A
significant story about the virtual collapse of the Republican Party here in
Minnesota appeared in today’s local newspaper – front page bottom: STATE
REPUBLICANS FORESEE MAJOR CHANGES. Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, one of the few
people I follow on Twitter, wrote the
piece and it’s very worth reading if you’re from Minnesota (or if the
Republican Party is having similar problems in your state).
by Charlie
Leck
To me, it sounds
like the whipping the Republican Party took here in Minnesota in this year’s
election will turn out to be a good thing for Republicans and not a bad thing.
It’s forcing that Party to take a careful look at itself and see some of the
problems with which it has failed to deal over the last decade or two.
One of my
favorite, grand, old Republicans here in Minnesota was the late George
Pillsbury. I’d played a number of Wednesday afternoon rounds of golf with this
fine gentleman and that had given us plenty of opportunities to chat politics.
More recently, Mr. Pillsbury, knowing, from some of our chats on the golf
course, that I was a committed Democrat, was willing to converse occasionally
about his disappointments with the direction his Party had taken over the last
decade. I had recent conversations with him about the subject; however, I also remember
having such a conversation with Mr. Pillsbury and my father-in-law, Lyman E.
Wakefield, Jr., over twenty years ago, when they both foresaw the developing
problems that would eventually mire down their great party here in the state.
Mr. Pillsbury
recognized that right-wing radicalism was not conservatism and he worried a
great deal about the way his Party was inching ever-further to the right. The
movement rightward reached its climax two years ago, when the state GOP
nominated an unreasonable, far right-winger to run for governor and the party
made it clear there was no compromising on their hard-core positions. At lot of
Republicans, like Mr. Pillsbury, looked for an alternative and ran a sensible, reasonable
conservative (Tom Horner) for governor as an independent. Many of the most
distinguished Republicans in the state turned away from the Party’s nominee and
that allowed the Democrats to take over the Governor’s Mansion for the first
time in many, many years. The fiasco dealt the Republican Party a very damaging
blow (including bankruptcy) from which it has still not recovered.
Shortly before
the most recent election, Mr. Pillsbury died (13 October 2012). However, he
foresaw what was going to happen in this autumn’s election. He knew there were
so many ways for the Republicans to win and they were, instead, choosing the
one route that would cause them to crash and burn (that is, the position of
ultra-conservatism that locks out too many moderates and intellectual
conservatives).
After his death,
Mr. Pillsbury’s friend and co-author (of his book, The Pillsburys of Minnesota) wrote this
of the fine gentleman’s hope for the renewal of his Party…
“His final
political act said much about his abiding concern for his state and nation.
Pillsbury was a Republican for most of his days. But since leaving the state
Senate in 1982, he has not been a happy one.
“He strived
mightily to reform today’s Republican Party, to widen its philosophical tent to
include reproductive freedom for women, same-sex marriage, and wider
distribution of the fruits of capitalism. He reasoned that aiding the defeat of
Sixth District U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a culture warrior and Tea Party
founder, might hasten the transformation he sought.
“At age 91,
Pillsbury knew he would not see the fruits of his effort. But as one whose
Minnesota frame of reference reached back to Gov. John S. Pillsbury’s arrival
at the Falls of St. Anthony in 1855, his sense of stewardship for his state
included a long view.”
Mr. Pillsbury
believed that Minnesota was a great, great state. He thought it was a fair
state that gave everyone, of whatever background, a fair and just chance to
succeed and find happiness and prosperity. One of the routes to such success
was fair, just and reasonable politics and political discussion and debate. You’d
never hear this gentlemen utter an unkind or insulting word about a Democrat.
He just simply disagreed with them in some of the slightest ways you’d ever
imagine.
Racial and
gender justice was not a question for Mr. Pillsbury or a matter of political
difference. Why, both parties stood for that! There were just different ways to
get there!
Mr. Pillsbury
was pleased that I was so committed to my party – and, with a broad smile on
his face, he called it a good party “by-and-large!”
Now the state’s
Republican Party is looking at the crash that wrecked it on Tuesday night,
November 6. Reasonable party leaders are assembling and analyzing what
happened. As they do, they are recognizing what George Pillsbury had been
trying to tell them for the last decade or two; that is, that the Party must be
an open and inclusive one and cannot take hard-core positions that exclude the
brightest and best people in the state.
Stassen-Berger
quotes the leader of the current state Republican Party as saying, “It was
ugly, from the top of the ticket to the bottom, and all across the country. It
was a bad night. We have to learn from Tuesday night and move on because the
cause is important and there is no time for self-pity.”
As I read
through the article I could see that the light has finally come on for many of
the outstanding and upstanding Republicans. I want to say to them that they
should begin by reading The Pillsburys of
Minnesota and then chat with the folks who knew George Pillsbury best. Then
rebuild the Grand Old Party of Minnesota the way Mr. Pillsbury had been
advocating for so long. The Republican Party here must be grander, bigger, more
inclusive, more compassionate, more positive and more hopeful!
There’s deep
concern yet, among old-time Republicans, that the Party has fallen into the
control of a very small subset of extremely conservative party members who
control the endorsement process. Now, to loosen things up again, Republicans
are beginning to indicate their willingness to test candidates through party
primaries – something they’ve avoided like the plague for the last twenty
years. This would help weed out the endorsement of quack candidates who cannot
stand up under the pressure of an election campaign.
Though I
certainly like the taste of victory, there is nothing I would more exuberantly
cheer for than the revival of the real Republican Party in Minnesota – not the
crazy one of Michele Bachman, but the reasonable and compassionate one of
George Pillsbury of Minnesota.
_________________________
Some
references to George Pillsbury (just in case you are interested):
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