The big news among conservative bloggers in Minnesota this past week is that one of our own, my NARN colleague and longtime friend King Banaian, is running for the Minnesota House in District 15B. 

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring compares Haws’ record with Banaian’s game:

A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of working with King, Rep. Laura Brod and Rep. Matt Dean on what essentially is a vision statement for Minnesota. The central theme to that document was essentially to get government out of the way so that Minnesota’s entrepreneurs would unleash their creativity in creating a more prosperous Minnesota.

That meant lowering taxes, shrinking the regulatory burden Minnesota puts on small businesses and keeping unfunded mandates to a minimum.

I’ve known King long enough to know that he’s a man of gravitas and a great public policymaker. When I look at Rep. Haws’s record, what I see is a man who is a reactionary and a man who votes too often for status quo policies.

Central Minnesota needs a visionary leader. The only man fitting that description is King Banaian. That’s why we must elect King this November to represent the residents of HD-15B in the Minnesota legislature.

This is, obviously, a major initiative among conservative bloggers.  Knocking off an incumbent gravy-monger, even in a year that should have a big conservative tailwind, is never easy.  We have to all pitch in and help out any way we can.

In the interest of helping, I’m going to present King with ten bits of campaign advice that should, with any luck, smooth his path to Saint Paul:

10. Find a winning message, repeat it relentlessly to every voter in Saint Cloud.  That’s the easy part.  Heck, every blogger’s got a winning message for their candidate, right?

9. Easy on the Radiohead.  Seriously.

8. Find a snappier way to explain “The Austrian School” to the layperson.  Perhaps given you’re in Saint Cloud, “The Oktoberfest School” would be a good start.

7. Get a couple of barrels of that Armenian brandy, and apply, er, liberally throughout the district.  Seriously.  Yummy.  That was some good breakfast brandy.

6. Carry the NARN tradition of the Speed Round to candidate debates.  Hilarity will ensue. Hilarity means votes.  Maybe.

5. Don’t even think about using Joy Division to intro your stump speeches.  Dude.

4. Go for the gutter.  Counterintuitive?  Work with me, here.  You know how one classic bit of Radio 101 advice is “smile as you talk – it helps your voice?”  Same deal here.  Most politicians are frighteningly uninformed and inarticulate. You have to drag them into some semblance of sounding literate.  That’s never been KB’s problem.  Quite the opposite; he can actually explain how fed policy works.  And if he doesn’t work to pull his level of discourse toward a more general audience level, he’s going to get 100% turnout among wonks.  Between the economic-wonk base of knowledge and the mental pull toward the ‘Bottom”, everything should even out about right.

3.  Ixnay on the Oxsay.  This is Twins country. Just saying. 

2. Think of a snappy name for your lit drop.  I’m thinking “The Caucusus Caucus”.  You’re welcome.

1. Enlist a couple of liberal whackadoodles to start the “Dump Banaian” blog.  We all know that it was the doop-di-doos that gave Michele Bachmann her margin of victory in 2008.  Every point counts.  You’re an economist with Eastern European ties; perhaps you could pull some surreptitious strings and get George Soros to pony up for it.

There y’go, KB.  Go to it!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass on something I flaked on yesterday; my friend and longtime Northern Alliance Radio colleague King Banaian is running for the Minnesota House.

The Twitter account for the campaign will be @kingforhouse — please find it, follow it, and watch for more.  I feel like the Facebook fan page looks too plain tonight so we’ll get to that tomorrow.  And for those who have inquired about online donation, thank you so much.  We will get that up tomorrow as well, along with an address for those preferring the paper variety.

We might need to run a trip from the Cities up to St. Cloud for lit-dropping and campaigning one of these next weekends.

I’ll be passing on news from the Banaian campaign as it’s warranted.  It’d sure be nice to eject Haws from office.

D’ya suppose we can book Banaian on the NARN broadcast at the convention?

Today on the show, I’ll spend a chunk of the first hour talking about the GOP gubernatorial race.

I’ll be heavily referencing two excellent blog posts from this past week, both of which appeared in True North: “Why I’m Supporting Tom Emmer” by Craig “Captain Fishsticks” Westover, and “A Closer Look At Voting Records” by regular SITD commenter Master of None.

Tune in after 1PM, on the air at AM1280 or online at the Patriot’s web site!

The DFL is heading toward a convention that will bestow its usual “kiss of death” to whomever gets it – usually the candidate that makes the “progressive” activists that control the party the most tingly; this will lead to a summer of hammer-and-tong DFL fratricide leading up to a September primary that will determine the real candidate for governor.

This combined with the fact that the DFL is in a historically disorganized state, and heading into a headwind of disaffection with Barack Obama and a GOP with new leadership at its head and a Tea Party chasing it to relevance, and the DFL and its minions are desperately in need of a sideshow to draw attention away from their own cage match.

Dave Mindeman at mnpAct wants to direct the reader to the sideshow they’re counting on – the neck-and-neck GOP endorsement battle between Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer:

The Emmer vs. Seifert free for all on the GOP side of the governor’s race is heating up. Both sides are capable of some prolific attack dog politics. And it will get nasty.

It is gradually developing into a conservative base vs. party establishment fight. Emmer is increasingly drawing endorsements and support from conservative bloggers, conservative activists, and conservative leadership. Seifert has support from old line party leadership and the more traditional Republican base.

Which is an interesting way for the local leftysphere to put it, given that both Emmer and Seifert are routinely portrayed as “conservative extremists” whenever they’re mentioned in any other context.  But it’s not untrue; Seifert’s got the organizational mojo, Emmer’s a conservative firebrand and the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today.

The two have developed a recent history. Emmer had challenged Seifert for Minority Leader a few years back and then refused to vote for him for Speaker in 2009. Emmer has been waiting awhile for this opportunity and he is cashing in.

Add to all of this the fact that delegate strength to the convention is nearly evenly divided and you have the makings of an old style, no holds barred, nasty party convention.

Yep.  The GOP convention is going to be a donnybrook, very possibly crazier than the 2002 convo.

It is noteworthy that Seifert has been particularly critical of Emmer’s voting record of late. The in-depth research style has the definite ring of a Brodkorb type tactic. Although the former MDE attack blogger has been careful to be neutral in his capacity as party deputy chair, his fingerprints are almost detectable in the current Seifert strategy.

