Posted on 11/09/2005 2:35:12 PM PST by goldstategop
There is no such thing as a fusion candidate, no such thing a bipartisan campaign or non-partisan issue, and come election night, there are just two parties, one at the GOP HQ and one at the Dem HQ. There's a winner's party and a losers' party. Last night you were speaking to the losers' party.
I didn't go. Why bother? The polls had shown for a few days that only Prop 75 had a chance (the measure to stop public employee unions from deducting political dues from their members' paychecks without prior authroization), and besides, most of your people aren't my friends and colleagues from nearly 30 years around California politics. They are fine folks, to be sure, and I have run into them in many of the seminar rooms of the state's hundred universities, but you have now run into the reality of California politics. The folks who don't care much about politics, well, they reallydon't care much about politics. They certainly can't get you wins on their own. There aren't enough of them.
As Nixon often remarked: You can't win with just the conservatives, but you cannot win without them.
Your team told you that if you put enough bait on the hook, you'd get the troops to marching. While they no doubt dutifully voted for your four initiatives --and Prop 73, which would have required notice to parents when their teen daughter sought an abortion-- they most certainly did not march.
And they aren't even that upset this morning. They didn't lose a thing --you lost. Perhaps you will spend the next couple of weeks figuring out that you have exactly zero high profile GOP conservatives close to you, and that there are a whole bunch of lefties running around your offices busy advancing agendas with which the right cannot agree.
Name the conservative icon upon whom you depend and to whom you go for solid advice? There isn't one.
Name the single conservative cause with which you are associated. Spending restraint? Private property rights? Limits on abortion? Second Amendment advocacy? Judges?
You have picked fights with all the right people, but over what? Redistricting that might have cost the GOP crucial seats in D.C., a spending cap that wasn't, teacher tenure tweaks? Again, mixing it up with the public employee unions was fine, but off-year elections aren't exactly gladiator time, especially when the budget got passed because your advisors didn't want a show-down in the summer.
Which is not to say that you won't win in 2006. You probably will, because both of the would-be Democratic candidates are stiffs with big bucks, and California remembers Gray Davis. Sending all Democrats to Sacramento is a recipe for power shoirtages and same sex marriage, abandonment of the public schools to failure and endless traffic congestion. A Republican governor is sort of like a fail-safe on the doomsday machine of California government. This helps you, a lot.
Plus, charisma and the technique that will get a grin and a yes vote from relentlessly bored voters who care not a whit about anything are still much in demand.
(But you must know that Rob Reiner could change things. Not Beatty --who looks more and more like Nixon every day-- but Reiner. Reiner's smart, very funny, very savvy. That would be a debate for the ages. They could sell tickets. No bobo dolls named Arianna, but a real contest.)
So you've got to get serious about winning in '06, and that means getting serious about the GOP base. Some suggestions:
1. Clear out the left from inside the "horseshoe," the Governor's offices inside the Capitol.
2. Bring in some senior advisors with pedigrees on the right and listen to them. Ask Bruce Herchensohn to spend a couple of days a week in the offices, as a "minsiter without portfolio." You don't have to do a thing he recommends, but there is no more respected figure on the California right than Bruce. Associated with Bruce, but also with Reagan, is Ken Khachigian. Ask Ken to take up a post somewhere on the battlements. And raid Hoover --get Robinson to convene a three day idea-fest with the folks who haven't spent their lives trading quarter percents with Sacramento's lobbyists.
3. The press operation. Someone has persuaded you that the political press is like the Hollywood gang. But they can't be wooed that way. They can't be wooed at all. And they don't matter. They don't create the buzz anymore than they do majorities. Retool and figure out new media.
4. The 2006 slate. There are big, big problems forming here, and the downticket matters as much as the top. The initiatives in the pipeline haven't been thought through. Get a marriage amendment qualified, period. And take another swing at the unions as well. Develop and qualify an initiative that protects churches/synagogues/other worship facilities from the local planning departments. Develop and qualify an anti-Kelo intiative.
Don't just say "I'll be back." Live it.
5. Finally, don't blow the California Supreme Court appointment or the rest of your judicial appointments. I sighed when I saw the latest round of your court picks in southern California. Look. If you are going to appoint Democrats to the bench --even one--don't ask me to get excited about your re-election. I know you can't do much with a legislature that makes the Swedish parliament look conservative, but you own your judicial picks. Ask around. There are great Republican lawyers who would make great Republican judges.
On the California Supreme Court vacancy, understand that this is the biggest decision you will make between now and next November. If you blow it, it will be a sure fire message to the base that the candle isn't worth the fight. If Lockyer is against a nominee, that's a great sign of that nominee's qualifications.
