State of denialThe Republican Party in California continues its long, slowslideFewer than 26% of Californian voters are registered with the
Grand Old Party
Why? The CAGOP is not registering voters and refuses to reach out to different communities and bring in voters. Just like the Washington DC establishment, they do not think about the concerns of gun-rack Reagan Democrats.
They don’t care about working people in a simple, direct fashion. Men and women want to work and thrive in this great country. They derive no benefit nor security from globalist enterprises.
TEN years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger made a speech at the
California Republican Party’s convention that silenced the crowd. “Our party
has lost the middle and we will not regain true political power in California
until we get it back,” Mr Schwarzenegger, then the state’s governor, warned.
“In movie terms, we are dying at the box office. We are not filling the seats.”
The problem had nothing to do with political alignments of picking the wrong fights. The fact is that Arnold Schwarz-a-housekeeper ran on a specific set of reforms and promises, and he did not deliver on any of them. In fact, he lurched even further to the Left, sold out his base and his party as well as the state of California.
That’s a larger part of the reason why Republican registration has been dwindling. It’s not that more Democratic voters are emerging and registering at the outset, but rather that more Republicans are joining the Decline-to-State column because they keep getting kicked in the teeth by the very Republican officials whom they elect! Back then, Republican registration in California had been
falling for a decade. Nonetheless, Chad Mayes (pictured), until recently the
Republican assembly leader, recalls being skeptical of the Terminator’s
message. “Dying at the box office? Oh come on,” he recalls thinking to himself
at the time. “Things ebb and flow.” Today, Mr Mayes looks back on the message
as prophetic.
Republicans are dying at the box office because elected officials routinely engage in false advertising. They promise to lower the tax and cost burdens in the state. They pledge to remove the red tape and reduce the regulatory schemas. Once they get to Sacramento, however, they jump in bed with the Democrats and continue raising taxes and fees. A Russian roulette of bad votes ensures that at least two or three Republicans in the state assembly and state senate vote on bad bills, thus providing the Democratic majority the supermajority edge they need to raise taxes and fees.
As of February 2017, just 25.9% of Californian voters were
registered with the Grand Old Party—the lowest level since the 1980s and nearly
20 points less than the share of Golden State residents registered as
Democrats. There are nearly as many Californians who express “no party
preference” as there are Republicans. Republicans hold less than one third of
seats in the state assembly and state senate and have not won state-wide office
since Mr Schwarzenegger’s re-election in 2006. Asked to characterise the condition
of the party in the state, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the Sol
Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, quips
that it is “in the iron lung ward of the hospital.”
In 2006, Republican Steve Poizer won the Insurance Commissioner seat, since his Democratic opponent was the corrupt, unlikeable Cruz Bustamante. California was once just as red as it is now blue.
Republican candidates won the state in all but one presidential election held
between 1952 and 1988, when Californians voted for Lyndon Johnson over the
radical populist Barry Goldwater. The California Republican Party produced two
American presidents: Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But starting in 1992 with
the election of Bill Clinton, Californians began leaning Democratic and have
not supported a Republican for president since.
Yes, yes, we all know that California was a fairly reliable red state. Sure, we got it. But that was decades ago. California has been overrun by illegal aliens, fleeced by public sector unions, and inundated with dependency cases. Demographic changes have played a big part in this: by 2014
Hispanics surpassed whites as California’s largest ethnic group. They became
less likely to consider voting Republican after 1994, when the state’s
Republican governor, Pete Wilson, championed Proposition 187, a ballot
initiative aimed at eliminating public benefits for undocumented immigrants.
Darry Sragow, a long-time Democratic strategist, says the measure, known as the
Save our State (SOS) initiative: “scared the living daylights out of anyone who
was brown.” Today, research by the Public Policy Institute of California
suggests that 63% of California’s Hispanic likely voters are registered as
Democrats; 16% are registered Republicans. Over half of Asians are registered
Democrats while 15% are registered Republicans. Whites in the state are split
equally between the two parties.
The issue is not demographic changes per se. The problem is illegal immigration, and all the corruption which has attended it. California Republicans’ stance on immigration has softened
since Mr Wilson’s era: several of California’s leading Republicans urged Donald
Trump to continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme before
he announced he would end it. But the party has done little else to adapt to
the new reality of the state. While Californians’ views on issues such as gay
marriage have grown more liberal and alarm about climate change has deepened,
the official Republican positions have remained entrenched. Its platform reads:
“We support the two parent family as the best environment for raising children,
and therefore believe that it is important to define marriage as a union
between one man and one woman.” Mr Mayes chalks this up to the party’s longtime
minority status. “Republicans have started to think their whole job is just to
oppose to other side…Just obstruct, obstruct, scream into your bullhorns.”
Republicans should be obstructed cost and tax increases. Republicans are supposed to offer a clear, affirmative alternative to the Democratic demagoguery destroying the state of California. The Republicans have not been doing that effectively, as most of them have become comfortable collecting their per diem, voting no on everything, and then retiring into a non-partisan office with a six-figure salary.
Just like Kristin Olsen! Last month, straying from the Republican Party line on the
environment cost Mr Mayes his job as leader of the assembly Republicans. In
July, he supported a bill to extend California’s cap-and-trade programme to
2030 along with seven other Republican legislators. Though polling suggests 56%
of Californian adults approved the legislation, which sets a limit on how much
carbon individual companies can emit and allows businesses that pollute less
than the cap to trade their excess allowance to groups that pollute more, many
Republicans were livid. Some of his Republican colleagues slammed Mr Mayes for
handing a victory to the state’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who had
fought for the bill. On August 24th Mr Mayes was replaced by Brian Dahle, an
assemblyman from one of the most conservative parts of California.
Who cares if 70% or even 80% of residents want Cap and Trade? Those polls are susceptible to change and reform. Real leadership is about changing polls, not following them. The Democratic Party in California is convinced that 2 + 2 = 5. They are wrong. They believe that they can borrow and spend more money and create wealth, when any common sense economist, liberal or conservative, will challenge such flawed thinking. Shortly after Mr Mayes stepped down as leader Mr
Schwarzenegger appeared at a fundraiser for his assembly re-election via
Facetime, a video chatting application. From a big screen, the
actor-turned-politician who also flouted party orthodoxy to vote for
cap-and-trade legislation during his tenure boomed: “You are the future of the
party.” But unless Mr Mayes’s colleagues recognise the need to balance ideology
with pragmatism, the party in California seems doomed.
The problem is not the California Republican Party, as the principled, conscientious movement of activists and insurgents who want good government and principled leadership. The real problem is that the state of California is doomed. There is no nice way to put it. Final Reflection
I do not want California to secede. This state is falling apart at the seams, and all the Silicon Valley innovations and tourist attractions will fix this. The agricultural sector is falling apart. Housing is beyond costly. The overrunning crony capitalist, big labor, and Big La Raza interests want to further their limited interests, but have no interest in serving the public interest.
The California Republican Party cannot–will not–bounce back by hugging destructive, Democratic policies. We need to push aside all political correctness and tell the voting public the truth. Not the race card, but a clear dedication to societal order and harmony will ensure a lasting recovery.
We may have to sit back and watch everything get really, really bad before voters stop voting Democrat expecting some kind of handout. When human nature gets beaten down badly enough, there will be a chance of GOP recovery, but more importantly for conservative, Judeo-Christian values to reassert themselves in this once Golden State.