It’s no big secret; Seifert’s the “insider”.   The party has several years invested in Seifert as minority leader.

But this – and the idea that for every yin there needs to be an opposite yang – leads Mindeman to a fatally flawed assumption or, if you are more cynical, to the gaping whopper the DFL wants you all to believe about the MNGOP in the upcoming election; the sideshow, if you will, to try to distract the voters and encourage the DFL troops as they go through their own cage match this summer.

He starts out OK…:

Looking over the general Republican landscape, let me make a speculation…and mind you this is only an opinion.

The conservatives are putting a vested interest in Emmer. He is emerging as their consensus choice. Emmer has a wind at his back as he makes his case for the convention.

Yep.  The GOP’s conservatives are using the endorsement process as it was intended to be used; as the time to reject compromise, to declare “death or glory”, to come home with their shields or on them; to campaign for the most conservative candidate left in the race.  They don’t want the consolation prize; they want it all.  And correctly so; now is the time to fight like hell for the brass ring.

Seifert’s supporters, by the way, are doing exactly the same thing.  Because now is the time for the fight.

But it’s on May 2 that Mindeman’s theory goes to pot.

If Seifert manages to wrest the nomination away from Emmer in a bloody convention, you will see a party that will go into the fall campaign divided. A conservative backlash might just stop the conservatives from coalescing around Seifert, reducing his turn out and possibly moving toward some other third party or maybe even forming one.

Let me take you back in time to 2002.  Brian Sullivan – who was and is every bit as conservative as Tom Emmer – had the backing of the conservative base.  Tim Pawlenty – who held the same position in the GOP caucus that Seifert does today – and Sullivan were every bit as closely locked together as Seifert and Emmer are today.   And some of the punditry, especially on the left, predicted exactly the same result; that Sullivan’s supporters would stay home, that conservatives would break away, that the GOP would battle itself into irrelevance.

But the convention, as long and brutal as it got, had exactly the opposite effect.  To win the endorsement, Tim Pawlenty had to adopt one of Sullivan’s key driving points – the Taxpayers League’s “No New Taxes” pledge.  And for the imponderably vast majority of Minnesota conservatives, that was more than enough.

Tim Pawlenty took the pledge – and, more importantly, has honored it for eight years, now.  And I, as a fire-breathing conservative talk show host, could care less if he took a trip to the arctic with Will Steger that had absolutely no policy ramifications, as long as he stuck to the point that mattered – stymying the DFL’s plan, “spend like crack whores with stolen gold cards”.

In short, the bruising endorsement process had exactly the effect it was supposed to; a candidate won, but as a result of his fight to get endorsed, he took the keystone of his challenger’s platform to the Governor’s Mansion with him.

Emmer may have a better chance of holding the party together but he is going to carry some baggage as well.

Nope.

Look – I’m not backing any particular candidate, at least not publicly.  Not yet.  But I’ll tell you this; even if you are a stone-cold Tom Emmer zealot, you have to realize that not only would Marty Seifert be a better governor than any of the DFL’s pack of hamsters, but that Marty Seifert’s voting record in the House is more conservative than Tim Pawlenty’s ever was.   Seifert is a conservative.  As conservative as Emmer?  Perhaps not – but plenty good enough.

So campaign like hell for whomver your candidate is – Seifert or Emmer.  Because for once,  conservatives are in a win-win situation.   Whomever gets the nomination will be a better, more conservative governor than any of the alternatives available to us today.  Neither will be perfect – but perfect, as they say, is the enemy of “plenty good enough”.

There will be blood.

No.  There will be coffee, and shouting, and more coffee, and pictures of delegates sleeping at 2AM with drool coming out of the corner of their mouth, and more coffee, and Excedrin, and five or ten or fifty ballots, and concession and acceptance speeches, and handshakes, and meetings, and buried hatchets and smoothed feathers, and looks out the window at the Tea Partiers who are done asking nicely for results.

And on the morning after the final gavel, there will be a campaign that hits the road at the head of a mostly-unified GOP that has a three month headstart building a winning campaign, on its way toward capping off an epic comeback.

There will be coffee, drool and victory.

Three words to live by.

So at the convention last night, we were debating one of the final resolutions of the evening – a proposal by a delegate to remove language supporting the Death Penalty in the current GOP platform.

It wasn’t my resolution – I submitted two at the caucuses, both of which passed easily – but I spoke in favor, for reasons discussed elsewhere in this blog.  Now, “speeches” around resolutions are pretty limited; two in favor, two against, generally short; they’re never what you’d call “great oratory”.  Mine was something like “I support the death penalty for every reason but one – the inevitability of human error.  Now, in the 34 years since the Supreme Court reinstated the Death Penalty, there’ve been over 200 complete exonerations – as in, people who were considered guilty beyond a reasonable doubt that were released directly from death row.  And it now seems absolutely certain that Texas executed an innocent man.  Since government can’t even fill in potholes correctly, should we trust them with the power of life and death?”

A woman a few rows in front of me rose to speak for the resolution.  “That just seems wrong, saying the government can’t get anything right.  Aren’t we the part of possibilities?”

The rules didn’t allow me to respond to the response, so I couldn’t leap to my feet and say “NO! We are the party that believes the people are capable of anything they set their mind to, and the government is too stupid to trust with a cardboard knife!”

We are, indeed, a huge tent.

I attended my House District convention – 66B – last night at Falcon Heights City Hall.

We had a few fewer people than the Ron Paul-swollen 2008 turnout, but it was pretty solid, and uncommonly well-informed, I thought.  Lots of tea partiers mixed it up with some of the stalwarts,  making an interesting mix of people.

Of our seven delegates selected to go to the CD4 convention next month, an informal survey showed five were at least initially committed to Tom Emmer.

As to the resolutions – normally both the most time-consuming and least-productive part of the conventions?   Things clipped along pretty fast – we voted for blocks of resolutions, paying individual attention only to the ones that people chose to debate indivually, maybe a quarter of the suggestions that came up from the caucuses.

The parts I thought were interesting:

• Gone were the endless pro-life resolutions.  No, no change in heart – but I suspect most people genuinely believe that the MNGOP’s platform is sufficiently anti-infanticide.
• There was, however, a resolution to remove the pro-death-penalty plank in the state party platform.  While it’ll no doubt die on its way up the food chain, it was interesting in that it passed the district convention by a close margin – for conservative reasons.
• Someone – not me – had actually gotten resolution forwarded from the caucuses that seconded John LaPlante’s idea (which I enthusiastically endorse) of erasing the state platform and replacing it with a short statement of princples.  It failed, I believe, but only barely.  2012 is the year.

