With blanket permission from FR friend State Senator Tom McClintock to "lift" material from his outstanding Citizens for the California Republic website, you’ll see a lot from McClintock here on the FR. I have been waiting for the right day to share with you, in full, the prepared text of the Senator’s speech which he gave to the California Republican Assembly’s annual convention last month. Here it is, some great reading to start your holiday weekend! – Jon
Speech to the California Republican Assembly
By State Senator Tom McClintock
Abraham Lincoln often spoke of a vivid, recurring dream that he had at critical moments during the Civil War. He was set adrift on a great sea in a small skiff without oars, but somehow was making rapid progress toward a mysterious and indefinite shore. He had come to believe that that dream was a harbinger of great events, because it always preceded a Union victory.
I mention that dream tonight because in a way we’re living it today – both as a party and as a people. I’ve attended a lot of Republican gatherings recently, and it does feel that we are adrift upon a great political sea without leaders committed to our party’s principles, and yet we are rapidly making our way toward a great climacteric. And yes, I also believe it is a harbinger of a great victory just ahead.
We are adrift because many of our party’s leaders have abandoned the principles of our party under an amorphous banner called “post-partisanship.” I have come to believe that “post-partisanship” is the term for the process by which Gov. Schwarzenegger skillfully schmoozes with Democratic leaders and gets them to do exactly what they wanted to do all along.
But it is not a new concept. It’s been tried before.
In 1848, the Whig party had been out of office for four years. The Whigs were the party of Liberty in that age. They were the party of Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. They were the party of abolitionists and the home of the free-soil movement.
They were in a pickle that year. The Democrats had nominated a very popular Senator named Lewis Cass. Henry Clay, the Whigs’ eloquent anti-slavery champion, was ready and willing to run on an uncompromising platform to stop the expansion of slavery. But in 1848, everyone knew that was a position guaranteed to lose the White House to the Democrats.
Desperate to win, the Whig Party Leaders abandoned all principle, passed over Clay and instead nominated a wildly popular hero from the just-concluded Mexican War, General Zachary Taylor.
Taylor was a political agnostic, but he was a nationally known celebrity. He was also a slaveholder and the Whig party leaders thought would appeal across party lines. In fact, the Whig Leadership was so fearful of alienating swing voters that they even refused to adopt a party platform to avoid any controversy that might polarize people.
The Whigs won that year on Taylor’s “rock-star” popularity. But the glue that held the Whigs together was gone. The Free Soil Party was born that year. The Liberty Party soon emerged. And the Temperance Party. And the Republican Party. In eight years, the Whigs, who thought the road to victory was paved by consensus and compromise and concession and capitulation had utterly disappeared.
All the voters who had joined the Whig party when it stood for the principles they believed in no longer had any reason to stay once it didn’t – and they left.
One of those who left was a former Whig congressman named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln obviously didn’t believe in post-partisanship. In fact, Abraham Lincoln held the extremely partisan position that slavery should not be extended into the territories. And win or lose, live or die, he told Republicans to hold fast on that principle.
Last month, the outgoing Republican State Chairman said that the next four years were – quote – “an opportunity to redefine who we are as Republicans.”
He couldn’t possibly be more wrong. We don’t need to re-define our principles – we need to return to them.
I have heard it said over and over, “This is a blue state – and sticking to our Republican principles dooms us to defeat. To win in California, we must be more like the Democrats.”
It is true that we are a minority party today – as we were when we began in the 1850’s.
But here’s where our Party’s Post-Partisan Practitioners completely miss the boat.
There are only two ways for a minority to become a majority. The easy and wrong path is to adopt the majority party’s agenda when you know that agenda is wrong. A minority party that does this soon discovers it has ceased to be a party at all.
First it loses its soul. And then it loses its supporters.
The harder but lasting road is for the minority to develop a better vision of governance than the majority party, take that vision to the people and earn their charter to govern.
And let me ask you: could that case for change ever have been more compelling than it is today in California?
Today, 30 years of leftist policy has reduced California to its present condition – at a time of record levels of spending, we can’t seem to scrape together enough money to build a decent road system, or educate our kids or protect our families from predators.
I know I speak for everyone in this room when I say: We don’t accept the status quo. We don’t accept the policies that have destroyed our state and we sure as hell don’t accept the proposition that for Republicans to succeed we just have to agree to continue those very policies.
