I’ve been writing for years about the problems I see in the Minnesota Republican Party.\u00a0 It’s taken years to even start figuring it all out.<\/p>\n
How can <\/em>an organization so chock full of talented, smart, motivated, passionate people find so many clever ways to shoot itself in the foot with flamethrowers?<\/p>\n I used to think it was just a problem with leadership.\u00a0 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<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n And there are <\/em>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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n And control is, <\/em>I think, the MNGOP’s big issue – but parliamentary procedure and technology are only the barest surface layer of the problem.<\/p>\n Closer to the core of the issue?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>!”<\/p>\n And therein lies the rub; what is <\/em>the MNGOP’s message?\u00a0 What does it stand for?<\/p>\n And that, of course, is where it gets complicated.\u00a0 The MNGOP is a big-tent party, in which social conservatives, Ron Paul Libertarians, “Moderates” (think Ron Erhard or Arne Carlson),\u00a0Jason-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.<\/p>\n How does a party fashion a cohesive message out of this Babel?<\/p>\n More tomorrow.<\/p>\n NOTE: While I welcome all comments, this thread (and the threads in this series) are going to be by, about, and for Minnesota Republicans.\u00a0 I’ll be a lot less tolerant of tangents than normal.\u00a0 I reserve the right to edit and excise without notice.\u00a0 Thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been writing for years about the problems I see in the Minnesota Republican Party.\u00a0 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 […]<\/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-4505","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\/4505","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=4505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6524,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4505\/revisions\/6524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}