Onward and upward!

John “Policy Guy” LaPlante, writing at True North, h talks about his experience at his first-ever BPOU convention last Saturday.

It’s a good story – read the whole thing, naturally, because reading John LaPlante is just a generally good idea.

Now, my own BPOU convention – District 66 – is tonight.  An  I echo John’s misgivings about one key part of the proceedings that generates a lot of heat, but almost no light at all; the resolutions for platform changes:

You say you want a resolution? As I paged through the packet we all received upon registration, I saw what I had dreaded: Page after page of the party platform, with changes that had been suggested during caucus night.

Why did I dread this, aside from the obvious time sink? First, it meant listening to people talk about items that are of marginal interest, at best, to a state party: the federal budget, the federal tax code, federal agencies, and foreign policy.

I spent a fair amount of time at precinct caucuses trying to filter out some of these, reminding people that nobody in state government has anything to do with, say, prosecuting the war in Iraq, or approving or opposing trans-American highways.

Second, some of the proposed changes are simply bad. One proposal was to repeal the federal income tax “and replace it with nothing.” Given the dynamics of Washington, that would lead to more deficit spending and thus (perhaps) hyperinflation. The measure narrowly failed, and I noticed a delegate in front of me shake his head. Another measure called for the “separation of school and state.” I rise and speak against the resolution, pointing out that the public-good argument for taxpayer funding of schooling is very strong. This is not, I continued, mean that government needs to actually run all schools. Indeed, we would be better off giving people vouchers or tuition tax credits, and let parents choose from among privately run schools and government schools. A defender of the resolution came after me, saying, in part, “we need vouchers.” Of course that’s a rejection, not an extension, of the “separation of school and state” argument. The resolution fails, narrowly.

There are a lot of resolutions that are spawned by angry people who’ve come to precinct caucuses to try to change the world; writing a resolution seems to be a fine way to give that concern a voice.  Which is fine, except that debating them inevitably ends up sucking up an hour of time at precinct caucuses, and will eat up much of the time tonight.

A third problem with the resolutions is that some are simply redundant. There were two resolutions on term limits (again, on the federal level), with specific numbers on years and terms. A third simply says something like “Heck they ought to just go home,” which is a spurt of outrage more than anything.

I remember my first precinct caucus, where we had no less than eight different resolutions calling for the outlawing of abortion.  Which is not only redundant within the caucus, but unnecessary, since the MNGOP Platform is not a pro-choice manifesto even now.

Even though it wasn’t 2008, I did see some Ron Paul-style activists at work. I missed the discussion a resolution to “abolish the Federal Reserve Board and allow free enterprise money and banking.” Unfortunately, I think that one passed. (Just now I noticed another sentence—tell me this is NOT in the platform already, please—“Opposing any movement toward a North American Union including any NAFTA superhighway.”)

The Ronulans made for an entertaining District 66 meeting two years ago; we had to wade through a solid ninety minutes worth of debate on resolutions – most of which had little to no bearing on the state offices we were dealing with!

But here’s the LaPlante’s most interesting point – the one I really wanted to get to when I started this post:

Finally, the document is simply too long. As I told several people, God had 10 commandments; why should a political party have a 17-page (or whatever) platform? At that length, the platform becomes not the statement of general principles that it should be but an internal version of the “Christmas tree” bills, passed by Congress and Legislature alike, that Republicans say they abhor. A paragraph here, a sentence there, many an article in the present platform is an attempt to buy off the support of certain factions in the party. (Maybe I should offer a resolution to abolish the platform and start over, and limit it to 100 words!)

Which got me to thinking; come the next Precinct Caucuses, I may propose exactly that.

Something along these lines:

Whereas the Minnesota Republican Party platform has become a long, meandering collection of sops to its own internal special interests, and…

Whereas no document this long and fragmented can possibly attract people to it on its own merits,

Be it resolved that the Republican Party of Minnesota shall scrap its existing platform, and replace it with the following statement of principles:

“As the Republican Part of Minnesota stands for liberty, the free market, and individual initiative, we resolve to support and uphold in every way the following principles:

• Liberty: lower taxes, less regulation, and a focus on freedom, whether economic, intellectual or political.

• Prosperity: the promotion of the freedom of the market to bring the most opportunity to the most people, and the promotion of merit that drives this prosperity.

• Security: the defense of this nation from enemies abroad, the protection of its citizens from crime and criminals at home, and the security of our borders.

• Culture: The recognition that America is a melting pot that welcomes newcomers who come with a desire to join in our novel experiment, enjoy freedom, wealth and a brotherhood of common principle, rather than view it as a candy store to be plundered.

• Limited Government: A government that is focusing on whether you’re smoking or eating Big Macs is a government that has too much time, money and power on its hands.

• Family: the belief that government needs to uphold, rather than undercut, the basic building block of all healthy societies, the family. “

Yeah, I borrowed it from here; why re-invent the wheel?

Yep.  February, 2012, I’m gonna do it.

According to MDE, Tom Emmer is now in a statistical tie with Marty Seifert for the GOP Gubernatorial nod, with more than enough undecideds to completely change things by convention time, coming out of last weekend’s “Super Saturday” orgy of district conventioneering.

This means a bunch of things.  The remaining “Basic Political Organizational Unit” (BPOU – a legislative district in more populated areas, a county outstate) conventions are going to be fu-u-un (mine is Tuesday).  If you ever felt neglected at a convention before, that’s over.  And if things keep going this way, the state convention is going to be a donnybrook, perhaps every bit as intense as the 2002 MNGOP convention, where the vote for the gubernatorial endorsement took 16 days and 389 ballots.  Seeing as I’ll be covering the convention with the Northern Alliance this year, I can hardly wait.

