Cam Winton on GOP Messaging

On today’s Gilmore and Glahn internet radio show, we hosted in our second half-hour Republican Cam Winton, who ran for Mayor of Minneapolis last year.

On the show, Winton offered some parting advice on the GOP campaign this November.  His four-point platform was structured on the Jeff Johnson vs. Mark Dayton race, but I think it will have wider appeal.  Here, I reprint Cam's remarks from the show, beginning at the 49:20 mark,

·       1 ) Under Jeff Johnson, all kids in Minnesota would have the best possible teacher in their classroom.  Under Dayton, they won’t – because Dayton defends teachers union bosses last in first out and is trying to keep out Teach for America.  

2) Under Jeff Johnson, all people in Minnesota could choose the health plan that works best for them – as any and all insurers compete against each other to provide the cheapest possible insurance.  Under Dayton, they won’t – because we’ll continue with the centrally-planned debacle of MNSure that limits competition.  

3) Under Jeff Johnson, we’ll make Minnesota an attractive place to start a new business – so that we can grow the next Medtronic or Target.  Under Dayton, we’ll continue to have stifling regulation that leads to us being #47 in the nation for per-capita number of new business starts.  [On the air, Cam said dead last. But he looked it up and we were #47 in 2013 according to Kaufman Foundation.]

4) Under Jeff Johnson, government will be a good steward of tax dollars, paying for our priorities.  Under Dayton, it won’t – we’ll keep spending on a palace for politicians and a football stadium where the numbers don’t add up.

Back in May of last year, I offered my own bloated five point message, aimed at the low information voter and reprinted here:

·        “We will make it easier for you to start and run your own business.”  Does not require voters to know how Minnesota ranks on business formations.

·        “We will help get your child out of a failing school”   Avoids insider phrases like achievement gap or vouchers.

             

·        “We will make sure your tax money is not wasted”  Labels like spending, deficits, debt, work less well when you are not familiar with the condition of state finances.

·        “You will get to keep more of what you earn”  Every one pays taxes, but a pitch based on “eliminating the new 4^th tier income tax” presumes way to much information.

·        “We will help those who need it most”  This phrase is what the argument around “priorities” really comes down to, but without the abstraction.

Start-Up Minnesota

Perhaps the most-cited statistic in Minnesota is that the state is home to 19 Fortune 500 corporations, the 2^nd most, per capita, behind Connecticut.  Minnesota rightly takes pride in its place within the corporate pantheon.   Despite high profile departures, like Northwest Airlines, the number has remained around 19 (plus or minus one or two) for the past decade.

However, every time I hear about the 19, I get a little more uneasy.  Scanning the horizon, it’s tough to see where the next 3M or Medtronic is coming from.  Perusing the Fortune 500 list, you see companies that have been around for decades, some more than a century.

The Shape of the Playing Field, Part 4

During the recent Super Bowl blowout, the real winner was not on the field but found in the commercial breaks.  Topping many lists was the Seinfeld reunion ad.  That 1990’s TV sitcom was famously “a show about nothing” (motto:  no hugging, no learning).

We are now only nine months from the 2014 election.  The media and political classes are obsessed with the latest fundraising figures and poll numbers.  Tactics and strategies will be hotly debated and the issues and candidates defined.

This time, I hope we can do things differently.  Minnesota (and America) desperately needs to have an election about something.  Rarely have the two major political parties offered such clearly opposing worldviews: those who say there is no difference between them have simply not been paying attention.  But not everyone agrees what those differences are.

The Politics of Poverty, Part 1

Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten recently wrote about the Metropolitan Council regional government and its efforts to remake the region’s demography using data collected through a “Fair Housing and Equity Assessment.”  Kersten writes,

Using these data, the council will lay out what the region’s 187 municipalities must do to disperse poverty.

Minnesota’s New Feudalism

I’ve written lately of the transformation of the North Star state under the one-party rule of the Democrats under the banner of The Banana Republic of Minnesota.

Author Joel Kotkin has taken to describing the transformation of his home state of California under one-party Democrat rule as the New Feudalism.  Since Minnesota’s liberal progressives see the Golden State as a model for all of America, Kotkin’s analysis may give us a glimpse into our own future.
 

We Need a Reform Conservatism

Ross Douthat, the New York Times’ only conservative columnist, posted a helpful piece today on “What Is Reform Conservatism?  An agenda for an almost-movement.”

I met Ross a few weeks ago when he was in town to give a talk on his latest book, before a packed house.  I think he is someone we should be listening to.

