Inland Utopia

The NY-23 Special Election displays the inter-party war between the conservative and the moderate to liberal factions of the Republican Party. The inter party war is demonstrating how the Republican Party is destroying themselves in the Northeastern United States, Maryland is now having only one Republican legislator now, Connecticut has no Republicans representing them in congress and now New York state will go 27-2 in favor of the Democratic Party if Doug Hoffman gets defeated in the November special election.

California Republicans have their own problems too, Republicans dangerously came close to losing their 2/3rds protection in the State Assembly and will likely lose some state senate seats in the next election as well. Politics is the process where we obtain collations by adding people to get majorities to pass the issues political parties rally upon, but if we are turning off people then how can we ever be the party of the majority or for future generations?

Throwing raw meat to the balcony for the base of the party right now is suicide. If we want to be irrelevant where in Massachusetts the legislative caucus of the state senate and house can fit in a carpool van, then we should continue on the road to nowhere. The Democratic Party may be the political home for the majority of the people in our state, but with the Democratic Party leadership thinking that they could max out the state debt load and thinking life is all right we are in a world of hurt with an ineffective opposition party that is powerless to stop the financial carnage.

The Republican Party must exit this wilderness of mirrors and escape the domination from the nutty right, but even with electoral collapse the Republican Party still has not found its safe word to use with the California electorate to get back to the prime time. Due to the 2/3rds rule the Republicans are content with only having 29 state assembly members out of 80 and 15 state senators because they do not have to compromise their ideology to become the majority party. However when you are the majority party you are able to control the agenda and lead a movement for the people of our state. Even with electoral collapse you will have ideologues begging for the Republican Party to stay the course.

I am not asking for the Republican Party to be a duopoly with the Democratic Party like in Los Angeles Channel 2 and 9 are owned by one ownership group and channels 11 and 13 are owned by another ownership group. One of the main issues that hurt the Republican Party nationally was they strayed from their principles. Republicans need to be consistent in their message of limited government and if they suck the teats of the big government, then they do deserve to be beaten in the next election.

Republicans need to restore confidence to young people that they do care about their future potential. We should offer students the tools so they can be achievers. If students cannot get the access to a public college/university or a decent career then they are going to deliver less of an investment to the state of California or they may flee the state for better opportunities. We should work with trade unions and corporations to help build a pathway that helps leads to successful careers for high school graduates as an alternative to college. College degree is not a necessarily a pathway to riches, for some it may lead to being the waiter with the BA in English with student loan debt. When we give students an affordable opportunity they will usually stay in our state and become part of the tax base to help pay it forwards to future generations.

Republicans need to learn how to embrace environmentalism without sacrificing our standard of living or jobs. Conservation is the real environmentalism. Our governor may have wanted to look good after a crushing special election where all his ballot measures tanked in 2005, so he embraced a draconian environmental law to remake his battered image after all those labor union advertisements turned him into a villain. We can still embrace post materialist values without killing our economy. For example in new housing developments in the Ontario and Chino agriculture area we can use gray water in landscaping the lawns of the new homes which would help keep water affordable for the people of the region. We could add motion sensing light systems so lights would only be applied when pedestrians and vehicle traffic cross paths. The question of how will the people of California deal with AB 32 is not provided with a solution of abolishing the law, the answer is providing solutions that will not weaken our economy and have meaningful environmental impact.

Republicans should ditch the big wedge and work to unite communities instead of using the politics of fear using immigrants legal and illegal and homosexuals as bogymen may only work for a few elections, but sooner than later these wedge issues will die away. You should not need to be pious in your morality or have lots of money to be a Republican. You should not be required to have the views of Glenn Beck or Jon Fleischman in order to be treated seriously as a Republican. Purging opposing views in the Republican Party nationwide or even in my own state of California will only make the Republican Party a regional party or a party gone by the way of the Know-Nothings. Sadly the Democratic Party welcomes pro-life members who might be pro-labor union, but if you are gay and support free enterprise the Republican Party wants to kick you to the curb handing you a registration card and say you should go to the Democratic Party.

Republicans cannot afford to be the party of exclusion; if we diversify our base we will have the potential to take back congress in 2010. The Democratic Party won in 2006 and 2008 by recruiting pro-life, pro-gun congressional candidates in conservative leaning districts. Perhaps if we could recruit pro-choice, pro-equality candidates in Burbank California, Long Island New York, and Palm Beach Florida we could get the numbers to help take back congress and remove Nancy Pelosi from the speakership. We need to find candidates that fit their districts like a glove. We need to work together to share the sandbox. As what Newt Gingrich said recently “if we seek to be the perfect minority we will remain a permanent minority”. It seems the Democratic Party is not our biggest enemy; it seems that the enemy is within.

