Dakota Beacon

"Anyone who loves the law or sausages should never watch either being made"  Otto Von Bismarck

There are two Republican Parties.  I think we all know this by now.  There is the faction which has ruled for the past 70 years or more - the group now referred to by some as “RINOs”, and then there is the base, the grassroots - the group now referred to in some circles as “America First” - including, but not limited to, supporters of Trump.  There is arguably more difference between these two ends of the so-called “Republican Party” than between the establishment, or “centrist” (read left) wing of the party and the Democrats with whom they interface when they hold elective office.  

This clash was on full display across the nation recently, when the newly-elected U.S. House of Representatives refused to rubber-stamp the assumed ascension of Kevin McCarthy, not known for taking conservative positions seriously, and demanded an actual election rather than submitting to an “appointment” by acclamation.  It took 15 ballots to finally elect McCarthy as Speaker, and they’d still be voting today had he not met their demands and allowed them a voice to pursue the agenda they had been elected to put forward.  

The media had kittens over this.  “What a clown show!”, “What a circus!”, “How embarrassing!”, they hooted.  But this is how self-government must work if it is to work at all.  Issues and concerns are brought to the table, they are heard, solutions offered, discussed, debated, some kind of agreement is reached through the fiery furnace of open debate.  We hope that it can be civil, but better we say what must be said than sweep it under the carpet with robotic consent.  What happened in Washington last January has been happening across the nation,  in our counties and districts.  We all know by now that Republicans acting like Democrats have not helped.  No matter whom we elect we still wind up deeper in debt, our problems still go unanswered, corruption continues apace, because, well, it just isn’t “nice” to bring it up.  

When the people who pay for all of this have had enough, they have been advised that they do have a say, but they need to become active citizens - take the time and effort to attend your local caucuses, elect and run to be delegates to your county and district conventions.  Otherwise it’s your fault.  It is when the grassroots people do this and find they were played for fools by the “party regulars” or the “elites” that long-suffering, tax-paying, ordinary Republicans begin to feel a slow burn.  Whose fault is that?  

This past weekend I had the opportunity to witness this dynamic on display in Kittson County.  A more out-of-the-way place for these elitists to descend upon is difficult to imagine.  It is a county based on small business and agriculture - the backbone, in other words, of our nation’s economy, but these are modest, matter-of-fact people with no designs on trying to control others.  They just want issues they see as vital to our lives as Americans addressed and they want to elect people who will advocate for their values.  

A re-organizational convention was held Saturday in Lancaster, MN, in the town hall.  What was different about this one is that it was a do-over.  The back story is that there is a requirement that these county organizations must report any donations above a particular amount.  As long as anyone could remember, this threshold has not been met in Kittson County.  The officer charged with reporting “zero” every year complained about having to do this seemingly pointless thing over and over.  The helpful official on the other end of the call said, “Well, you could avoid having to report this if you just filed for ‘inactive’ status for your organization.”  Gee, too good to be true!  So, perhaps on his own, the local officer took that decision and filed as “inactive”.  That was last October.  Fast forward to February.  The local citizens identifying as Republican met in their caucuses and elected delegates to their county convention.  The convention met, fulfilled its duties to elect their officers, consider resolutions and elect delegates to the district and state conventions.  Everything seemed pretty normal.  But wait!  Someone higher up the line called them out.  Their convention was deemed “illegal” - they were “inactive” so could not have held that convention without becoming “active”.  (Is this beginning to sound a little “off” to you?)

Now in a sane world, in order to satisfy the paperwork, these people could have been called back together, following re-activation, to reaffirm their actions of a couple of weeks earlier.  But no.  This had to be de novo.  It was this re-do which I had the chance to observe.  It was obvious that the people who run the Minnesota GOP were not very pleased with the choices of Kittson County, so they made some “corrections”, shall we say.  

When we arrived, we checked in as guests and noted for the record that we were from Polk County.  We were offered three items:  an agenda, a manifest of Republican rules and a brand new constitution to replace the one approved previously.  The delegates were seeing these items for the first time, just as we were.  Well, that was Red Flag Number One.  If they could send letters calling delegates to another convention, presumably they could have sent them copies of this new constitution.  It was several pages long and obviously no one would have had time to read, digest or discuss it.  A Chairman, Kathy Berntstrom, had been “appointed”.  (By whom?) The next several items had her filling - by appointment - various party offices - Secretary, Treasurer, etc.  A parliamentarian was also provided, a gentleman from another county, in fact, Rob Crowe.  Throughout the proceedings, although not qualified to be a delegate and not elected or assigned his role by the delegates, Mr. Crowe repeatedly jumped up to advise the Chairman and steer the meeting.  The entire exercise left no doubt that this was a “correction” as much as it was a “reorganization” of the Kittson County Republicans.  

Of course there were some objections.  Amanda Hughes, who had been re-elected to her office as Chairman by the original convention in February, called for a vote to elect the Chairman.  The make-up of the delegates present on Saturday were of two “teams”, those aligned with the power base, 10 in number, and those who supported the actions taken by the delegates at the previous event, numbering 4.  These factions voted in a block on nearly every measure, every officer, every delegate to the district and state conventions.  The niceties of procedure tended to be disregarded.  As one delegate put it, “We can’t sit here for hours and hours” [doing it right].  One might wonder where were those who had taken their actions and votes in February, but then, too many people will consider their job done if they do it once.  Twice becomes a nuisance.  Or it might have been purely coincidental and people had other commitments that day.  Or perhaps they thought it would just be going through motions and affirming their previous votes or maybe they said, as we’ve often heard, “It’s no use - they will do what they want regardless of what we think. Our votes don’t really matter.”  