I don't doubt that you are more enrgized than ever and ready for a knock-down 12 months. Your spokeman on the tube last night wasn't. (Enough of "rolling up our sleeves" already!)
It is going to be sweet to win re-election, especuially after all the doom-sayers on this Wednesday morning, but you can't get there with the tactics or the team of 2005.
I know you made some lousy movies, and you must have known at some point that the team you had on the set just wasn't cutting it.
Have you got that feeling now? You should. You're the producer and the director. Change the script. Change everything. Or go back tp making movies in 15 months
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Hugh, stop drinking the GOP Kool Aid. 77 wasn't about protecting your term-limitless pals like Dreier in D.C. It was about ending the outrageous gerrymanders.
I'd gladly trade some Republican seats in the House for just the CHANCE at more Assembly and Senate seats in Sacramento.
When the GOP in Washington is all about more government and more spending, I have no inclination to protect them.
Looks like Hewitt is trying to get back into the good grace of conservatives after having been exposed as a Beltway suck-up boy last month.
I recall hearing that you didn't vote in this election. If you didn't vote, don't complain. Prop 73 came within a whisker. We needed every one, yours included.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Wow. I am impressed that Hugh isn't sucking up to the Governator....anymore.
My fear is the down-ticket effect that Wilson's gang, with coerced backing from the CAGOP, may have on some reasonable conservatives that are being allowed to participate on the CAGOP ticket during the next election cycle.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
You beat me to it. My reaction exactly. He's going to do some bang the drums conservative drooling here for a while to solidify the base. At least he's taking his own advice.
Dragged it down.
I doubt that's going to happen. He blew a lot of his credibility on that one. In any case, I am hopeful that yesterday is the beginning of a trend for conservatives to stop this idiotic policy of going along with the RINOs in the hope that they're at least a little better than the Democrat alternative. We have trouble enough getting the genuine conservatives to live up to their campaign rhetoric. And if it takes staying home instead of voting, so be it. Politics obeys the laws of supply and demand as well. If the GOP continues to put up candidates who generate no excitement, where the only reason given to vote for them is that at least they aren't a Democrat, then they are going to keep losing elections. If they continue to put forth people who woo conservatives during the two months prior to the election but then govern like liberals, then they are going to keep losing elections. Conservatives have been tolerant of betrayal by the moderates and RINOs long enough. We refuse to be the African-Americans of the Republican party, i.e. courted at election time but ignored for the other 3 and a half years of the cycle.
Hardly. You forgot the Ohio ballot measures and gay marriage in Texas.
California is a lost cause. No conservative can be elected to statewide office there, and "conservative" issues are not going to carry the day.
Democrats won in NJ and Virginia, succeeding....Democrats.
No massacre, just a status-quo election.
and a redistricting measure that would given unelected judges a say in redrawing district lines.
And how is that worse than letting the legislature itself do the job?
I'd really worry, except you didn't vote so your opinion is horse s*** to me...
heh, good point.
November is going to seem like a bad dream if the Dems end up nominating Rob Reiner.
People would vote for a man whose great success is being known as "Meathead"?
On the California Supreme Court vacancy, understand that this is the biggest decision you will make between now and next November. If you blow it, it will be a sure fire message to the base that the candle isn't worth the fight. If Lockyer is against a nominee, that's a great sign of that nominee's qualifications.
Mmm. Amazing how some folks experience a marked turnaround on this issue when they realize they were on the wrong end of the argument. What did Hugh argue we were? Sexists? Elitists? I'm still waiting for that Gonzales' nomination to materialize.
Nevermind how in bad form this is that he attacks Arnold on his low ebb, when he's been one of his strongest supporters. Went to the mat for him in the beginning.
I happen to like Arnold. I agree with some of what's in this piece. It's fine to be a Liberal leaning Indepedent, which Arnold is, but you have to have an army behind your back and that means showing some love to the Republican ticketed base you ostensibly belong to. He's VETO'd a couple good measures important to the base, but kept at an arm's distance. Inviting them over for coffee once in awhile wouldn't hurt.
Still, while I like Arnold okay I've never been the biggest supporter he's got. Yet I'm not taking shots at him today as Hugh is. Interesting.
Damn good idea, even though Hugh misspelled both "Herschensohn" and "minister"...
" I didn't bother to go and vote yesterday because there was nothing in the agenda to excite me. Nothing to get me out there and vote "
I'm outraged and disgusted that you as a member here, who I might add has one of the loudest voices about EVERYTHING, would be so selfish and not get off your a$$ and support the party unless there was something you would personaly benefit from it.
IMHO, since you didn't find it necessary to put yourself out a little and vote, your conscience should tell you that you have no right to comment on the outcome.
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