But here’s the important part:  This is the one, single, solitary time in all of electoral politics when compromise truly is worthless.  Now is the time to get out and stand unstintingly for whatever it is you believe, and pull like crazy to see that those beliefs are enshrined in your candidates.  If you think Marty Seifert is the one hope the MNGOP has to hold onto the governor’s office (other than, of course, the DFL), then get out there and take no prisoners at your BPOU convention.  If you think Tom Emmer is the one person with the plan to save Minnesota, then come home with your shield or on it!  Carry the battle on at the Congressional District conventions, if you are selected as a delegate; when things progress to the convention in Minneapolis, then carry on the battle to the hundredth ballot, if need be.   Now is the time for principle to win out over compromise, politics and pragmatism!

And then, if you’re a Republican, once the last ballot is cast and the winner gives his acceptance speech, it’s time to look at the candidate.  If he’s the guy you supported all along, congratulations.  If not, ask yourselves two questions:

1. Look at what the nominee stands for.  Can you honestly say you agree with 70% of it?  And if you disagree with him on a few issues, but agree on most – or, even more so, if you disagree on a few issues that are not vital to Minnesota’s future, or over which the Governor really has no say anyway (I’m looking at all of you who clucked about Tim Pawlenty’s brief and fairly meaningless dalliance with the global warming cult, as if the Governor of Minnesota would be able to control the environment)?  Then bury the hatchet, and do it immediately.  Because the important question is…
2. …even if you disagree with the GOP nominee on 29.9% of issues, do you suppose you might disagree with one of the DFL’s pod of gabbling hamsters, Margaret Anderson “Ze Legislachah is an instrument and I am ze musician!” Kelliher and Mark “DUCK!” Dayton and Tom “Look, a shiny object” Rukavina and RT “look, tax money!” Rybak and John “All your health insurance are belong to me” Marty, even more?

If you can honestly say that you disagree with Tom Emmer or Marty Seifert more than any of them, then by all means, vote your conscience.

But if you believe that some vote that Tom Emmer or Marty Seifert took two years ago somehow makes them less fit to be governor than some vacuous DFL bobblehead, and you plan to sit the election out because of it?  We need to talk.

Dave Mindemann sounds depressed:

I wonder if Pawlenty even wants to help anybody. He doesn’t care about the poor…we got that loud and clear. He’s playing games with the bonding bill, which means he is in no hurry to help with jobs. He reversed himself on climate change, which means he doesn’t give a rip anymore about the environment.

Let’s see, where to start?  The Minnesota taxpayer already pays for some of the best benefits in the United States, so much so that they attract people to move here.  There is plenty of wiggle room downward.

The bonding bill was larded with pork, and “cared about” mostly government jobs and swag for the construction unions.

And lots of people are reversing themselves on “climate change“; indeed, pretty soon the remaining Warmers will be like those Japanese soldiers who held out in the jungle for thirty years because they refused to believe Hirohito would ever surrender.

So buck up, little camper. Governor Pawlenty cares about all us poor schmuck taxpayers (remmeber us?) who are already getting sucked dry by our wortheless, spendthrift cities and counties.

Glad we could settle that.

Derek “Chief” Brigham over at Freedom Dogs has taken an unscientific (!!!) poll of Minnesota conservative bloggers for the gubernatorial race.  Unsurprisingly, Tom Emmer won, bigtime. 

I’m listed under the “Has a candidate, but isn’t spilling it publicly yet” category, along with David Strom, Margaret Martin and Sue Jeffers.   The fact is, with the departure of Dave Hann from the race, I am leaning in one direction – but I’m not going to say which one yet.  Partly because, hello, I’m a schmuck blogger and nobody cares what I think.  Partly because it’s early, and I could still change my mind, depending on how this session goes.  And partly because, hello, do I want to get the other candidate’s people cheesed off at me so they’ll never appear on the NARN again?

And mainly because the fact is, whichever one wins the nomination, I’ll back him 100%, along with pretty much the entire MNGOP slate.  While I’ve never considered myself a straight ticket voter, the only DFLers I’ve been able to justify voting for since the mid-nineties have been Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly.  As to the Independence Party?  Get serious.  Jim Gibson’s Senate candidacy was the only IP bid I’ve ever considered voting for (and I didn’t; Rod Grams needed my vote more).  The GOP, imperfect as it is, is the only party in Minnesota that covers most of what I believe in and has any impact on the way this state is run (shaddap, Constitution Party).

Over on Facebook, a DFL-leaning lobbyist asked what kind of record conservative bloggers have at predicting general elections.  The answer is “none”; we’re not the general public.

What it does predict, I think, is a spirited endorsement process and State Convention, the kind that’s going to lead to a much better GOP effort in the fall. 

Eight years ago, MNGOP establishment candidate Tim Pawlenty had lukewarm support from a conservative wing that’d been ignored for decades, but which was gaining power.  Their candidate, Brian Sullivan, ran a highly successful insurgency, driving the final convention race out to 560 ballots over the course of 467 straight hours of voting at the 2002 MNGOP convention; he only clinched the nomination when he took the Taxpayer’s League’s “No New Taxes” pledge, promising to spend his term(s) as a fiscal hawk – something that’d never have happened without the Sullivan challenge.   Would Brian Sullivan have won the general election had he gotten the nomination?  We’ll never know; conventional wisdom was that he was “too conservative”, but Roger Moe was a bit of a stiff, and probably a lot more vulnerable than the keepers of the “conventional wisdom” want to admit.  But in a sense he, and his supporters, did win; their insurgency pushed Pawlenty to adopt a key piece of Sullivan’s platform, in a sense perhaps the most important one.

This year?  The delegate count is shaping up pretty tight so far, although there’s a long, long way to go.   Emmer’s done a good job of staying in front of the Tea Party, but Seifert’s organization is a formidable one.

The point being that, from where I sit, either Seifert, the establishment candidate, or Emmer the conservative firebrand, will make a better governor than any of the vacuous hamsters the DFL is putting forward.  And an imperfect “good enough”, whether it’s an imperfect conservative (who’s been driven to the right by the Tea Party and an Emmer push) or an unrepentant Conservative (who’s got the whole MNGOP working for him) is going to be better than any of the alternatives.

Derek “Chief” Brigham, at Freedom Dogs, has been tallying up blogger “leanings for Republican Governor candidate endorsement.”  He has some interesting observations. Definitely worth a look.

Derek puts my own opinion into the (surprisingly) rare “Uncommitted” tally, but he doesn’t seem sure about it. So just to clear things up… Make that a definite uncommitted opinion. I hope whomever wins the endorsement makes a fine candidate in the general, and an even finer governor thereafter. But I’m too cynical to get caught up in all the primary hoopla this time around.

