This weekend in addition to endorsing a US Senate candidate we will decide what to do with the MN GOP platform. And this year, it may well take a very different direction. There are many new people in the process, and many of us who have been around for a while who have said for some time that we need a document that better communicates that the party stands for, and against.

Well, we got that. Through processes of conventions we passed what is now known as the statement of Guiding Principles and Values as an official document of the MNGOP. Hopefully the Chair will market the heck out of it at the State Fair and elsewhere. That was one of the goals—to have a short simple summary of what the party stands for despite how some in the legistature may vote. Have a quick read of it here to see what it is and is not.

So here we are, and what is next? Some on the platform committee say wipe the slate clean, or eliminate the platform entirely. Of course others who have fought in resolutions discussions for hours and years to keep points in the platform say don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I understand both sides of this argument, and although I have been quoted as saying "the platform should be killed with a dull meat axe", I do like the sound of a new proposal that has some traction.

The proposal is for leaving the guiding principles doc as it is, and transforming the platform into a new animal that would be named something alone the lines of Legislative Agenda. Now this might be 2 separate documents, one of federal, and another for state issues. Or one document with 2 parts.

The 1 or 2 documents aspect is not an argument I care a whole lot about. What I do care about is that if this up-from-the-ashes document does come to be, that it be streamlined a great deal. Like just above bullet point simple. Not the same legalistic language in 6 point type that ties itself in knots clutching to every issue under the sun.

I believe this can be done as simplified, effective, readable copy—marketable to someone new and curious about the party. And before everyone tells me I'm crazy and that this will just lead to starting the whole behemoth thing over again, I like to think that a new defining document that states specifically how and where our conservative principles can be applied to opposing or supporting the important issues of the day is important enough to try.

The faces in the party always change, the issues before us shift in priority, but the standards of common sense, small government, individual freedoms, responsibility and integrity remain the heart of the Republican party. There is a place where the sausage is made and for this I believe there should be a brief definition-of-priorities document for the Legislature. How and if it will come to be, and who will create it is what will be sorted out this weekend.

I like the look on the bright side of things.  As the new part owner of the Vikings Stadium, I get into all the games for free, plus an annual dividend check for my share of the profits.  Right?

James Simpson of Accuracy in Media filed a special report this week, exposing detailed voter fraud strategy. In it, you'll read how pervasive this problem is on multiple levels in multiple states — with the assistance of the Department of Justice:

This report reveals the Left’s vote fraud strategy for the 2012 elections. Like a KGB operation, it is thorough, multi-faceted and redundant. It has overt and covert, illegal and legal elements, the latter of which are designed, at least in part, to facilitate illegal activities later. It is a deliberate, premeditated, comprehensive plan to win the 2012 presidential election at all costs, and is in keeping with the organizational methods, associations and ethics of the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, Barack Obama.

The Left seeks fundamental structural change to our entire form of government. In keeping with their amoral, means-justifies-ends philosophy, they will register any voters, dead or alive, legal or illegal, who will then vote as many times as possible, in order to establish a “permanent progressive majority.” As two New York Democrats recently caught in a vote fraud scandal told police, “voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections…”

On a local scale, Minnesota's Secretary of State is mentioned and how his election helped the controversial election of Senator Al Franken:

The Soros funded Secretary of State Project seeks to elect leftist Democrats to that critical post. SoS Project-backed Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie demonstrated the value of this program when comedian Al Franken eked out a victory in his 2008 U.S. Senate race amidst numerous, well-documented allegations of vote fraud.

The SoS Project did poorly in 2010, however. Ritchie was one of only two SoS-backed candidates to survive the Republican tidal wave.

The project’s website, secstateproject.org, is no longer operational. There is a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/secstateproject. It does not appear to get much traffic. This may reflect a temporary lull in activity, or Soros and his minions have moved to more promising initiatives.

What can we do? Read the whole Accuracy in Media report where you'll find national organizations working to fight voter fraud.  First is exposing it, which James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart did with ACORN in 2009, and groups here like Minnesota Majority after the Franken/Coleman recount. Now, it's up to us to get involved: spread the word, organize, and get the Voter ID amendment passed. Here are a few organizations in Minnesota with boots on the ground:

Protect My Vote

MN Voters Alliance

Voter ID For MN

The most critical election in our lifetime is only a few months away. The other side supporting fraud and cheating is working hard to win elections with their strategies in place.

