Unsurprisingly, I couldn't agree more. It's people like Minarik that I cite when asked why I don't give or raise money for the party. What an embarrassment.

It is amazing how a state party chairman can make the party great or destroy it.

For many years the Republican Party was irrelevant in Minnesota. In 1998, Bill Cooper, a businessman, started rebuilding the party piece by piece. 4 years later another businessman, Ron Eibensteiner, took over and built upon what Bill Cooper started.

Today the Republican Party is the dominant party in Minnesota. We have the governorship, the state legislature and are three seats away from controlling the Senate.

Karol, I believe this is the time for you to pull a Margret Thatcher and come from nowhere to take over the leadership of a dying party

Personally I'd go for Weld, Daniels, Golisano. In that order.

The only caution I offer is that Minarik could be replaced by someone else controlled by Pataki's surrogates, who have been a force unto themselves for far too long.

The failure of the State GOP to facilitate a "rank and file" process cannot be denied, except I would suggest there is another culprit.

New York is ostensibly sliced into three separate mass media zones; New York City, suburbia and massively fragmented news regions upstate.

We're divided and conquered by this separation. It's created separate political fiefdoms, who often have no idea they share the same problems, and the liberals in the State Legislature prefer it that way.

We're at a stage not too different from the political climate a year or two prior to the "Contract With America" when Republicans were bit apart by the Clinton cult of personality.

C-Span made a big difference then.

C-Span in Albany, reported to be coming after the first of the year, could come in handy as the tax revolt storms the castle walls.

Until newspapers, radio stations and television news outlets start treating New York's problems as universal, that rebellion against the powers-that-sleep in Albany is never going to happen.

Minarik's only an instrument of the problem, not the problem.

Golisano for party chairman.

It would be nice to get an outisder, with the proven ability to lead and be an executive, at the help to right this ship.

The issue is reform.

The issue is allowing a primary.

The issue is not forcing one chair out so that John Faso can force another one in to stop any primary.

The issue is that John Faso doesn't want a primary, so that he can get endorsed before the first of the year.

Faso's "all-or-nothing" approach strikes me as more self-serving than Pataki, especially since (a) he hasn't exactly set the state on fire in any polls and (b) we won't know how much money anyone has until after January 15, 2006.