One potential headache for the MNGOP this fall has evaporated.

The possibility that Col. Joe Repya – war hero and longtime grassroots GOP leader – would run for governor as an “Independence” Party spoiler, soaking five or so percent of the votes away from a MNGOP candidate, might have been a problem come November.

No more; Repya is bailing out of the race:

“It has become clear to me that, much like the DFL and the GOP parties in this state, the (Independence Party of Minnesota) fails to stand by its own rules and principles. At issue, the (party’s) decision to essentially nullify the state convention endorsement process,” Repya said. “This action, in my opinion, severely damages the IPM’s chances of truly becoming a viable and strong third party option….Their action will further erode and (tarnish) the IPM brand while relegating it to a permanent position of political “spoiler.””

Well, no.  The “Independence Party”‘s big problem is that it was a “party” based around one celebrity candidate – Jesse Ventura – who got elected governor during a fit of collective silliness in a sillier time.  The rest of the party, afflicted with a grave case of self-importance, has soldiered on ever since, clinging to the faint fringes of relevance and – based on its ability to barely eke out 5% in one of the 2006 constitutional officer races – existence as a major party.

Repya’s candidacy had the chance to be a little more; Repya has a long history not only as a grass roots organizer, but as an organizer whose roots predate, and share a lot of personalities, with Minnesota’s large and successful Tea Party.  He was well-placed – within the context of the IP’s traditional ineptitude – to take advantage of the Tea Party, withy a message that could very well have peeled a few of them away.  And the media knew this, which was why Repya’s IP bid got so much media play; he was a disaffected Republican who left the party in a whirl of publicity last year, prompting media that had always looked at him (and all conservatives) as something just a little less than human to suddenly christen him “the voice of disaffected Republicans?”, someone that the MNGOP rank and file needed to pay strict attention to; they were setting him up, much like a Mike Huckabee, to be a spoiler against the GOP.

Anyway – here’s hoping that this is the year the “Independence” party finally fails to get 5%, and finally gets shuffled off the stage and back to minor party land.  And good riddance.

I attended the GOP caucuses in 66B last night.

Attendance was down from two years ago, which answers the question “will the Paulbots keep their energy and influence?”   But it was way, way up from two years before that , which is a good thing; non-presidential-year caucuses are frequently painfully slow.

In my precinct, the Seifert machine was in full effect; Marty won my precinct pretty handily.

Statewide?  Emmer closed the polling gap he had at the Central Committee straw poll; he’s just a tad over 10 points behind Seifert.  Hann got about five points, so he could well be in a position to be a kingmaker at the state convention in May.

So it’s off to the BPOU (in Saint Paul, that’d be State House District) conventions on March 2!

It’s precinct caucus night.

“But where’s do I go, Mitch?”

The MNGOP has it all right here.

You can also follow, and post on, your caucus on Twitter using the #MNGOPCaucus hashtag.  You can also add an MNGOP Caucus Twitter Ribbon to your avatar (I refuse to call it a “Twibbon”, I’m sorry) at this link, if you’re so inclined.

It’s pretty simple; if you’re there, you come in, you vote for precinct officers (someone can feel free to don my mantel as precinct chair!), you vote for delegates, you vote for resolutions, and at the end you get to vote in the “preference poll”, the straw poll for Governor among other races.  (Note; while the DFL lets you vote the preference polls and just leave, in the GOP the preference polls are the last event of the evening).

It’s going to be a fun year; the Tea Party crowd will hopefully turn up and continue the work the Paulbots started two year ago, reinvigorating and pushing the party to do better.

(And if you’re looking for a DFL “Assimilation Brings Joy” meeting, go here)

Tomorrow is caucus night in Minnesota.

Republicans will gather at hundreds of community centers, schools, city halls, auditoriums and libraries around the state to vote for resolutions, local party leadership, and – most importantly – delegates to go to their House District (called “BPOU”, in curious MNGOP parlance) conventions, there to begin a process of delegate selections and candidate endorsements that will end at the State Convention from April 29 through May 1; each round of conventions will, in turn, endorse state legislators and representatives, Congressional candidates, and candidates for Governor as well as the other constitutional offices, and any local races in play.

And if you have a vision for the Minnesota Republican Party, now’s the time to speak up.

I’ll be going, of course; I’m the convener for my precinct in the Midway.  I’m hoping we continue the fantastic turnout from the 2008 cycle; that year, the hordes of energetic Ron Paul supporters stormed the gates, and in so doing energized the party, motivating it to actions that had eluded it for many years.

This year, the Tea Party movement – a cousin of the Paul campaign, but broader and not focused on any personalities or, indeed, any parties – will no doubt dominate the discussion at the conventions.  While the Tea Party movements are, in fact, non-partisan, there is just no room for that sort of populist-libertarian philosophy in the DFL, and the Independence Party is a joke that will likely lose major-party status this election.  (And yes, I have friends in the IP, so I know this’ll lead to an argument or two – but it’s the truth; the “Independence” Party, AKA “DFL Lite”, without Jesse Ventura, is just another self-marginalizing third party, existing only as a spoiler; even Minnesotans, as flighty as they are, are getting tired of the joke.  Any party that can consider Dean Barkley a serious candidate deserves to fade, and quickly).

Who’s doing to be the winner?

We won’t know for sure until we get to each level of endorsing convention, of course.  But the big ‘tater is obviously the Minnesota Governor race, along with the various Constitutional Office races (Secretary of State, State Auditor and Attorney General).

For governor, it’s a tough call this year.  There are three great conservatives running for the nomination this year; Dave Hann, Tom Emmer and Marty Seifert.  Each of them has a fairly impeccable conservative record (tempered by, yes, a few of the compromises that politicians always wind up making in a deliberative body like the legislature; the only people who can manage pure and uncompromising in their political records are those who have no political record at all).

The real question for me?  Which is the conservative who will do the best job of going to “independents”, and convince them to move to “the right?”

That’s the thing I’ve gotta figure out by tomorrow night.

What’s everyone’s sense this time around?  Leave a comment, and vote in the poll…

I’ll be taking votes through Tuesday. Who’s the frontrunner?

…you need to get out and support Doug Wardlow.

Another reminder; Tuesday is Caucus night in Minnesota.

