Former Senate Minority Leader and current Assistant Majority Leader Dave Senjem spoke honestly to the Post Bulletin yesterday about the MNGOP’s flawed approach to this legislative session. Most notably, he admitted that the MNGOP had passed a bunch of bad bills:

When it comes to who is at fault for the session ending without a budget deal, Senjem said everyone is somewhat to blame. He said he backed the Republican strategy of passing out budget bills and leaving them open in hopes of negotiating with the governor. The idea was to avoid having the bills vetoed. In retrospect, he said “maybe I was a little idealistic.”

He added, “The idea as good as it might have been just didn’t work and so then what do we do? We throw a whole bunch of frankly bad bills at him — bills we knew needed to be negotiated with the governor,” Senjem said. [Emphasis added]

Well, I’ll certainly agree with Senjem that his party passed a bunch of bad bills. In fact, their budget would have been disastrous. But if Senjem was being “idealistic” about the prospect of negotiations, it was in overestimating his own party’s willingness to deal.

The fact is, the MNGOP leadership has been completely unmovable since day 1. Their position of “we’ll compromise, but not on taxes” means “we will not compromise.” So what sort of negotiation did Senjem think was possible?

Still, I’m glad that there’s at least one person in the caucus who understands that negotiation is necessary. I wonder what the chances are that he can convince his colleagues to compromise with the Governor. I won’t be holding my breath.