Ross concedes in his post today that the idea of reform conservatism “has not exactly caught fire within the G.O.P.”  When you are fighting against the daily catastrophes brought on by one-party rule—as we are in Minnesota—or the too-many-scandals-too-count in Washington, it’s tough to look longer term at ideas worth implementing when (not if) we are back in power.

I’m optimistic that—in Minnesota—we may be back in 2014, so now is the time for building a consensus around a positive agenda for change in state government.

Last month I made a few suggestions to get started on a reform agenda for Minnesota.  Today, Ross offers a six point agenda that is useful as a starting point for discussions.  I wish he would have included a point on education reform (as I did) but that is more a quibble than a criticism.

More useful for the idea of establishing a conservative reform agenda are the two premises Ross’ articulates as underlying his thinking on the subject.

First, Ross discusses the need for “making family life more affordable, upward mobility more likely, and employment easier to find.”

Second, Ross names that the biggest hurdle to making that happen,

The existing welfare-state institutions we’ve inherited from the New Deal and the Great Society, however, often make these tasks harder rather than easier:  Their exploding costs crowd out every other form of spending

I’ve made exactly that same point before.  You would think that we would share common ground with those on the other side of the fence who genuinely want to help the needy.  The No. 1 reason why there is not more money to help the neediest?  Because of the huge share of our budget devoted to programs that we know don’t work.

Ross’ conclusion,

So we don’t face a choice between streamlining the welfare state and making it more supportive of work and family; we should be doing both at once.

Just as important are the items that Ross lists that should not be part of a conservative reform agenda:  no cap and trade, no more tax increases, etc.

I agree with the idea that we need something of a conservative reform movement.  Let’s get started.

Reaching the Low Information Voter, Part 2

In the first part of this series, I explore Minnesota’s current political landscape and suggest some messages crafted to reach democracy’s newest key demographic: low information voters.  In this part, I dig deeper into what low information voters actually know, and how to approach them.

Reaching the Low Information Voter, Part 1

With the 2013 legislative session now behind us, the 2014 election campaign can begin in earnest.  With major elections set for Governor, U.S. Senator, and the state House of Representatives, Minnesota’s voters have the opportunity to change the direction of the state’s politics for the third time in four years.

For the state’s Democrats, now enjoying one-party rule in St. Paul, the election is theirs to lose.  Thus the focus will inevitably fall on the Republicans’ response to the opportunity before them.   Already, there is no shortage of advice, coming from all points on the political compass.

Ted Cruz Writes on "Opportunity Conservatism"

Newly-sworn in U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) writes in the Washington Post on the need for Republicans to promote "Opportunity Conservatism."  He's not talking about the Compassionate Conservatism of a decade ago, but something more along the lines of the Aspirational Conservatism that we have advocated in this space.

Senator Cruz is definitely one to watch in coming years.

Saving the Middle Class

[A repost of a book excerpt from earlier this year]

Is America's middle class in danger?  In October 2011, Anne Applebaum wrote an opinion piece in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph— “Can America survive without its backbone, the middle class?”—and put forward this thesis,

I would argue that the growing divisions within the American middle class are far more important than the gap between the very richest and everybody else.  They are important because to be “middle class”, in America, has such positive connotations, and because most Americans think they belong in it.  The middle class is the “heartland”; the middle class is the “backbone of the country”.  In 1970, Time magazine described Middle America as people who “sing the national anthem at football games – and mean it”.[1]

Unfortunately, so much government policy is aimed at helping lower income families—through social welfare programs—and upper income people—through subsidies for the “Creative Classes” and outright crony capitalism, that the middle class, the middle-middle, ends up getting squeezed out.

Avoiding "Sherpa Conservatism"

[Prototype for "The Column"]

Over the next few months, in the wake of the recent elections, Republicans and conservatives at every level (national, state, local) will (and should) be engaged in a big rethink of who we are and what we are about.  Clearly, the current approach is not working well enough.

Those on the other side, in an uncharacteristic bout of apparent helpfulness, suggest that Republicans need to return to the halcyon days of the "moderate Republican."  This political creature was quick to compromise and always looking for ways to split the difference.  I'm all for improving the tone and working constructively, but limits need to be set.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg has coined a phrase for this "moderate" approach to politics:  Sherpa Conservatism.  Writing in National Review, Goldberg describes Sherpa Conservatism as follows,

"Good conservatives... should know their place and gladly serve as Sherpas to the great mountaineers of liberalism, pointing out occasional missteps, perhaps suggesting a slight course correction from time to time, but never losing sight of the need for upward 'progress' and happily carrying the extra baggage for progressives in their zealous but heroic quest for the summit."

