Posted on 11/10/2005 4:58:56 PM PST by ajolympian2004
There is no such thing as a fusion candidate, no such thing as a bipartisan campaign or a 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 winners' 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 those that showed up 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-- the base most certainly did not march. The collective yawn was hard to miss.
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 a messed-up 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 shortages 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 Peter 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.
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.
Lessons from Election 2005
Here's my first podcast. Click here if you'd rather listen than read this post. :)
'Just a Woman' commentary - link to windows media player audio
I’m still reeling over Tuesday’s election results. I’ve read both conservative and liberal analysis of the election. But, I have to admit that one of my favorite posts was Hugh Hewitt’s open letter to the Governor of California.
To quote Hugh, who quoted Nixon: you can’t win with just the conservatives but you cannot win without them.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from this election as well as this last political season esp. with regards to the from the Harriet Miers debacle, THIS is it. You can’t presume on the conservative base. It’s not merely about having that “R” tagged on to the end of your name; it is about standing and fighting for conservative core values; it’s about “living it” to quote Hugh again.
As much as it may hurt, I would much rather the pendulum swing in the other direction in order for conservatives to figure out what they stand for and then “live it.” We would never have gotten George Bush if we hadn’t lived through the Clinton Era…just like we would have never been blessed with Reagan if the nation hadn’t been fed up with Carter.
This reality, however, does not justify conservatives staying home for any election. We bear the responsibility to stand for our values as much as we expect our representatives to do likewise. While I don’t believe that Prop 73 (which proposed parental notification for a minor going in for an abortion) is a partisan issue, I am disappointed that conservatives and Christians did not show up en masse to make a statement: not about abortion but about parental rights. THAT is a shame on us.
As we head into next year’s fight, my hope and my prayer is that we take to heart what just happened this week. Conservative politicians can’t take their base for granted. But, the base had better wake up. Conservatives and liberals have let the family and minor girls down this week. I cannot help but think of Edmund Burke’s admonition: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” When good conservatives and liberals do nothing, we all suffer.
I pray that the lesson of the 2005 election is not wasted. We have one year to learn it. Let’s live it.
http://justawoman2005.blogspot.com/2005/11/lessons-from-election-2005.html
Isn't Mike Murphy one of Arnold's top political guys? And, isn't this the same Murphy that ran McCain's 200 primary campaign? If I'm correct, then I'd say that's a place to start to replace a guy bent on trying to win on a RINO strategy.
Hugh keeps writing things like this, and I may have to start listening to him again.
Hugh consistently has one of the best shows on talk radio and he is a champion for conservative principles. I know some folks here at FR like to flame him from time to time. I suppose if there were 300,000,000 million talk shows in this country everyone would be happy. ;) :)
RE: 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
Yep!
Loved your post and follow up writing. We have been taken for granted by the "Country Club" republicans, ridiculed for our beliefs, and betrayed by incompetent leadership when the going gets tough. California is invaded, along with many border states, and is no longer recognizable as a US state. The majority of people in California reject the American model and ideal. They reject the laws of the central government and hold people that love America in contempt. They hold our constitution in contempt. They are the children of treason. And they are legion in America. Our leadership, that we supported and worked for don't seem to care and don't fight to stop it. The President doesn't seem to have the stomach for a fight or perhaps he doesn't see how desperate Americas situation really is. I really don't think he holds that much in common with us. It is time for serious reflection on the part of Conservatives as to where we go from here and, more importantly, how we get there. Thanks for a great and thought provoking post. BTW, there are no "good" liberals.
1) That conservative politicians can't take their base for granted.
2) That conservatives can't impose their will or effect the course of political events if they don't exercise their franchise.
From my perspective some very sound advice but also not particularly pertinent to the circumstances in California.
California certainly has a Republican as governor but not a conservative by either of the two widely accepted definitions; paleoconservative or neoconservative. Schwarzenegger would be better described as a progressive or a reformer. The fact that he is registered as a Republican didn't help the turnout on Tuesday. Few conservatives, beyond Republican Party loyalists, will follow where Schwarzenegger wants to lead. No leader, therefore no followers, therefore no turnout.
Should conservatives in California have voted and cherry picked there causes? Yes. Was the leadership of the CAGOP or the Schwarzenegger administration a cause for conservatives to participate? No. Many California conservatives may have asked. What will be the result, even if my causes succeed in this election, when the results will be left in the hands of the likes of Schwarzenegger and liberals to implement?
Wasn't he a major RINO just a few weeks ago? I'm getting whiplash trying to follow him. He's very eloquent but alarmingly inconsistent. He supported (R)nold over McClintock, right?
This is a very interesting post and one that the whole GOP needs to read. I can think of about 24 "Republican" senators who need to take this advice seriously themselves.
