u00a0It must have been in 2000; it was long before I had a blog. \u00a0I had been elected as a delegate from House District 66B; this was my first Congressional District convention, and my second convention of any kind at all. And I sat in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mngop","category-what-the-hell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24714","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=24714"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24728,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24714\/revisions\/24728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}