My inner conflict emerges from my first term in the Minnesota House of Representatives after a long tenure as a grassroots activist and commentator. I am a life-long conservative who came of age listening to Rush Limbaugh in my high school years, then became active in the Tea Party after the birth of my first son in 2009. During my many years watching politics from the sidelines, I have often shared the conviction of many alongside me that “RINO” politicians need to be challenged. I have watched as my representation in Congress went from Michelle Bachmann – a lightening rod and rabble-rouser in a mold not unlike my own - to Tom Emmer, who has managed his tenure much differently than his predecessor and managed to ascend to the office of Majority Whip as a result. I have also watched as friends who proceeded me in the Minnesota House played their cards in a confrontational way, breaking away from the primary House Republican Caucus to establish their own “New House Republican Caucus.” From these observations, I have gleaned some impressions which guide my thought process today.

I have noticed that legislative effectiveness has not come to those who eat their own. The New House Republican Caucus in Minnesota consisted of four members who broke off from the rest of their Republican colleagues in 2019, before the lockdowns took hold, and spent the subsequent two years attempting to one-up the conservative bona fides of other elected Republicans. In 2022, the results were this: two of the four lost elections, and two secured open state senate seats after redistricting, effectively abolishing their insurgent caucus without (to my knowledge) passing a single piece of legislation.

What they lack in legislative legacy is inversely proportionate to what they left in another form – distrust. The relationships within the current House Republican Caucus, while largely productive and cordial, remain tainted by the memory of “betrayal.”

Known as an ideological ally of the New House Republican Caucus, my campaign for the House was initially viewed by some as a harbinger of further discord. I have worked hard to distinguish my approach as equal parts hardline conservative and “team-player.” That has served me well in the minority under a Democrat trifecta but remains to be tested if and when Republicans secure a majority in the House.

What I see in Washington DC does not give me hope. The bickering and infighting seems cannibalistic. But then, something like Saturday’s vote to send $95 billion to Ukraine and Israel while doing nothing on the border happens, and I think: what’s the point?

I share this inner monologue without having arrived at a workable conclusion. But I do have some nascent thoughts that may be worthy of crowdsource.

Scripture tells us that God’s judgment often manifests as a people turned over to a depraved mind, and that failure to obey God’s commandments will result in failure to administer the kingdom properly. Deuteronomy 28, Psalms 1, and Romans 1 come to mind. I suspect the underlying principle of those passages applies to both sides of the grassroots-establishment divide.

The sin of the establishment is obvious. They fail to serve those who elect them. It is entirely fair to regard funding to Ukraine before securing the border of the United States as a betrayal. Sincerely, I don’t know how to ask voters to overlook it, and I’m fairly certain that I shouldn’t even try. If you are not going to provide people with the value proposition you campaigned on, then you have no right to complain when they come seeking your scalp in a primary.

On the grassroots side, however, I again note that those who engage in unbridled cannibalistic rage have no better track record. When is the last time unfocused anger resulted in better policy?

In Minnesota, it has only perpetuated an ineffectual legacy of losing elections, as both sides of the divide seek to winnow down the factional opposition, making the tent smaller and smaller as we head into the next cycle.

What’s the solution?

As I have said, I don’t know. But I’m starting with prayer. That’s not a trite platitude, but an echo of the sound counsel offered by Benjamin Franklin as debate descended into insurmountable gridlock at the Constitutional Convention in 1787:

We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and by-word down to future ages...I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service.

What followed that prayer was not confrontation and antagonism, but inspired unity. The delegates did not badger each other into consensus but forged it through persuasion and humility.

Can such an approach work today? If we proceed with sound moral determination to persuade through example and argument, while treating those within our ranks with grace when they disagree, can we salvage the Republican Party from its current fecklessness?

Again, I don’t know. What I do know is, what we have been trying has not worked. And the model I suggest has two virtues: it has not recently been tried, and it aligns with the counsel of God.