Riding The Storm Out

It was a long night at the GOP "Victory" Party in Bloomington. We started our broadcast at 8pm, ended at 1am, and hung around until 1:45am hoping that we would hear that Pawlenty had finally secured his victory. Of course, that wasn't finalized until 10am this morning, so our decision to call it a night when we did was a wise one.

Going into the evening, my expectations on the state level were quite low. The two candidates that I was most concerned about were Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann. The fact that they both won made the rest of the news (almost entirely bad) much easier to swallow. I wasn't shocked to see the GOP lose the Minnesota House and fall even further into the minority in the Senate. The biggest surprises for me were Gil Gutknecht losing in the 1st District and Pat Anderson being defeated rather easily by Rebecca Otto.

But the biggest loser of the election has to be Mike Hatch. The results were a big FU to the long-time power seeker. Despite the fact that a wave of blue swept the state (actually a wave of green in my district, the 5th), Hatch was unable to win. Voters pulled the lever for DFL candidates up and down the ballot, but enough of them had qualms about Hatch to allow Pawlenty to hang on. And I don't think it was issues either. It was all about personality and the outcome was a personal rebuke of Hatch.

Despite the fact that it was a down night for Republicans, the party was actually quite lively and we had a lot of fun. We were able to interview a number of great guests including Rudy Boschwitz, Vin Weber, Ron Carey, and Norm Coleman, who claimed that his wife Laurie is a big fan of the NARN. Boschwitz and Weber were able to provide some much needed perspective on what the evening's results really meant and how one defeat by no means ends a political career.

The highlight of the interviews had to be Michele Bachmann. After her victory speech, she did interviews with two televisions stations and then stopped by The Patriot broadcast area. We were her first radio interview and as always she was energetic, enthusiastic, and a little bit feisty. She's not someone who we have to worry about going wobbly once she gets to Washington.

Attending these events as media representative is always a bit strange, since we are quite openly partisan. We're used to being on the other side of the wall and it's difficult to pretend that you're a detached observer like most of the media do. And I must report that there was some cheering in the press box, especially when it was announced that Stillwater's spending levies had gone down to defeat. Let's just say that Saint Paul takes his pocketbook issues quite seriously.

One thing that was evident last night and continues to seen today is the difference in the way that Republicans handle defeat compared to Dems. There wasn't a lot of head hanging, finger pointing, or blaming outside forces for the setback. No one is going to call for investigations into the voting machines or blame the voters for being too stupid to know what's good for them. Rather, most Republicans will take responsibility for the defeat, look within ourselves to see what we did wrong, and figure out what we need to change to have a different result next time around. We're not victims, we just lost some political races.

At this point, it's difficult to draw broad conclusions from the election results. One point that I've been trying to make for some time is that Minnesota is still a predominately Democratic state, although less so than in the past. After the last couple of elections, there has been a lot of talk about Minnesota moving from blue to red and maybe even being a purple state (this despite that fact that 2004 was hardly a banner year for Minnesota Republicans). Perhaps these results are just an example of two steps forward, one step back, but I believe they more accurately reflect the true balance of power in the state.

That's not to say that progress hasn't been made in moving Minnesota to the right. It's just that it's going to be a very long, very slow transformation and rather than hoping for sweeping changes, Republicans should be content to chip away at the DFL when the opportunity presents itself and to play defense and expect losses in years where the stars are aligned against them.

The good news is that Republicans, especially conservatives, are usually better at playing defense--standing athwart history yelling "Stop" in Buckley's immortal words--than being on offense. And we'll have plenty of opportunities to do just that in the next few years, especially here in the North Star State. Button up your chin strap T-Paw. It's time to play some tenacious D.