OR had they NOT sabotaged Bill Simon's campaign
Not exactly. However inept Bill Simon's campaign may have seemed, the worst of it was done by his own Party. One rightly has to question the apparent ineptitude of his considering the way he crushed an experienced pol in Dick Riordan. The explanation is simple: Gerry Parsky and the GOP leadership refused to raise the money promised when they took the job, withheld funds raised by President Bush until Simon's campaign manager (Sal Russo) signed the Log Cabin letter, Parsky refused to fund GOTV or registration efforts, and stipulated Simon hire Wilson/Jones (remember "Fire Gray Davis"?) and Ed Rollins (the famous fundraising photo) as campaign consultants. As a result, Simon lost by 350,000 votes while 1.6 MILLION registered Republicans didn't vote. It was a party failure.
Consider Bill Jones recent campaign. ALL of the funds raised and ALL of the organizational effort in California last year went to the Bush campaign. To what end? After Jones beat conservative Howard Kaloogian in the primary, he took the expected dive in the general election getting zero support from the CAGOP, as predicted.
The behavior of GOP "moderates" during the Simon campaign is the principal reason I have so little patience for Arnold supporters when they demand I support him. They put up Riordan, lost, screwed a conservative in Bill Simon, lost, resisted the recall petition drive, lost, and then inserted their "centrist" excuse for a Republican telling us to support him while accusing conservatives of splitting the vote! They were perfectly happy to keep Gray Davis until conservatives succeeded in the petition drive despite them and then get crappy when we don't fall in line behind them.
If conservatives had supported Arnold, would the GOP leadership EVER support another conservative candidate? The record says, no way. They'll expect us to keep giving them money, keep doing the legwork, and keep accepting the consequences for their "social liberalism," which ends up costing the State a fortune and manufactures ever more Democrat dependents.
Those are the facts, your crappy tone notwithstanding.