What RNC Should Learn from CA GOP

In his latest column, Washington
Post commentator EJ Dionne advises National Republicans to learn from
California's mistakes, or face declining voter support in election cycles to
come.

CA GOP Chairman Jim Brulte

His first point of contact on this matter? The current Chairman of the
California GOP, Jim Brulte:

 “California is the leading edge of the country’s demographic
changes,” Brulte said in an interview. “Frankly, Republicans in California did
not react quickly enough to them, and we have paid a horrible price.”

That is true. Up to the early 1980s and the 1990s, California was a majority
white state, Republicans did very well working the entire. Other critics can rightly
point out that the party structures got complacent, with easily redrawn
Congressional and state representative districts which made it very difficult
to remove an incumbent. Still, the demographic changes took the California
Republican Party by surprise, and indeed they are playing catch-up.

The strange turn of Dionne's article, however, highlights the liberal
columnists’ infusion of their left-leaning vision onto everything. They would
prefer all political parties participate and promote that view. The Republican
Party, by platform and legacy, is dedicated to a conservative standard, i.e.
limited government, local control, individual liberty, small-scale
constitutional form of governance.

In one flagrant example of this liberal bias, Dionne plays the race card to
diagnose the California Grand Old Party's middling appeal to minorities:

 The principal cause of the GOP’s troubles is its alienation of
Latinos, Asian Americans and African Americans in a state whose population is
now majority nonwhite.

This statement is disconcerting and false. Lack of outreach, yes. Offensive,
alienating policies? No.

Governor Romualdo Pacheco

Before anyone claims that GOP stands for "Grandpas and Old
People", a little history lesson about the California GOP is well in
order. From its early stages as the opposition to the otherwise Democratic
machine dominance in San Francisco and Los Angeles (where Confederate
sympathizers attempted to secede California from the United States), the
Republican Party boasted a diverse array of candidates. The first Latino
Governor of California, Romualdo
Pacheco, had started out as a Democrat, but left the party over slavery (he
opposed it!) then became an elected Republican.

Governor George Deukmejian

 In the next century, Progressive (when it really meant “progress”)
Republican Governor Hiram Johnson initiated the referendum and recall process.
Another famous California Republican Governor, Ronald Reagan, relied on
Hispanic outreach to unseat Governor Pat Brown. After eight years of Jerry
Brown Part One, Republican  leader George Deukmejian, of Armenian
descent, restored the Golden State from its wasteful, profligate
predecessor. He also divested state funding from apartheid-run South Africa and
engaged the black vote, depriving then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley of a
possible upset during Deukmejian's 1986 reelection.



US Senator S. I. Hayakawa

One of the latest (hopefully not last) Republican US Senators for
California, Japanese-American S. I. Hayakawa unseated an absentee incumbent
Democratic US Senator John Tunney in 1976. What bolstered the profile of this
non-politician? His
courage, when he stopped unruly black militant protests during
his tenure as President of San Francisco State, despite ethnic cries of
prejudice. His bold stance against disrespectful disruption gained the respect
of conservative voters. He campaigned on a pro-America, keep Panama platform,
and won in a year when Jimmy Carter upset incumbent Republican President Gerald
Ford.  (Ironically enough, the roots of
failed GOP minority outreach began with Ford, who failed to re-charter RNC
groups to reach out to Hispanics.)

Refusing to be defined narrowly by race, Hayakawa, a celebrated linguist and
writer as well as outsider-politician, questioned paying reparations to
interned Japanese-Americans during World War II, and even founded
a lobbying group to promote English as the official language.

 The California Republican Party already boasts a winning legacy
with other ethnic groups.

Predictably, the party's more government-averse views jar with progressive
Dionne and the Democrats whom he also interviewed for his column. No wonder
they (and the media) counsel Republicans to go liberal: “Be like us, and lose
more elections!”

Like many liberals, Dionne beats the CA GOP with the Prop 187 stick,
claiming that the popular (passed by 57%) initiative to block public benefits
to illegal aliens ended up alienating Hispanics. Despite this misleading information,
Dionne still has to explain the growing array of California’s Republican state
and federal legislators of Hispanic origin.

Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance/Santa Monica), born in Taiwan, first
elected to the Torrance City Council in the late 2000s, who mountaineered his
way to federal office, commented that Republican opposition to in-state tuition
for illegal aliens has hurt their brand:

 “Republicans were saying, ‘Come support us, we like you, but we
want to deport your children.’ ”

Another patently offensive remark with no factual basis.

Some California Hispanic voters opposed Governor Jerry Brown Part II's
"DREAM" Act, which benefitted three thousand illegal aliens at the
expense of the millions of legal students, in-state or not, who still pay high
and rising tuition rates.

What really “rankled” Asian-American voters? The Democratic legislature’s
attempt to reintroduce
discrimination into the college application process. Dionne did mention the
CA GOP’s strong and growing outreach to California’s Asian-Pac communities,
with an unprecedented number of Asian-Americans in the state legislature, all
Republicans, evidently CA GOP leaders are learning from their past mistakes. By
the way, there are more women in the GOP caucus then their liberal
counterparts. Who is waging a War on Women now?

From Left Assembly Woman Young Kim, Supervisor Michelle Park-Steel, Senator Janet Nguyen and Assembly Woman Ling-Ling Chang (Forbes)

Before conservatives nationally or in California panic about the Republican
Party’s future, a historical and political perspective is essential.  For the CA GOP, the issue has been messaging,
not massaging the truth, but more importantly punching back at the heated,
racist narrative played out by the California Democratic Party for the past two
decades (see
one example here).

In 2014, Republicans already learned and applied key lessons. With
wide-spread technological advances, a broader appeal through recruitment,
outreach, and grassroots investment, the Grand Old Party is getting more than
its well-deserver make-over. The National GOP needs to follow on those reforms
in California, not take up the “advice” of liberal California Congressmen like Lieu,
or liberal columnists like E. J. Dionne.