The Perpetually Forthcoming Book

Before my recent adventures in electoral politics, I was rolling out parts of a book on government reform under the nom de guerre "Private Citizen."  So far, I have reissued three excerpts that can be found here

• "More Admirals Than Ships" explores the bureaucratic animal
• "Education" more money is not the answer
• "The Reform Agenda" whatever can't go on forever, won't

Modernizing Conservatism

Power Line's Steven Hayward writes on the topic of modernizing conservatism in The Breakthrough Journal.

The Receding Tide of Prosperity

Picking up on yesterday's theme, there are more good analyses popping up of the current situation, particularly of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon.  Over on his blog, Walter Russell Mead calls attention to an analysis by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic.  She builds on the essay I linked to yesterday by Kenneth Anderson, who argues that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement really represents an intra-class conflict between the upper and middle tiers of the (his word) virtueocracy.

Before returning to that thread, I first want to call more attention to to this piece from Anne Applebaum in the Daily Telegraph, "Can America survive without its backbone, the middle class?"  This quote helps frame the issue,

"Despite all the loud talk of the “1 per cent” of Americans who, according to a recent study, receive about 17 percent of the income, a percentage which has more than doubled since 1979, the existence of a very small group of very rich people has never bothered Americans.  But the fact that some 20 per cent of Americans now receive some 53 per cent of the income is devastating."

Rich Lowry, in the New York Post, picks up on a theme of inter-class struggle in "Stuck at the Bottom:  Culture and the American Dream."  He concludes, "old-fashioned bourgeois virtues, and particularly marriage, rarely figure in the public debate.  Everyone is more comfortable talking about taxes or the banks, as the American Dream frays."

Finally, from Sunday, Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times about stresses on the middle class and diminishing expectations.  While the OWS crowd may harbor some legitimate (if well-hidden) grievances, their preferred policy solutions--higher taxes and a bigger government--will only lead to more grief,

"The public-sector workplace has become a kind of artificial Eden, whose fortunate inhabitants enjoy solid pay and 1950s-style job security and retirement benefits, all of it paid for by their less-fortunate private-sector peers.  Some on the left have convinced themselves that this 'success' can lay the foundation for a broader middle-class revival.  But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door."

Instead, Douthat makes an argument for what he terms "small-government egalitarianism," which to my ears sounds a lot like "aspirational conservatism" combined with "redesigning government."  His concept,

"would seek to reform the government before we pour more money into it, along lines that encourage upward mobility and benefit the middle class.  This would mean seeking a carefully means-tested welfare state, a less special interest-friendly tax code, and a public sector that worked for taxpayers and parents rather than the other way around."

Back to McArdle's analysis, "The Rage of the Almost-Elite."  Picking up on Anderson's analysis, she extends it, by harkening back to this work by George Orwell from the last century, where he describes another time and place occupied by the "wreckage left behind when the tide of Victorian prosperity receded."

McArdle touches on the culture theme, as did Lowry, not to praise "old-fashioned bourgeois virtues" as he did, but to explain why members of Anderson's "New Class" seem so obligated to trash those same virtues,

"It's not entirely crazy to suspect, as Orwell did, that this has something to do with money.  Specifically, you sneer at the customs of the people you might be mistaken for."

But McArdle confirms with her experience that the New Class saves their ire more for the tier directly above them, than the classes they view as below them,

"They didn't see it coming.  Yes, yes, maybe they were naive about the possibilities of a fulfilling and secure life in the field of non-profit environmental management.  Probably they should not have sunk tens of thousands of dollars into acquiring a BFA.  But these mistakes didn't usually used to be crippling.... Unfortunately their choices became utterly, horrifyingly disastrous just at the moment when we had a terrible financial crisis that spiked our unemployment rate up to 10%."


I find much of this analysis persuasive in explaining current events, like the OWS protests.  More importantly, these analyses show the Internet at its finest.  Rather than fomenting dissent and spreading confusion, analysts around the globe are able to read and react to each others' work almost in real time, strengthening arguments and building on one another.

Arthur Brooks on MSNBC

Catching up from two weeks ago, Arthur Brooks--President of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and author of The Battle--appeared on MSNBC to debate with Matt Miller.  Brooks is a good spokesman for the cause.

Joel Kotkin on the "Gentry Presidency" vs the "Grass Roots Economy"

Over at Politico, Joel Kotkin writes about President Obama and the "Gentry Presidency."  Kotkin argues that the President's "post-industry" view of America has alienated him from the lower-income and middle classes.

According to Joel,

"Essentially, gentry liberalism reflects the coalescing interests among the financial, technological and academic upper strata.  For these people, the Great Recession was brief and ended long ago."

Unfortunately, the recession hasn't ended for the rest of us.