“But Mitch – I’ve never been to a precinct caucus!”

Well, it’s interesting, and you should try it. You go to wherever you’re supposed to be – usually a school, library or other community center – and you find your precinct and grab a seat with your neighbors.  There’s some precinct business to take care of, and then you get down to the stuff we all really come for:

• Endorsing candidates, although this doesn’t usually happen at precinct caucuses.
• Electing delegates to the BPOU (Legislative District) conventions.  This is important; these are the people who will endorse the candidates for the Legislature, and vote for delegates for later conventions.
• Voting in any straw polls that might be held (might be one for governor, but I’m not sure about this year)
• Resolutions.  You can suggest resolutions to be included in the state party platform, campaign for ’em, and get ’em adopted to get sent to the BPOU conventions.  If your resolution gets enough traction, it can become part of the platform…

The important thing is, caucuses matter.  And when I say “matter”, I add “party politics is about persistence more than passion”.   The last round of major caucuses, two years ago, saw a huge outpouring of support for Ron Paul, which indirectly changed a lot of things about the way the party works, and led the party into a good position as re the whole Tea Party movement – but changing any party is a matter of showing up, year in and year out, and convincing people that change needs to happen.  So every time you go to the caucuses, you affect the way the party works – perhaps not as much as you want it to, but every bit matters eventually.

Anyway – hope to see you there on Tuesday!

Fearless – and, as it happens, inevitable – prediction:  now that Joe Repya has not only left the MN GOP, but is running for the Independence Party nod for Governor, he will become the Twin Cities’ media’s leading voice for conservative Republicans who are, let us never forget, inevitably disaffected by the rise of “extreme” (read: all) conservatism.

Now, I’m n0t going to bag on Joe Repya; a retired Army colonel who served in three wars, including one as an infantry platoon leader, which is just about the most dangerous job there is, he’s also been a leading voice among grassroots conservatives in Minnesota for the past seven or eight years.   He left the MNGOP last year because of differences with the new regime on Park Street, Tony Sutton and Micheal Brodkorb.  I’m not sure what the differences were – although I inadvertently caught some shrapnel from the firefight last year – but they’re the kind of thing vex a lot of us who care deeply about politics and government, but not so much about parties except as a means to affect, well, politics and goverment.

So I’m not writing to bag on Repya.

But if the media wants to convince Minnesotans that ideas like this…

Joe Repya, a longtime Republican now running for governor as an Independent, says he has an answer for the long-running battle over whether the Vikes should get a new stadium funded by taxpayer dollars: Yes, as long as the the state gets a controlling stake in the organization.

On his homepage, he writes:

As your next governor, I would agree to public financing of a new Viking stadium only if Ziggy Wilf and the NFL agree to sell a 51% equity of the Vikings to the State of Minnesota with a never to relocate iron clad clause. Ziggy could run the team as long as he wishes and without state interference. We will increase state revenues by allowing Minnesotans to purchase one share of non-voting, non transferable interests (like the Green Bay Packers “stock” program”) in the Minnesota Vikings. If Green Bay can own the Packers, Minnesota can own the Vikings.

…are the kinds of things that sends disaffected conservatvives to protest at the Capitol, they’ve got a rude surprise coming. State-owned football teams make no more sense than state-owned light rail lines or factories.

The holes in the idea aren’t only ideological, of course; and they’re obvious enough that even the City Pages gets it:

Two small points of order:

First, Green Bay doesn’t actually own the Packers; fans and investors own the Packers. The team has been publicly owned since 1923, when it was registered as a Wisconsin nonprofit corporation.

And when even the City Pages points out that forking over for a football team makes no sense in a year when the state budget is looking ghastlier than Tara Reid’s resume, you know there’s a problem.

So sorry, Twin Cities media.  I’ll give a shout to Repya for all he’s done for this country and for conservatism in Minnesota.

But nobody’s elected him “the voice of the disaffected” just yet.  There’s a whole lot of us out there who haven’t picked a leader yet, but it’s for sure we’re not going to let you do it.

I hear you, conservatives.  After years and years of giving time and money to the Minnesota and national GOP, you felt that in some respects the party left you.  I’ve heard the criticisms, and I agree with many of them (Bush did spend too much; the GOP became the party of slightly less bigger government; the GOP supported the likes of Ron Erhard for years) and disagree with a few (d’ya think Norm Coleman’s ANWR or ethanol subsidy votes were more important than Obama having a supermajority?)

And so many of you sat things out in 2006 and 2008.  For some of you, it was a practical thing; you’d been volunteering in every election since 1998, or earlier; your families, jobs, and personal lives had paid the price.  For others, it was that feeling of rejection.

But a week from tonight is the day you can start taking your party back.  It’s Caucus night in Minnesota on Tuesday, February 2 – a week from tonight.

And there, your votes matter, both for straw poll results and, most importantly, by electing delegates to go to your “BPOU” convention (usually equivalent to your House district or county); these, in turn, endorse State House and State Candidates, and elect delegates to your congressional district convention; there, you endorse candidates for the US House, and send delegates to the State Convention.  Where you endorse candidates for the big races; Senate (but not this year), Governor, and so on.

The kicker is this; while all politics is a matter of patience and persistence, groups of activists can make a huge difference the caucuses.  Two years ago, the Ron Paul campaign’s legions of highly-motivated activists made a huge dent in the Minnesota GOP; hopefully some of them will stay involved – and serve as an example to the rest of you.  Here, your vote matters to your party.

I hope you can join us there!

“But where’s do I go, Mitch?”

The MNGOP has it all right here.

You can also follow, and post on, your caucus on Twitter using the #MNGOPCaucus hashtag.  You can also add an MNGOP Caucus Twitter Ribbon to your avatar (I refuse to call it a “Twibbon”, I’m sorry) at this link, if you’re so inclined.

At any rate – if you don’t show up at a caucus on February 2, I don’t wanna year you complaining about the MN GOP’s course.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Dave Mindeman’s take (on his MnpACT blog) on the gubernatorial election. His basic assumption; without Norm Coleman in the race, the DFL will take the governor’s office.

I noted that that conclusion would indeed reflect the “conventional wisdom” in Minnesota, normally; that Minnesota likes center-left DFLers and “moderate” Republicans.

