{"id":4502,"date":"2009-04-08T07:22:14","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T12:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4502"},"modified":"2009-11-20T15:33:43","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T20:33:43","slug":"what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-the-mngop-part-vii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4502","title":{"rendered":"What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP: Part VIII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So what&#8217; should the Minnesota GOP&#8217;s message be?<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve talked about prosperity &#8211; achieved through cutting taxes <em>and <\/em>spending &#8211; and education.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Security.<\/p>\n<p>Security means a lot of things; the Constitution refers to the people&#8217;s right to be secure in their homes and possessions.\u00a0 National security is one of very few real clear mandates upon the federal government. Of course, if you&#8217;re a liberal, a complex formula of dairy price supports and support for the National Endowment for the Humanities are vital elements in national security.<\/p>\n<p>But at a state level, it means a few really important things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Afflicting the lawless and comforting the law-abiding<\/strong>:\u00a0 Law enforcement should be a burden on criminals and ne&#8217;er-do-wells, not on the law-abiding citizen.\u00a0 Quit finding new ways to criminalize legal behavior.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Laws are for enforcing<\/strong>: Dangerous people belong in jail.\u00a0 End Minnesota&#8217;s revolving door for career criminals.\u00a0 Quit subsidizing criminal behavior in this state.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Police are not social engineers<\/strong>: if people break laws, <em>any laws<\/em>, then prosecute them.\u00a0 That means everyone from CEOs to illegal immigrants. Focus on keeping streets safe, rather than canoodling about as government social policy enforcers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This makes sense if you&#8217;re a Republican &#8211; or a citizen who may not be a Republican, but pays their taxes, works hard, and wants to know their neighborhood is <em>their <\/em>neighborhood, not the scum&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to make the case that&#8230;:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Republicans: Common Sense and Safety<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;presuming we manage to actually embrace common sense: punish criminals, leave the law-abiding alone, quit tolerating (much less subsidizing) bad behavior.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the alternative?\u00a0 Revolving door justice.\u00a0 Criminals who should be in jail attacking, raping and killing people, and <em>illegal <\/em>immigrants soaking up our resources while the DFL legislature looks for ways to punish the law abiding citizen (the gun owner) and harass those who run afoul of their picayune social policies (Saint Paul&#8217;s dwindling number of small landlords).\u00a0 Our streets grow more dangerous, as the DFL diverts resources away from enforcement and into subsidizing more bad behavior.<br \/>\n<strong>Democrats:\u00a0 Chaos and Fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>It should be an easy sell:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Republicans: Common Sense and Safety<\/strong>. <strong>Democrats:\u00a0 Chaos and Fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow: Getting along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So what&#8217; should the Minnesota GOP&#8217;s message be? We&#8217;ve talked about prosperity &#8211; achieved through cutting taxes and spending &#8211; and education. Today, Security. Security means a lot of things; the Constitution refers to the people&#8217;s right to be secure in their homes and possessions.\u00a0 National security is one of very few real clear mandates [&hellip;]<\/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-4502","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\/4502","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=4502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6520,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502\/revisions\/6520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}