California's Road to Perdition (The Golden State proves that even gold can rust sometimes)

srbfl

If we had a fiscal collapse as you suggest, the state LEAST likely to turn itself around is Kalifornia, along with her uber-Liberal sister states. Beggars & thieves rarely accept other options, such as work.

While I believe a collapse is coming that will end the entitlement state for good, I fear what may replace it. There is no guarantee that the liberal, entitlement kumbaya will be replaced by a conservative, personal responsibility kumbaya. Chaos usually generates tyranny.

By all rights, Warren was unelectable, but she defeated a good candidate, Brown. With enough party support you can elect a dog as dogcatcher. Angle was, in the end, shot down by the country-club set who support only their own.

The problem is MA is a one-party moonbat state that has an exceptionally high tolerance for corruption. Fauxcahontas embraces both moonbattery and corruption. Brown tried to pander to the left, and that never works. Democrats can never be outpandered in that direction.

But as for Angle, I was warning folks here well ahead of time that of all the Republicans running, she would be the one who would lose, and that was that. I supported her in her race for Congress in 2006, but when she narrowly lost the primary to Dean Heller, she totally flipped out. Started making unsubstantiated allegations of vote fraud and the like. She not only turned off former supporters (like me), but she went out of her way to antagonize almost everyone. She tried an ill-advised campaign against the state Senate leader in a 2008 primary and that was a fiasco as well.

The Tea Party folks listened to her rhetoric when she mounted her 2010 U.S. Senate race and ignored her record of losses and the hurtful allegations (indeed, she left such a mess in 2006, she nearly cost Dean Heller the safe NV-2 seat, and had he lost, he’d not be Senator today). She was the epitome of a bad candidate and rightly viewed as unstable, which was why so many of the party people refused to go along with her.

Angle even threatened (after Heller was appointed to the Senate) to run for the House seat in the special, even if it meant the seat would be lost to the Democrats (meaning oppose the GOP nominee as an Independent). She is precisely the kind of candidate that is more harmful than helpful.

Measure up Angle against half the Democrats in the House, or even the Senate. She doesn’t look so bad. Why Republicans can’t win: the leadership is mostly hostile to the Teaparty’s types, in part because of their tone. In Part because they really do equate looks and education with quality. Never mind that men like Bush’s last treasury secretary are conmen whose first instinct in a crisis is to save their own asse(t)s and bail on the rest of us.

I’m sure Angle’s voting record would’ve been superb. Ditto Akin and Mourdock. But that doesn’t change the fact that their own mouths and/or behavior get them in serious trouble. If Angle hadn’t made false allegations of voter fraud against Dean Heller in 2006, her viability would’ve been preserved for a future race and she might very well be the Senator today. She has only herself to blame, and same goes for both Akin and Mourdock (both of whom I supported in their respective primaries).

Regardless, the Tea Party needs to be more sophisticated in whom they support. There are credible, Conservative candidates out there who can overcome the odds and win (like Ted Cruz in TX). Of course, nobody can predict if a candidate decides to publicly commit political suicide despite a previously pristine record of electoral success (as Akin & Mourdock had).

As for the GOP establishment, I give them no quarter, either. They’re more comfortable giving their Dem buddies a reach-around than serving with or campaigning for Conservative reformists. They’re both the problem in DC.

Angle lost because the Democrats ran busloads of casino employees to the polls. Pretty how much they won in Ohio, where they seemed to get 100% turnout in certain precincts.

Robby, did you not read anything I wrote about Angle above ? You seem to persist in maintaining she was ever a viable candidate with a chance at winning. She wasn't. At all. I'll tell you flat out that vote fraud had nothing to do with it (unless Reid directed his minions to cast votes FOR her in the GOP primary). She was politically D.O.A. from 2006, period, as I already told you above. Every other Republican running in that 2010 Senate primary would've beaten Reid. Every single one. Reid was excited as hell to have Angle as an opponent, because the race was over as soon as she was nominated.

If voter fraud alone was responsible for her loss, explain how in that same election that Republican Brian Sandoval was able to stomp Dingy Harry Reid's boy in an open Gubernatorial race -- by almost 12% ? Sandoval carried every county in NV, including Clark (Las Vegas). If the union SEIU casino employees were going to steal the race for Reid, they'd steal it for his son, too. Reid didn't need to steal his own race.

She seems to have been given the same treatment that Akin did. She did well enough in the debates with Reid. Of course she has a chance of winning. She was breathing, wasn’t she? Which is more than I can say about. Reid. Face it: when the big shots say your are not good enough, they are not going to life more than a oinky to support you. After all, they might do something to embarrass them, The same reason why the Dallas Establishment was not enarmored of Cruz, even though he will be probably the most articulate politician in the Senate.

No, Robby, she was, as I’ve stated umpteen times, thoroughly and completely a non-viable candidate. Nobody had to do anything to harm her. She destroyed herself. She was living in a fantasy world from 2006 when she couldn’t GRASP that she’d lost a primary fair and square. She lashed out and blamed everyone but herself and made ludicrous charges and almost fatally crippled Dean Heller for the general election.

Robby, Angle is a nutjob, a prima donna and a sore loser that didn’t care whom she hurt in the process. That is not the behavior of a Tea Partier or a Conservative, period. If you think that is admirable behavior or qualities that should make up a leader for our cause, I’m sorry to say but you’re sadly mistaken.

That’s precisely why I was here warning folks about NOT voting for her in the 2010 primary precisely because she couldn’t win in the general, for the above reasons, and I was proven 100% correct.