It is this latter sentiment that is so deadly to the conduct of our political affairs.  It is a kind of conditioning to submit to higher powers.  And it will be the death of the Republican Party unless it is countered.  

“Unity” was the mantra of those who came from above to deal with Kittson County.  “We need to be united.”  “We need to be unified.”  “The important thing here is unity.”  “Unity”, however, is a very subjective noun.  There is good unity and then there is bad unity.  There was certainly Unity in Nazi Germany.  The Chinese were Unified under Chairman Mao.   The North Koreans enjoy Unity today under Kim Jong-un.  Unity can be a good thing when it is voluntary, when it is by agreement, when this union reflects the will of the people.  Dissent is also a good thing, however, and this has not been recognized by the elites among the Republican Party.  The dissent and differences brought forth at long last, after decades of frustration, in the US House last January were a very healthy symptom that the people and those they elect are not simply puppets or figureheads, but are responsive to the people’s will.  

Well, the convention rolled along, albeit with the token votes at the insistence of Mrs. Hughes and those aligned with the original convention.  One delegate urged passage of this new constitution, with the memorable reasoning that they could call another meeting and undo this action or revise the new constitution if need be.  Sort of like Nancy Pelosi’s famous quote, “You’ll have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”  Hughes and others suggested simply going with the existing constitution and amending that if and when necessary, but for SOME REASON, this was not acceptable.  The new one was passed, 10-4, un-read, never discussed.  

At every turn were the symptoms of a meeting run to counter the actions taken by others before and of a top-down mentality with a side of hypocrisy.  At one point, in asking for support to be a delegate to the state central committee, Dave Hughes said he had “the most experience of anyone  in this room”, whereupon another guest, Michelle Fishbach’s staffer, said in a stage whisper, “Yeah - the most experience in working against an endorsed candidate.”  The irony here, of course, is that Michelle Fishbach worked against, and ran against, an endorsed candidate.  Who was that, again?  Oh, it was Dave Hughes.  Unity, in the Republican Party, is a one-way street.  

There were other signs that all is not well in the MNGOP.  

• Time and again, Mrs. Hughes called for a standing vote on matters but each time this call was dismissed out of hand.  “No.  We’re doing it by ballot.”  No discussion, no vote on that.  The high-handedness was palpable. Meanwhile the clock was running out.

• Mr. Crowe was appointed Parliamentarian.  This position has always been an elected one.  That election process was dispensed with by those outside of Kittson County and, in fact, Mr. Crowe could not even qualify as a delegate there, being from Roseau County.

• The new constitution was insisted upon - it was several pages of single-spaced content.  Had there not been something potentially objectionable in it there would not have been the urgency to pass it sight unseen.

• One guest was video-recording the proceedings.  When Chairman Berntson noticed this she ordered him to stop recording.  Another guest observed that after all, this was a public meeting, not a secret meeting.  The recording, quite properly, resumed.

• When Amanda Hughes urged that the Kittson County Republican organization should begin recruiting good candidates for local offices such as the school board, Mr. Berntson chimed in that because the Hughes family home schools their kids they should have no input in what goes on in the local public schools.  His view gained no traction with participants, but here I will assert  that every American has a vital stake in the performance of our public schools.  You bet we all have input.  

In the end, the delegates - or at least the 14 who were present - got their vote, albeit not through the efforts of the establishment faction but rather their opposition.  Yet the whole thing left a sour taste and no one could have been fooled.  The logical thing would have been to dispense with the “reorganization” inasmuch as the county delegates had but a month before held a convention and made their wishes known.  Or they could have been recalled with one agenda item, namely, get a quorum to reaffirm their actions taken in February.  They could have had the existing constitution under which they had been operating re-affirmed, rather than springing a whole new constitution on delegates minutes before a vote was taken to adopt it, a document no one had had the time to discuss or debate.  It was a clumsy effort, and largely effective, to squelch the cheeky folks of Kittson County, to show them their place - under the heel of the MNGOP establishment who run the show.  How this “grows” a party baffles me.

Kittson County was not the only one.  A convention held Saturday in Bloomington, MN, appeared to take a page from the Dominion Manual of Vote Management, while over in Wisconsin, delegates were banned from participating if they had been caught supporting the opponent of Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos.   I repeat - this is not the way to grow the Republican Party.  We’ve all seen this stuff before - in North Dakota, Louisiana and other Republican conventions, where mics were shut off or people were beaten up in 2012 because they supported Ron Paul.  If this is the kind of bullying and coercion that has become the standard for this party we can hardly blame honest people for walking away - and they will, eventually.  It takes a lot to so anger people as to leave the devil they know for the devil they don’t know, but the time is coming when people’s tolerance will run out.  There may be a huge backlash coming as more and more Democrat corruption is revealed by independent people like James O’Keefe and others.  When that happens, those who have made it their policy to “move to the center” or “go across the aisle” to meet these Democrats to help them oppress the rest of us, will perhaps pay a price.  

There are now two Republican Parties - a party for the elite who are so sophisticated that they find more common ground with Democrats than with their own constituents and a party of the people, the “grassroots”, those who sustain their communities in rural Minnesota, people with a very different set of values - personal freedom under the Constitution, our God-given right to raise our own children as we see fit, the principles which once made America what it has been and could be again.  If these grassroots patriots cannot find a home in this Republican Party, if this Party feels the need to control them rather than listen to them there will be two parties in name as well as in fact and while unfortunate, at least in the short term, it might be inevitable.  The desire for power to control others is not only unbecoming and symptomatic of fear and insecurity, it is self-destructive.  It should be obvious that to make a party grow in numbers it must be responsive to its own constituents.  It must listen rather than dictate. 

The MNGOP in northwestern Minnesota is on very thin ice.  If there is no movement away from the left it might well be doomed.