There is a movement within the Minnesota Republican Party to "simplify" the State Platform.    "The Platform is too long and complicated," they say, and they have a point.  It IS, but the U.S. Constitution is much longer.  Their solution is to, basically, do away with the platform altogether!  That is simply too simplistic.  It discards and disregards the work of countless caucus and convention attendees over the years, dismisses their very real concerns about scores of issues, and suggests that the Party only cares about a few, brief, high-sounding 'principles' with little bearing on actual public policy. 

It seems to me that before you can say a document is "too long" you have to be able to say what the PURPOSE of the document is.  Certainly the full MNGOP platform is too lengthy as a "marketing document" to hand out at the county fair and get people's heads nodding quickly in agreement.  We HAVE such a "statement of principles" already, so what purpose is there to eliminating the rest of the platform?  If the problem is that the rest of the platform is too long, isn't the proper solution to reduce the length in some sensible fashion, to better serve its purpose, and then change our process to reduce future unnecessary growth?  Why such radical, hasty and poorly considered change that may create NEW problems? 

Oh, some propose just reducing our platform to a "hard limit" on the number of planks-- less than 100-- while others would allow unlimited planks but require every last one of them to be submitted all over again every two years, rather than merely making small changes (always additions, unfortunately) to a Standing Platform, which has long been our practice.  Seeking to limit the total planks is arbitrary at best.  We shouldn't do it.   There is no reason that any given "principle" can be described by any specific number of policy statements.  For example, if we have a principle which says, "taxes should be kept low and simple," which of the 27 different taxes should we say we would reduce, if this principle is limited to 5 or even 10 planks? 

Requiring every resolution to be passed at every state convention is an even worse solution, in my opinion, for three reasons:

1.   First and most critically, the most important aspect of the current platform is the resolutions process itself, where everybody has a chance to be "heard" on the issues.  Having a resolution passed in caucus and advanced to the BPOU convention gets people involved and rewards them for their involvement, regardless of whether their item passes beyond that point or not.  (We always announce that we will send a digest of all resolutions, whether they pass or not, to our legislators so they know what the grassroots are concerned with.)   Few of us come to the Party for the party; we care about the issues far more.  Take that away and what's the point? 

2.   The trouble with any statement of principles (and why are there always 10 of them?)  Is that if you give the task to 1000 convention delegates, you will get at least 800 different versions, all more or less equally valid and all relatively useless as a means of defining what we believe public policy ought to be.  It is far too easy to defend both sides of a particular legislative issue using the exact same set of principles. 

3.   We should NOT be looking to replace the platform and the resolutions process with any statement of principles, but rather solving the problem that we are trying to do too many things with a single document we call the "platform."  The last convention added a [permanent] statement of principles to preface the platform, so we already have a "Marketing document."  We need to substantially slim down what we now call the “platform” and have it represent only those Policies (in general) that define and describe the principles and do not contradict them, or each other, yet outline for our legislators our clear expectations.  The third platform "piece" we need would be some sort of legislative priorities—issues of temporary and/or specific interest—and these might reasonably be revised and reapproved (based on resolutions) every two years.  Filtering out BPOU-level and CD-level concerns from this list and encouraging each of those organizations to forward all such concerns to their local legislators would effectively limit the size of the platform and make the overall platform much more useful.

The advantage to splitting the current platform document into three parts is that it can then serve three different purposes without being "too long" for any of them, maintaining the ability of the grassroots to participate fully in the platform process, and allowing everyone to access the level of detail and "simplicity" they choose.  We gain more unity by division, and if we add rather than subtract.

"Not actually an Obama 2012 ad," says the National Republican Senatorial Committee — but if more political ads are like this, people may watch and learn:

Hat tip: Chicks On The Right.

Dear Old Dad would sometimes say "that's just cutting off your nose to spite your face."  I don't know how common the expression is, but I'm finding a lot of use for it, lately.  When Dad used it he meant that somebody was doing something counterproductive of his own ends or deliberately choosing a bad solution for the wrong reasons.  I am reminded of that when I keep seeing people who claim to be Republicans, but who then work to sabotage the Republican Party.  They're highly inventive at doing it, too. 

For example, you have the kind who get elected as a delegate to the convention, and then stay away because they do not "like" the one candidate running for the nomination.  How silly is that?  If you think you can do better, or know somebody that can, get that hat in the ring!  You can't beat somebody with nobody.  Like it or not, the rest of us "establishment" types will go to the election with the candidate we have, unless you give us a better one.  And when the election rolls around, I don't want to hear how the Republican candidate "isn't conservative enough."    One thing you can count on is that the Republican is more conservative than the Democrat, regardless of what the Democrat says.  The other thing I hear too often is that somebody "can't vote for [the incumbent Republican] because he voted for/against X."  How stupid is that?  Some guy that votes as you like 85, 90 or 95% of the time, and you prefer a Democrat that will vote as you like 10, 5 or 0% of the time!?!   Because that is what will happen!

