Where Are All the Republicans? (Hint: Everywhere)

I recently met a few more who joined the Republican Party from Decline to State. More people are joining the Beach Cities Republicans, too. I know a number of Democrats who vote for Republican candidates, including influence individuals connected to homeowners associations in the South Bay.

Individual Democrats are fed up with their party, which cannot pay its own bills, and routinely pleases special interests instead of the public interest.

We need to engage the base, and we need to inform more people that we are winning.

The base feels disrespected, right now, and they should feel that way. Big Business has strangled Washington with corporate favors at the expensive of the general welfare.

Perhaps it is working in the California Republican Party's best interests right now, that the Chamber of Commerce is leaning toward Democratic candidates. Let the limited political manipulators drift toward the Democratic Party. The rest of the country wants a "We the People" representative.

I repeat: We don't need a Big Tent. We need more people to know that there is already plenty of room for them to come in. Republicans working at the local and the state level should stop taking direction from the mainstream media or the Democratic Party.

Once again – we have a Big Tent. It would help if more Republicans simply recognized that they are not alone. It would also help if we told more people that their values, their worldview is welcome within the GOP camp.

The problem remains that too many Republicans love going to the clubs and talking with the same people who agree with them on just about everything.

The California Republican Party does not need an echo chamber. The same people have been talking to each other, and waiting for someone else to hustle and raise the money, reach out to communities, and bring in the votes. This kind of thinking has to go.

So, where are all the Republicans? That's easy: just about everywhere and anywhere you can see people, men and women trying to get by from day to day. The soccer moms who are concerned about their children's future. The single parents who are tired of fighting the bureaucratic inertia of city hall and the statehouse — and they do not even know whom they are fighting!

I met Republicans in Venice, CA! Yes, liberal loony, left-wing, anti-corporate Venice! One Republican Congressional candidate informed me that he should have campaigned more — in Venice! Of course he should have! There are small businesses, working families, and young people working for a better future there, as much as in every enclave of Southern California and throughout the country. What values, what ideas, what programs are going to help down-to-earth people? Conservative principles, and Republican values.

So, once again — where are all the Republicans? Everywhere. You and I just have to reach out to them and keep the basic priorities of their lives, and the irreducible minimum required from the Constitution, in mind.