Check out what happened when "the rogue 6" Republican legislators in Minnesota decided to vote their constituent preference instead of the party position on the Transportation bill.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/15998752.html

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/03/06/gopbacklash/

You might have used the rogue six as a case study at your conference.

What does the centrist do if the party's position disagrees with his constituents' preferences? The answer, spoken from the party leadership to the representative, used to be, "Vote with your constituency, because we want you back."

But the party leaderships have since taken care of that by gerrymandering Congressional districts so that there's a 95% re-election rate for the House -- freeing >90% of Congress to safely take the party "hard line".

Note that this has been an entirely bi-partisan process. Who says the two parties can't cooperate when it is in their interest to do so?

("Gerrymander incumbants in forever? Agreed! Don't mention the coming enititlement funding crisis while we are promising more tax cuts/new national health care entitlements? Agreed!!")

If you want centrism in Congress there's a simple way to get it: Re-draw Congressional election districts so elections are contested and the re-election rate drops significantly.

Don't hold your breath.

So they are punishing the Republican Rogue 6, the ones who crossed over and voted to override Pawlenty's veto. They are endorsing other candidates to run against them at the Republican local conventions.

Part of the transportation bill allowed the county boards to vote on a .25 percent sales tax increase to fund mass transit.

A little background here . . . county board is a non-partisan job, mostly because voting on road repair and snow plowing and funding county sheriff and such is non partisan stuff. But the Republicans decided a few years back to endorse candidates for county board (the Dems don't endorse for county boards, as it is a nonpartisan office) because, well, just because they like doing extreme things that don't make much sense.

You guessed it -- the Republican-endorsed county commissioners who voted in favor of the .25 percent tax increase are now being punished at the Republican endorsement conventions.

This is better than watching the daytime soaps!

In my county the guy getting hung for voting for the mass transit tax is actually quite popular with the constituents, and many of his constituents supported the mass transit tax (we need mass transit in a big way -- gas prices keep going up).

The state Republicans don't get it. Their message has been falling flat for the past two years. They've loaded up their party with a bunch of extremists over the past 10 years or so (think Michele Bachmann, author of the lightbulb freedom of choice act), and now they are totally out of touch with the constituents.

I won't even get into who they've endorsed in the state district races. Apparently the moderate Republicans are hiding in a cave somewhere. I used to vote for moderate Republicans for the statehouse . . . before they got kicked out of the party.

This is getting almost comical, but it is also sad, because there are good people in that party who are getting beat up for taking an independent vote, one that was supported by their constituents.

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