"Republicans" and conservatives are the ONLY people I know who "think" this way.  Democrats vote Democrat, and they don't care what the candidate does or says because they understand that without getting elected they don't have POWER to force their ideas on the rest of us.  It's time Republicans (and pretend Republicans) understood that very simple fact, that the election is between good and evil and we're the good guys.  If you know a better guy and can convince the rest of us AND stick around long enough to help get him elected, great, wonderful.  If you're going to pick up your marbles and go home because you can't see that very simple choice, then kwitcherbellyachin'.

Above is the closing 6:45 featuring Minnesota from the Fox News special report on voter fraud entitled "Stealing Your Vote." Learn more by visiting http://www.ProtectMyVote.com/

This new short video is so simple and honest it should frighten anyone not yet of the statist mindset. Turn off the sci-fi and give this one a try.

Yesterday was Minnesota’s CD2 convention…go ahead, queue the lights because the action and drama are about to begin.  There was big business to be completed – people to nominate, speeches to be given, and elections to be held.  One item on the agenda for the day was the election of six National Delegates and Alternates (three each category) to represent the 2nd Congressional district at the RNC convention in Tampa this August.

Like so many other days, this one started out with promise…but it quickly turned into another eye opening lesson on the “How To’s” of how a small group of individuals can coordinate an internal army to make big things happen.  The Ron Paul contingent set their sites on obtaining all of the national delegate and alternate slots.  A lofty goal some may say, but one they executed upon quite flawlessly.  At the end of the day, they’d secured all six positions with huge margins in the vote tally.  Rumor has it that the closest “non” winner had over 100 votes less than the 3^rd place delegate.  When the voting strength was only 307 to begin with, that tells you one thing loud and clear – the Ron Paul team had some serious boots on the ground.  They were not stealthy or quiet about their objectives…and yet they still managed to shock many convention goers.

So why…why were people still shocked, left standing there with mouths agape?  I think a big reason is how this game is being played.  I applaud the Ron Paul camp for implementing an effective strategy right out of the Left’s playbook…they’ve analyzed the process, assessed the weak points, and attacked in true soldier fashion.  Chaz Johnson, of Congressman Kline’s camp, observed that in all of the BPOU conventions he’d attended since the “season” opened, he didn't recall seeing a Mitt Romney table until the CD2 convention while at the same time there was a Ron Paul force at every single event.  My own observation was that the volunteers manning Governor Romney’s table didn't seem to be overly engaged with the convention goers even though they had good table placement right by the front entrance.  Was that maybe a “tell” that they didn’t know their audience because they’d not been in attendance to other events? 

With our representative government process, we’ve been educated to believe that the people elected are indicative of the people being represented.  But the hard lesson we continue to learn as a party is that one well organized and managed group can overtake the process and instill an elected body that really only represents a small portion of the whole.  For me, yesterday was disappointing and validates that old adage, “in order to not be shark food, you best not act like chum.”

So the question is, can Minnesota be effective at this late juncture and secure some national delegates for Governor Romney?  Do we have the chutzpa to lay aside what’s already done and rally troops to counter the Ron Paul contingent??  There’s a bit less than 4 weeks till the State convention in St. Cloud – as a delegate, I’ll be there to cast my vote, but will it count?  Yesterday’s bitter lesson says that maybe it won’t.  But, I’m going to stay in the game with my head held high because I firmly believe we only have one shot to make Barack Obama a one term President…and I’m sorry, while Congressman Paul is a good man, he’s not the right man to lead this national fight.

My fellow Americans:

This week as American families draw together in worship, we join with millions upon millions of others around the world also celebrating the traditions of their faiths. During these days, at least, regardless of nationality, religion, or race, we are united by faith in God, and the barriers between us seem less significant.

Observing the rites of Passover and Easter, we’re linked in time to the ancient origins of our values and to the unborn generations who will still celebrate them long after we’re gone. As Paul explained in his Epistle to the Ephesians, “He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. So then you were no longer strangers and aliens, but you were fellow citizens of God’s household.”

This is a time of hope and peace, when our spirits are filled and lifted. It’s a time when we give thanks for our blessings-chief among them, freedom, peace, and the promise of eternal life.