A recent bombshell has been announced at conservative blog Red State about the sorry state of her campaign for US Senate. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign eagerly wants to recruit candidates who could self fund their campaigns so they do not have to worry about fundraising. Last month Carly filed exploratory paperwork to the FEC, but until you spend five thousand you do not have to formally declare yourself as a candidate. As reported on Red State, Carly has not made any noise or decided to make her own self visible during the upcoming Republican State Convention.

Red State has suspected that Carly does not want to self-fund her campaign and that is not getting the political campaign staffers excited to even wanting to work for her campaign. Unfortunately in politics, money talks and if you cannot show the money do not expect competent staffers to work for you. Since the firm of Dresder and Wickers was not able to find a campaign chief for her, she decided to go for Marty Wilson who was the governor’s chief fundraiser. However Marty Wilson’s job was easy because Arnold has universal name recognition and Marty was previously hired by Poizner and let him go because he was not effective in fundraising for Poizner. The big question is, will Marty leave if Party realizes Carly refuses to use her own money to win the primary?

Her statement of self-funding, but I am not going to self-fund was designed to block the NRSC from supporting DeVore for the race. Unfortunately with the unflattering history of her tenure at HP, her lack of voting in elections and allegedly shipping technology to Iran you got a hot mess ready to fail. Also expect the FEC to file reports against Carly for failing to file papers for candidacy because she obviously has spent over five thousand to run for US Senate.

I am not interested in Assemblyman DeVore and I was looking for a fresh alternative, but for California Republicans the water is still warm for someone new to run for the nomination of the Republican Party. NRSC is offending the grass roots of the base that funds their campaign committee and should treed carefully and vet their candidates before deciding to endorse or give money to them. The base does not want another Arlen Specter to bite back to haunt the party in the future. Carly should understand that Senator Corwyn of the NRSC only wants her money not her.

Vice Chairman Jon Fleischman recently tabled the proposal to restrict Republican Primaries to Republican voters. Jon stated that misinformation about the changes and its effects were causing fractures in the party. Both sides do have legitimate arguments about the fight on deciding who could vote for the Republican Party’s nominees. Understanding why and how the Republican Party is suffering at the ballot box could help the party in the long run.

On the proponent’s side Jon argues that "The reality is that as long as someone can registered Decline To State and elect to vote in either major party’s primary, we will continue to see the percentage of DTS voters steadily increase at the expense of party registration. Both political parties are going to eventually have to confront this issue head on." There is no incentive for people to register as a Republican or a Democratic Party voter when we give DTS voters the chance to join in our primaries.

Maybe the true reason why Jon tabled the proposal is that the party’s leading donor Larry Dodge holds a three million dollar loan where he wants a more inclusive political platform and signs that the Republicans would better manage the party and begin to register new voters and things that parties should do.

I could understand voters registering as Decline to State because they want to influence the politics of the majority party, such as Republicans living in the bay area, or Democrats living in northern San Diego County. However conservatives feel that the party’s brand becomes diluted with these non-party members participating in the primary. Conservative activists do not want another Olympia Snowe or Charlie Crist diluting the message of the party which makes it harder for the party to stand for principle when we have to count on these individuals to vote with the party.

For the opponents of keeping the primaries closed, there is a good example in why we need to reach out to the decline to state voter in Congressional District 47. The Orange Juice Blog explains how reaching out to the DTS voter would pay dividends in that congressional district. 33% of the voters are Republicans, 23% are third party and DTS and 44% are Democratic. If the right mainstream Republican candidate was nominated, perhaps the Republican Party will finally win against Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez. Looking at past years nominees a nominee such as 2004 nominee Alexandra Coronado would fare better than 2008 nominee Rosie Avila.

Instead of locking down the primaries, we should focus on better candidate recruitment for the competitive districts. Expecting that Burbank or San Jose is conservative like Utah or Mississippi is suicidal too. I am not saying that conservatives and traditionalists should be thrown off the plank, but we should have diversity of ideology where conservatives and centrists run together so we can form a majority in the state legislature. Democrats nominate social conservative, economic liberals in Indiana and North Carolina; it would not hurt if we had socially inclusive, economic conservatives as our representatives in constituencies that would not normally elect Republicans.

Closed primaries naturally do produce candidates usually that are friendly to the base, but we have to recognize that California is not just Bakersfield or Corona, but it’s also Pasadena and Redwood City. As Republicans we need to be the party of solutions and not the party of saying no. State Senator Maldonado’s solution for top two primaries would also be a wrong choice as well. Non-Partisan Open Primaries would shut down third parties from having a voice in the general election or will Kern County Democrats and San Francisco Republicans will as well. If we want to put democracy before party dogma, we should consider other options.