It will come as no surprise to many among MinnPost’s politically well-informed readership that members of the Republican Party, both nationally and in Minnesota, find themselves in an awkward, painful, dizzying dilemma.
They are coming off a particularly rough election cycle, in which they lost the presidency for the second consecutive time, suffered a net loss of seats in both houses of Congress, and, in Minnesota, lost control of both houses of the Legislature and saw the rejection of two constitutional amendments they had sponsored.
Polls suggest that the party’s “brand,” as we are all wont to call such things in this marketing-obsessed age, is drowning in a common household plumbing appliance that shall go nameless here. At both the rank-and-file and the leadership levels, the party is riven ‘tween two factions, one of which believes that a substantial portion of the party’s woes is that it is perceived as the uncompromising “party of NO,” and the other of which believes that the party’s deepest problem is that it doesn’t stick by its fundamental less-government, more-liberty principle.
This factional duality was on bright and somewhat poignant display yesternoon at the U of M’s Humphrey School for a forum titled “Which Future? The Minnesota Republican Party.”
Other than political scientist Larry Jacobs (of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance), who served as referee, the panel featured two Republican operatives, if that is the word I want here, each of whom represented one of the factions.
Cullen Sheehan is an experienced Republican insider. He managed the Norm Coleman Senate campaign of 2008, held the top Republican staff job when his party controlled the state Senate, and is now a registered lobbyist for the Minneapolis law firm of Lockridge, Grindal and Nauen.
Sheehan spoke Tuesday for the party establishment and he spake thus:
Politics is a cyclical business. Not long ago, when George W. Bush won two presidential elections in a row, his political mastermind Karl Rove claimed to have created a permanent Republican majority. He hadn’t, Sheehan noted, and the next two quadrennial cycles demonstrated that he hadn’t. Now, after two Democratic wins in a row, people are talking as if the Republicans will be in the wilderness for a generation. But, even in blue-leaning Minnesota, “all hope is not lost,” said Sheehan.
Don’t be the party of 'No'
The Republicans may not need much more than a paint job, said Sheehan, and maybe some flower boxes in the windows. Seriously, the quote was “tinkering with the outside,” not “tearing down the whole house.”
The key, he said, is communication. The public is leery of a party that wants to run the government but seems to dislike the idea of government.
“We have to find a way to communicate that we don’t think government is a bad thing and that we have ideas to make it better,” Sheehan said.
The public currently sees the Republicans as “the party of ‘No,’ ” Sheehan said. The public knows that Republicans want to say “no” to tax increases and abortion and gay marriage, and those are, of course, the party’s principles. Sheehan tried, throughout the panel yesterday, to suggest that the party needed to simultaneously stand by its principles and yet find a way to say something other than “no.”
“We have to understand that compromise is not a bad word,” he said. “We can’t just say ‘no’ and walk away. We have to have a seat at the table.”
If you’re trying to figure out what Republicans would say and do differently under Sheehan’s suggestions, you may have trouble with specifics. He said the party needs to be more “flexible” and more “inclusive.” He implied that Republicans are too quick to turn on candidates who may stray from party orthodoxy on any issue.
“When you are walking into a church, you don’t have to sign a declaration that you will agree with everything the preacher will say that day,” Sheehan said.
Challenging the right-left paradigm
While Sheehan believes that Republicans might have done better in 2012 if Mitt Romney had been a better communicator, his co-panelist believes the party would have done better if it had nominated Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
That panelist would be Marianne Stebbins of Excelsior. Stebbins and Sheehan go back to their days together in the Young Republican organizations. In 2008 and 2012, Stebbins worked for the Ron Paul presidential campaigns and in 2012 was Rep. Paul’s Minnesota chair. She currently holds the title of Minnesota coordinator for the Campaign for Liberty, which is chaired by the now-retired Paul.
While Sheehan was all about what Republicans need to do to win future elections, Stebbins was all about liberty, a word that seemed to figure in most of her sentences and which she uses as virtually synonymous with less government.