It was EXACTLY the same thing with Katherine Harris in Florida in 2006. She had a cult of followers who deluded themselves into believing she could beat Bill Nelson in the Senate race, ignoring the fact that over HALF the party did not support her and that she was the most unpopular and polarizing political figure in Florida. It was no surprise when she was obliterated in a landslide.

Angle at no point was a threat to Reid, her unpopularity was sky-high and worse than Reid (whom himself is highly unpopular). No debates and no amount of spending on her behalf was going to change that. She was a bad candidate, period. You don’t win races against unpopular incumbents by managing to dig up a candidate even MORE unpopular.

I can give you countless examples of non-viable candidates like Sharron Angle. Ken Buck in CO turned out to be non viable when he blew a winnable Senate race. Establishment-chosen Pete Coors in CO in 2004 was also a non-viable candidate. Before anything else happens, a candidate must be established that they have a viable shot at winning. You can’t just run anyone. Even if their message is good, the messenger can be seriously flawed.

Akin and Mourdock were both leading in the polls until they opened their mouths on the issue of rape, and that was it. No amount of help, financial or otherwise, was going to rescue them. Both should’ve removed themselves from those races after their comments. I have no doubt that the blowback from what they both said was enough to alter the outcome in many close races, with some voters thinking the entire GOP ticket was indifferent or grossly insensitive to the issue of rape.

Why were they even TALKING about the issue ? We should’ve learned 22 years ago from the example of Clayton Williams in TX when he ran against Ann “Ma” Richards. All he did was crack a joke in comparing weather to rape. There should be a permanent standing rule that ANY GOP candidate that goes off on this subject should immediately end their candidacy. Absolutely not one iota of common sense from these guys, and it makes me ill, because I supported them both. That they didn’t know any better shows that they weren’t ready for prime time.

Conversely, we had an excellent and viable candidate in Ohio for Senator in Josh Mandel, whom had already won statewide. Still, even an excellent candidate AND excellent messenger couldn’t take down the ultraleft Sherrod Brown. Fortunately, he’s young and can run again in the future and has preserved his viability. That cannot be said for Sharron Angle, Katherine Harris, Ken Buck, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock.

Blame voter fraud and GOP establishment sandbagging WHEN it is warranted. But when you try to use that as an excuse for execrable candidates like Angle or Harris not winning, it rings patently false and smacks of failure to recognize reality and not taking responsibility for backing someone whom we knew ahead of time could not win. Conservatives take responsibility for their actions, liberals do not.

RE :”Robby, did you not read anything I wrote about Angle above ? You seem to persist in maintaining she was ever a viable candidate with a chance at winning. She wasn't. At all. I'll tell you flat out that vote fraud had nothing to do with it (unless Reid directed his minions to cast votes FOR her in the GOP primary). She was politically D.O.A. from 2006, period, as I already told you above. Every other Republican running in that 2010 Senate primary would've beaten Reid. Every single one. Reid was excited as hell to have Angle as an opponent, because the race was over as soon as she was nominated. “

Jeeze, this was over two years ago.

Sue Louden seemed (NV) like a perfectly good GOP candidate for that race who would not have said crazy stuff on camera like Angle did.
There was no legitimate reason for Angle to blow that election and make us have to watch Reid for 6 more years..

I have Republican relatives in NV and they voted for Angle but she had made herself such a bad joke there that were ashamed to tell anyone they voted for her. Louden wouldnt have done that,.

Reid was very unpopular in NV in 2010 and still Angle blew it by rallying the Dems to come out and vote against her in an off-year election.

“Ashamed" of her? That is a luxury that we can't afford. Are the Democrats ever ashamed of the turkeys that they send up? No, they would have us believe they are soaring eagles. Akin didn’t deserve our support, but wtf, neither did the Lady he ran against deserve the support the Democrats gave her My God, LOOK at the woman! She is the type who should never reach for any level above the state senate. No, it boils down to the unwillingness of the people who control the political party to give full-throated support to candidates who do and say things that embarrass them in front of their liberal friends. It is part of the passivity that made the Tory ashamed of someone like Churchill, because he lacked “judgement.” That made it impossible for Romney to attack Obama on the issue of Benghazi, which makes us NOW go after Rice rather than Obama. I mean, God, the President was repeating the same crap that Rice spouted ten days later at the UN! Faint heart never fair maiden won.

RE “Ashamed” of her? That is a luxury that we can't afford. Are the Democrats ever ashamed of the turkeys that they send up? “

Look, I have heard this before. Before you cast stones she is a real person (and a Dem hating Republican yet), not just an anonymous poster, and one-who supported Angle early on but then Angle made herself in to the pariah with everyone my sister knew there saying stuff my sister could not defend (Do you even know what those statements were?). So she voted against Reid but didnt talk about it.
Angle blew an easy election for saying stupid stuff. She did it.

What we cant afford is candidates who take easy wins and turn them into losses by saying stupid stuff. This is getting too common. And watching Reid drama is painful.

There is almost not election tat is “easy” if the stakes are high enough. Reid was not just your average senator. But, since you keep mentioning them, what statements ARE you talking about?

“What should Republicans do to restore the party to viability?”

Stop trying to appease the media and the left. Everytime the GOP is nice to these b@stards they get screwed. Since that hasn’t worked the last 4,872,921 times it was tried then how about we attack the left, over and over, relentlessly, and then when the media lie to confront them instead of making kissy-face with them like Romney did?