I do not think liberals in general care about whether minor girls have an abortion or not, whether they notify their parents or not, etc. Liberals have been co-conspirators to the deaths of over 40,000,000 unborn baby girls and boys in this country.
I DO NOT ever expect their support for abortion to change (not supporting parental notification shows radically EXTREME support for abortion), with one possible exception being a change in heart when they have their own children someday. I do know of a few women who were 'blindly' pro-abortion until they experienced motherhood first hand. They are now as pro-life as anyone I've ever met.
I think many conservatives and fair-minded democrats did show up in California's special election. The vote totals bear that out.
In the end, a 130 million dollar advertising effort against Props 73 - 77, an off-year special election, folks still weary from the 2004 elections, etc. doomed any chance of these propositions passing, in my humble analysis.
Even his relationship with FR is an on again/off again herky/jerky sort-of-a-sometime thing that's as useful as a warm pitcher of spit! He's hollow and pointless like most moderates who occasionally try to act like conservatives!!!
He's all talk and nothing else. I doubt he's ever knocked on a door that he didn't know what he'd find on the other side, or walked a precinct for that matter, to actually further the Conservative Movement! He'd rather name-drop on his radio show and show off his shallowness!!!
All the hideous crappola I've seen typed on this site about Rush Limbaugh is more correctly attributable to this clown as a pretty poor pretender!!! (/rant)
Even his relationship with FR is an on again/off again herky/jerky sort-of-a-sometime thing that's as useful as a warm pitcher of spit! He's hollow and pointless like most moderates who occasionally try to act like conservatives!!!
He's all talk and nothing else. I doubt he's ever knocked on a door that he didn't know what he'd find on the other side, or walked a precinct for that matter, to actually further the Conservative Movement! He'd rather name-drop on his radio show and show off his shallowness!!!
All the hideous crappola I've seen typed on this site about Rush Limbaugh is more correctly attributable to this clown as a pretty poor pretender!!! (/rant)
Last year on the weekend just before the 2004 elections Hugh spent the weekend here in Colorado helping to get out the vote for President Bush, Senator Pete Coors, congressman Bob Beaupre and others.
Hugh 'knocks' on millions of doors each week from the platform of his radio show, blog and syndicated column.
Hugh is a conserative as well... no RINO blood flowing through his heart.
Your comments amount to name calling and a personal attack on a conservative Hugh Hewitt. Your comments are either coming from someone on the off the deep end wacko right or a DU'er posing as a Freeper here at FR, IMHO.
Great post, and good for Hugh Hewitt.
Many tactics were used to suppress the vote,
from union strongarms to FR 'hopeless' posts.
Shame on anyone for not voting.
Even Hewitt describes himself as "center/right", so you might want to reconsider just what it is he champions. A lot of Californians flame Hugh because we have seen him an action for years. He has been an RNC sycophant who puts party first. A classic example is illegal immigration, which has been a huge problem in California for over a decade. Local conservatives have been trying mightily to get Washington to do something- Hewitt has been silent all that time, except for when he has badmouthed those trying to get something done. Hugh is as "genuine" as his pal David Dreier.
Lol. You can be sure he will be having milk and cookies with Dreier and Chemerinski as they discuss how well this letter fooled the rubes.
Well said.
After listening to Hugh for the past year and nine months now my opinion of him only continues to be more positive. He's a true conservative, but brings arguments based on logic, not emotion to his show on radio each day. Hugh convinces folks in the center and left of center to move to the right politically with his reasonable style of talking to people, whether they be guest or callers to the show.
Anyway, I've come to expect replies like yours from the Hugh Hewitt bashers, Ann Coulter bashers, Sean Hannity bashers, Rush Limbaugh bashers, etc. that post here at FR. It's a BROKEN record.
Once we have 300,000,000 talk show hosts in this country then I suppose we'll stop seeing the conservative talk radio show bashers here on the CONSERVATIVE FORUM at FR. Everyone will have someone they can agree with 100% all of the time, themselves. ;) :)
Your wish to believe is admirable though misguided. And given more time, even you may come to understand Hugh Hewitt.
I understand Hugh having met him in person on two occasions. He didn't just say hello and move on to someone else. On both occasions we had a chance to talk for more than 10 to 15 minutes each time. Hugh Hewitt is an awe-inspiring 'Great American' as Sean Hannity would say.
One thing that I most like about Hugh is that he promotes freedom & liberty on his show each day. How many talk show hosts will be a person on the air to mention their blog site where they are participating in their own freedom of expression. Hugh even remembers callers by their voice and he almost always offers them a chance to promote their site. Try mentioning your site on another talk show, whether nationally syndicated or local.
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