Of course, there are all sorts of larger reasons the “conventional wisdom” could come up lacking this year; Obama’s plunging popularity will sap votes in the DFL’s traditional powerhouses, the Twin Cities and their first-ring suburbs; the “tea party” movement and its populist offshoots are going to bring an energy back to the GOP’s powerhouses – the third tier of ‘burbs on out, the south east and southwest parts of the state, the Red River Valley – that they lacked during the dismal dismal years of Bush’s second term, when you could palpably feel the exhaustion on the part of an awful lot of the volunteers that are the backbone of the MNGOP.

But there’s one other thing that I think the DFL/media (as always, pardon the redundancy) miss in their assessments. 

Not to indulge in name-calling – that’s not my intent, here – but there’s an intellectual laziness behind the overuse of the term “extreme”.  It seems everybody to the right of Arne Carlson gets labeled “Extreme” by the left and their allies on the editorial boards.

It is, of course, a crude but effective way to frame the debate for the left; labelling everyone and every thought of the opposition as “extreme” at every possible mention.  If you’re a conservative, you’re not just pro-life, you’re a “pro-life extremist”; you’re not just for limited government, you’re an “extreme Tenther”; you don’t just favor constraining spending and cutting taxes, you’re an “extremist”; any Second Amendment activists…well, we’re used to being called that and much worse. 

Marty Seifert

A big part of me would like to think that this bit of framing is showing signs of backfiring – as with the term “teabagging”, which the left turned from a junior-high snark into a fairly universal slur to, through relentless overuse, a two-edged sword that says more about them than the actual protesters. 

“Extreme” is different.  While there’s a certain amount of self-caricature in the left’s overuse and devaluing of the term, I think the left has fallen into an even more pernicious trap; after calling everyone to the right of Arlen Lindner an “extremist” for a generation now, they’ve come to believe it.

The left has been working overtime to label Tom Emmer (and, comically, Marty Seifert) as “extreme” conservatives, smug in the belief that as long as they apply the label (and the media dutifully uses it at every opportunity), then it’ll stick with the people, while the “reasonable”‘, non-“extreme” left will mop up the votes, because (so say the left and media) that’s where Minnesota really is.

But they haven’t heard Tom Emmer speak to a mixed crowd.

Tom Emmer

Here’s the thing people like Mindeman miss about Seifert and – especially – Emmer; they state the conservative case to the middle and the undecided better than any recent conservative figures in Minnesota politics.  While some previous conservative leaders in Minnsota have been seen (rightly or, more usually, because of media connivance) as exclusionary dogmatists, the two GOP frontronners can actually get out in front of an undecided crowd and make an appealing, articulate, solid case for why those in the middle should be over with us on the right. 

And while it’s entirely possible that someone among the left’s pack of hamsters – Rukavina or Kelley spring to mind – can do the same, I’ve seen little to no evidence that they can preach to anyone that’s not fundamentally disposed to be in the choir.  And given how fast Obama, Pelosi, Reid and (let’s be honest) Kelliher have been piddling on independents this past year, I think it’s fair to say that Emmer and Seifert will have a more sympathetic audience than they might have a year or two ago.

So I’m a lot less convinced that having the left/media merely chanting “extreme!  extreme!” over and over again – as well as it’s served them in previous elections – is going to do the job for them this time.

If you haven’t found a babysitter for two weeks from tonight, get on it!  Tuesday, February 2 is caucus night!

Any hope this nation has for change starts at your precinct that night!  It’s where Republicans pick candidates and vote in their platforms and, most importantly, sign you up to get involved.

“But where’s do I go, Mitch?”

The MNGOP has it all right here.

You can also follow, and post on, your caucus on Twitter using the #MNGOPCaucus hashtag.  You can also add an MNGOP Caucus Twitter Ribbon to your avatar (I refuse to call it a “Twibbon”, I’m sorry) at this link, if you’re so inclined.

At any rate – if you don’t show up at a caucus on February 2, I don’t wanna year you complaining about the MN GOP’s course.

The GOP gubernatorial field has been an embarassment of riches so far, for a good conservative.  Tom Emmer, Dave Hann and Pat Anderson are all good orthodox conservatives; Marty Seifert is more of a pragmatist but certainly acceptable. 

But with the 800-pound gorilla rumors that Norm Coleman is pretty likely to enter the race, some of the air got sucked out of the room. 

And Pat Anderson, who served as State Auditor from 2002 to 2006 (and a very, very good one at that) has decided to run for her old office.

Good for her, I say.

Coleman – so says at least one thread of conventional wisdom – is going to get into the race, likely lose the endorsement but go to the primaries, and have an excellent chance of winning the governor’s office against the pack of gabbling hamsters the DFL will field. 

Coleman is not the perfect conservative, but if the choice is between an imperfect conservatve (who’s voted to the right of John McCain and Jim Ramstad, for crying out loud) and Steve Kelley, Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson Kelliher (especially since the MNGOP is unlikely to flip the House and/or the Senate this fall, not that that’s not going to stop me from trying like hell), the choice should be obvious, if that’s what it comes down to; I am hoping that the presence of strong conservatives Emmer and Hann will drive him to the right, one way or the other.  That’s presuming we all believe the conventional wisdom.

But this is about Pat Anderson.  She’s young.  She articulates a conservative vision in a way that reaches out to people in the middle who might be sticker-shocked by the DFL’s coke-binge-like spending spree.  She’s very sharp.  She’s also been out of the public eye since the drearily unaccomplished Rebecca Otto upset her for Auditor during the 2006 election.  I think four years in the public eye will set Anderson up nicely for whatever comes next.

I first predicted in 2002 that Pat Anderson would be Minnesota’s first female governor or Senator. 

I’ll amend it; she’s got a great shot at being Minnesota’s first female governor or good female Senator.

Here’s the dirty little secret of elections:  if you wait until November, all the really important decisions have already been made.  The party’s selection of candidates, its platform, its high-level policy -all of that gets set…

…at the precinct caucuses.

Which are on Tuesday, February 2 – just three weeks from tonight!

If you’re a Republican – or, more importantly, are an “indepdendent” who is reeling from sticker shock at all the “hope and change” out there, and want to join a lot of like-minded Americans in saving things while we can – then I hope you see you on February 2 at your GOP precinct caucuses.  It’s there that you vote for delegates that will go to the State House District Conventions to support your candidates – and hopefully win, and go on to the Congressional District conventions, and finally the State Convention, where we will hopefully select the next Governor of Minnesota.