"The essential problem of gentryism, however, is that it fails to address the fundamental economic needs of the vast majority.  It is also tied to policy prescriptions that either fail to spur broad-based growth or, in some cases, hinder it."

Coming around to our theme, Kotkin concludes,

"Overall, gentry rule has fostered a sense throughout the American public of national decline and diminishing personal expectations.  Small property ownership, the key to a democratic capitalist society, is fraying."

The solution,

"Clearly, as even many on the left now acknowledge, we need a bold and radical break with gentry politics...Perhaps it is time to focus instead on how to shift capital and incentives to the grass-roots economy."

The American Dream Reborn: One Town at a Time

In a series of posts [1,2,3] the past few weeks, I have urged city leaders to put aside the fashionable and ephemeral and embrace the hard and unglamorous work of making our communities more friendly to business.

It seems that someone is already doing that.  The recently elected mayor (Jeff Lunde-R) of the northwest Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park has launched an initiative to reconnect businesses and city staff to solve problems, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The article makes clear that the effort was born out of frustration with red tape and city-made obstacles for business expansion.

The "Business Forward" initiative will hold a series of meeting this fall to brainstorm ideas.  "We don't want a bunch of people sitting around complaining. We want people to tell us what is good and bad with what the city does."

And it sounds like no issue is to small or too big to tackle,

"Such goals could include changes in sign ordinances, fees and inspections, Lunde said.  They could be issues solely for the city to address, but they also could include other partners, such as colleges or the county, with such issues as workforce training or transit."

Rebuilding from the bottom up.  What's not to like?

Grassroots Capitalism vs. Spender of Last Resort

Tuesday's Minneapolis Star Tribune features dueling columns on the President's proposed jobs plan.  Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Clinton, ("Government is the Spender of Last Resort") never met government spending he didn't like.  Far more interesting are are the thoughts of Joe Selvaggio, who supports "grass-roots capitalism."  Selvaggio is a former priest, union organizer, and serial founder of non-profits.

What he describes sounds a lot like the evolving economy being described by Walter Russell Mead.  As for Mr. Selvaggio, when a former organizer for Cesar Chavez quotes Adam Smith and says, "Stop looking for the government to take care of you, unless you really can't take care of yourself," then perhaps we have a philosophy (Rebuilding from the Bottom Up) that can unite left and right.

Essay on the Uses of Hypocrisy

I have been experimenting with longer form posts that cover more ground than my usual fare.  A new effort "Hypocrisy is Good" is posted above as a separate page.  I am convinced of the need to make the moral case for capitalism and free markets, and this essay is a start.

The Danger of One-Party Rule, Part 2

Today's Minneapolis Star Tribune includes a story about an upcoming special election for the Minnesota State Senate.  Headlined "Minneapolis sees diminished clout at Capitol", it ranges far and wide in an effort to explain the City's diminished influence at the state legislature.  The article mentions the 2010 Republican takeover of both houses and key retirements that reduced the local delegation's seniority.

Yet the article bravely refuses to discuss the two most obvious points to be made regarding Minneapolis and its experience in the 2011 legislative session.  First was the multi-billion budget deficit, which resulted in reductions to local government aid and school aid across the state.  The article makes it sound that budget cuts to Minneapolis were purely the result of Republican spite.

More importantly, the article fails to mention that the City, from school board members to U.S. Senate, has not a single Republican representative at any level of government.  A few days ago, in an earlier post I discussed the dangers of one-party rule.  The Star Tribune quotes another State Senator, saying "We're a liberal city and liberals are not in charge."  Indeed.

Liberalism in Minneapolis is now a victim of its own success.  The district with the upcoming special election cast only 11 percent of its votes for the Republican in 2010.  Also that year, the local congressional district went more than two-thirds for the democratic candidate.

With liberalism holding a complete monopoly on power, the City has no advocate to press its case in St. Paul or with the Republican House of Representatives in Washington, DC.

It's now up to the people to decide.  Stick with liberalism in overwhelming numbers and watch the City's decline continue or create a more competitive political environment where both parties have a stake in the success of the state's largest city.

Minneapolis is no outlier on this point, pick any "blue" state where a single metropolitan area dominates the landscape--Illinois, Maryland, Michigan--and we find a similar situation.  A one-party liberal domination of the urban area, to the extent that Republicans/Conservatives feel they can safely steer clear and have nothing to lose. 

For some weeks now, I have been beating the drum for the idea that it is important to create an environment where the "wrong people" have the incentive to do the "right thing."  It's even more important than getting the "right people" elected to office.  Liberals in Minneapolis have succeeded spectacularly in getting the "right people" elected (from their viewpoint).  They are now faced with problem of getting the "wrong people" to help them.  Good luck!