The Republican Party claims to be the party of smaller government, but Stebbins expressed considerable skepticism on that point.
“A lot of people don’t see a difference between the parties,” Stebbins said. Those people, she said, see the Republicans and Democrats “fighting ferociously over negligible differences.” Republicans and Democrats stand in a vast football field of possible changes and “quibble over a single inch of turf. Republicans' idea of making the government smaller, Stebbins said several times, seems to be to make the government bigger at a slower pace than Democrats would.
When George W. Bush was president, government continued to grow, especially the national security state. Bush gave us the Iraq War, which was not only costly but was used as part of the argument for new attacks on civil liberties, such as warrantless wiretaps.
Republicans had a majority in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in 2011-12 and “we didn’t maintain our credibility as the party of smaller government.” Instead, she said, Republicans went along with a “socialized Vikings stadium. We “missed the opportunity to teach the public that less government can be a good thing.”
While Stebbins didn’t explicitly denounce the idea of bipartisan compromise that Sheehan was touting, she tried to stand his rhetoric on its head.
“We always compromise toward more” government and spending and taxes, Stebbins said. “Why can’t we compromise toward less?”
When Jacobs asked about the risk that the Ron Paul and Tea Party movements might run of pulling the Republican Party too far to the right, Stebbins replied: “I don’t agree with the whole right-left paradigm.” To her, the spectrum is about more government or more freedom. When Minnesota Republicans decided to put the same-sex marriage ban and “voter ID” on the ballot, they sent the wrong message to voters who favor less government, more freedom issues, she said.
Is it all about winning?
Sheehan didn’t say so explicitly, but his whole presentation was built around the assumption that a political party exists to win elections. Whatever good causes you stand for, you can’t advance them unless you hold office. Stebbins did say – explicitly – that her faction rejects that logic:
“Our goals are not necessarily to gain political power,” Stebbins said. “It’s to grow the liberty movement itself.”
“We’re not just focused on the next election,” Stebbins said. It’s more important that each campaign be “part of a long-term approach to educate people that they will live better when they live free. ... We will be better off with more liberty in our lives rather than always asking what else can the government give me today.”
Moving the primary
For most of the hour that they shared the stage, Sheehan and Stebbins found ways to disagree indirectly, although the tension between their differing approaches was palpable. Sheehan said many times that the kind of politically practical Republicans for whom he purportedly spoke share the basic values and policy positions of the “liberty” Republicans.
The two did disagree explicitly on two things. Sheehan favors the idea of moving Minnesota’s primaries to June, which he said would make the nominating process more “inclusive” by giving ordinary voters more influence, and the smaller but more committed group of caucus-goers less.
Stebbins, whose movement relies heavily on a highly motivated base, is against it. Ron Paul consistently did better in caucus-dominated states than in states that chose national delegates by primary. Stebbins said that a movement gets built by cultivating those kind of highly-motivated grass roots activists.
A system that emphasizes primaries just gives the advantage to those candidates who are most able to raise big money in New York and California to fund a TV advertising campaign, she said.
In recent history, the Republican Party has seldom unseated an endorsed candidate in a primary, and the party establishment has put a high value on maintaining the value of the endorsement. It’s time for a change, Sheehan said. “We shouldn’t ostracize candidates who want to take their case to the primary voters.”
A seat at the table
Sheehan illustrated his overall pitch about the importance of demonstrating to voters that Republicans know how to compromise with the example of Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek and the gun-control issue.
Stanek came up several times as Sheehan’s model. By expressing openness to some of President Obama’s ideas on gun issues he has gained a seat at the table when gun issues are discussed, and he communicates that Republicans know how to say something other than “no.”
Stebbins was unimpressed. Stanek, she said, has “lost a lot of respect out here” for doing that. The liberty movement of which she is a part doesn’t see much to like on the list of Obama’s gun-control ideas, all of which would increase government’s power at the expense of individual’s Second Amendment rights. It’s fine to have a seat at the table, she said, as long as when you get to the table and bad ideas come up, you use your seat at the table to say “no.”