And it all starts at your precinct!

“But where’s that, Mitch?”

The MNGOP has it all right here.

You can also follow, and post on, your caucus on Twitter using the #MNGOPCaucus hashtag.  You can also add an MNGOP Caucus Twitter Ribbon to your avatar (I refuse to call it a “Twibbon”, I’m sorry) at this link, if you’re so inclined.

At any rate – if you don’t show up at a caucus on February 2, I don’t wanna year you complaining about the MN GOP’s course.

I don’t go to the WaPo’s Chris Cilizza for keen-eyed observations on conservatives or Republicans. 

But his piece in “The Fix” on the Minnesota goober race provides some junk food for thought:

Norm Coleman (R) isn’t expected to make a decision on the 2010 governor’s race until next year but a new Rasmussen poll suggests the former senator has plenty of time to make his decision. Coleman led the Republican field with 50 percent while state Rep. Marty Seifert at 11 percent was the only other potential candidate to break double digits. Coleman’s lead is almost entirely attributable to name identification gained from his time as mayor of St. Paul and his six years in the Senate but it does suggest that if he decides to run, he will be a clear favorite. On the Democratic side, former Sen. Mark Dayton and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak each received 30 percent of the vote while none of the other candidates scored in double digits. Coleman would give Republicans a chance to hold this seat, which is being vacated by Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) after two terms. But, if Coleman takes a pass this race looks extremely difficult for any other GOP candidate given Minnesota’s Democratic tilt.

Before we get to Cilizza’s actual piece, let’s take a moment to remember how well the “cult of the inevitable” serves the Democrats.  While it’s entirely possible that the second coming of Ronald Reagan would have had trouble in the 2008 election, it’s also a fact that the “inevitability” of John McCain – cultivated through many careful years by the media, who spent the better part of a decade building up John McCain as the “Good Republican”, so they could spend six months tearing him right back down – didn’t serve the GOP especially well in the past election.  McCain was built up to serve as a beacon for “Moderate” Republicans, and “moderates” discredited themselves utterly and completely between 2002 and 2008.   Don’t believe for a moment that Big Media doesn’t desperately want to do the same again; look for a wave of approving stories about what an “acceptable”, work-across-the-aisle kinda guy Republican Mike Huckabee is, sooner than later.

But for the moment, let’s do two things; leave media perfidy out of it (or just accept it as a given and move on), and accept Rasmussen’s numbers at face value, and assume that Norm Coleman’s name ID gives him a prohibitive advantage in the GOP field (and, at first glance – again, let’s accept the numbers at face value – an edge over the Rybak and the ludicrous Mark Dayton), what does it mean?

I’ve disagreed strenuouosly with plenty of my conservative friends on Coleman, based on one key principle – a principle that guides so very much in life.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Coleman, like Tim Pawlenty, is no conservative’s icon.  But like Pawlenty, he is conservative enough, at least on the issues that matter.

Coleman, like Pawlenty, has angered conservatives with a number of his stances over the past 16 years.  But, like Pawlenty, he has been a thoroughgoing conservative on the things should matter; taxes, spending, growth and security.

As Mayor of Saint Paul, he presided over eight years (and keynoted four more) of holding the line on taxes, on living within the city’s means, and on job and business growth – things that are nearly forgotten four years after Coleman’s successor Randy Kelly left office.  Like Pawlenty, his conservatism may fray a bit around the edges, but at its core it’s just fine.

So who do I support for Governor?

I think the race boils down to one thing, if you’re a Republican; not moving the party to the center, but communicating what the right really stands for to give “the center” a reason to move right.

Do I think a thoroughgoing conservative like Tom Emmer, Dave Hann or Pat Anderson has what it takes to communicate the benefits of a real conservative vision to a middle that’s shell-shocked by Obama’s incompetence and excess?  Yes, I do  – and so does the Twin Cities’ media, which is why you never see Tom Emmer or Pat Anderson’s name in print without some variation on “extreme” or “hardline” conservative in front of their names.    I’ve seen Emmer, Hann and Anderson talk with mixed crowds; I’ve even heard Emmer on a liberal-leaning internet talk show – he did a spectacular job of articulating the conservative vision to a non-conservative audience, and I have no doubt Anderson and Hann can do the same  (which is why the Strib and the rest of the Twin Cities media will make sure that they don’t give any of them the opportunity to do it to a larger audience).

But at the moment, I support one thing; fighting like hell – as I put it a few years ago, grabbing one side of the rope or another in our inter-party tug of war and pulling like mad.  Getting out the caucuses early next year and fighting like there’s no tomorrow for your candidate.  Because for Minnesota conservatives, it’s a win-win situation.  Either we get a genuine movement conservative, an Emmer or Anderson or Hann or Seifert, someone who can genuinely articulate conservatism to the undecideds, running for (and winning) the race…

…or we get Norm Coleman, after having to survive a tough, spirited nomination battle against three superb candidates to his right.  Which will make him tack right, while still remaining Norm.  Norm is no slouch at articulating the key tenets of conservatism to a crowd either; and as a “worst case” that isn’t all that bad, having to overcome Emmer, Anderson and Hann will force him to walk the conservative walk in a way he has not had to before.

Which is not a bad thing.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.  Would I prefer that Emmer, Anderson, Seifert or Hann won with a forty p0int margin?  Absolutely – and I plan on pulling like hell for one of the three of them.

And whomever gets through the convention – Tom, Pat, Dave, Marty or Norm?  I’ll pull like hell even harder for any of them.

Because any of them will make a better governor in these times than Rybak or Dayton.

I just got back from MCing the MN Fourth District GOP Fundraising dinner tonight.  In addition to the traditional silent auction, we had a very appropriate motivational speaker – he spoke about “resilience”, which is something Fourth CD Republicans get a lot of practice with.   If you get a chance to see Roger Revak speak, do it.  Just saying.

We also met some great people; Gubernatorial candidates Senator Dave Hann, Representative Tom Emmer and former State Auditor Pat Anderson came by, as well as a slew of local and district candidates.

It was a lot of fun, which the Fourth is always good at.  Things are tough in the Fourth – but I have  a hunch better days are coming.  The DFL is doing a bad enough job that everntually even the voters’ll figure it out.

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