We have come through a devastating election created not because of a rejection of Republican principles by our fellow citizens – but rather because of a rejection of those principles by our own party’s leaders.
Republicans promised to reduce the size of government – instead we increased it. Republicans promised to protect the integrity of our borders – instead we abandoned them. Republicans promised to defend our principles of individual liberty – instead we trampled them.
Why, then, should we be surprised that Republican voters stayed at home on Election Day in record numbers? In Republican Orange County, voter turnout barely topped 50 percent. But it was 73 percent in Democratic Marin County.
Democrats voted and Republicans didn’t. It was that simple.
Last month, the New York Times-CBS Poll probed the thoughts of rank-and-file Republican voters.
Here’s what they reported:
In a survey that brought to life the party’s anxieties about keeping the White House, Republicans said they were concerned that their party had drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan, its most popular figure of the past 50 years.” Gee, ‘ya think?
Four years ago, the CRA and other conservative groups initiated the recall – and lest we forget, we did so against the solid opposition of the liberal wing of our party. You remember those days. They called it an “unwelcome distraction;” they derided it as “dead on arrival,” they even said it was a threat to the re-election of George Bush.
But we persevered, and ultimately succeeded in recalling Davis for policies that had nearly bankrupted our state. We conservatives split that year, and the result was the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. We did get him to at least adopt our rhetoric. He promised to stop any tax increase, cut up the credit cards, and live within our means.
But last year, he began to depart from those promises, and has now executed a radical turn to the left that makes the Gray Davis years look like the good old days.
By every conceivable measurement, our fiscal affairs have dramatically worsened:
• Average annual spending growth under Gray Davis was 7.1 percent; during this administration it has averaged 10 percent.
• The worst general fund deficit under Gray Davis was $6.6 billion in 2000. The 2006 budget is running an $8 billion deficit –that could reach $10 billion by June.
• In 2003, State Government consumed $8.80 out of every $100 of personal income – the highest portion of personal income in the 150-year history of our state. Today it consumes $9.58.
• Debt service costs were $2 billion a year in 2003. Today they have tripled to $6 billion – more than the budget of the entire University of California.
• The state budget has ballooned from 78 billion to 102 billion.
• The number of state employees has grown at almost twice the rate of population growth.
In short, spending is growing much faster than it did under Davis, the general fund deficit is much bigger, government is consuming much more of your paycheck, the debt burden has tripled, and the state payroll is now growing at nearly twice the rate of population.
And should anyone really be surprised? Last year, Gov. Schwarzenegger invited the Gray Davis Alumni Association into the corner office – and they are doing for him what they did for Davis. Same policies – same result.
I suppose you could say that they’re governing like Democrats – but that would be unfair…to the Democrats. The fact is, Davis would have vetoed the worst of the legislation that Schwarzenegger has signed.
Last year, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed the most radical measure anywhere on the planet to slash carbon dioxide emissions at incalculable cost to our economy and with virtually no benefit to the environment.
This has dire ramifications for manufacturing, for construction, for cement production, for cargo transportation, for agriculture – all of which must see their commerce radically curtailed under the provisions of this measure. And don’t think these developments haven’t already been factored into investment decisions affecting our state – dramatically amplifying the impact of any national slowdown.
For example, just last month, Fleetwood – one of the biggest manufacturers of RV’s in the nation, had to respond to a national slowdown in demand for RV’s. Of the 30 plants around the country the one they closed was, of course, in California. That was a three percent reduction in their national manufacturing plants – but a 100 percent reduction in California.
Meanwhile the Governor has proposed the second biggest tax increase in the history of our state to finance his universal health care scheme, the cornerstone of which is to provide free health insurance for illegal aliens.
We are now already tasting the first bitter fruit of these policies. There’s a reason we’re not hearing a lot of boasting about California as a nation state these days. When this administration took office we were the 7th largest economy in the world. Today, we are the 8th largest economy in the world.
California is now suffering one of the worst domestic out-migrations in our history. Last year 287,000 more people moved out of California than moved in. That’s a bigger population loss than Louisiana suffered after Hurricane Katrina. Population growth is now entirely babies and foreign immigration – most of it illegal.
Our incoming tax returns are already recording the impact on our economy, and they are showing a decided downturn, which is further exacerbating the state’s fiscal problems – at a time when many other states are running surpluses.
So what are we to do? Reagan addressed that question after the devastating 1974 election. He said, "Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors, which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?"
We might indeed be adrift in a small skiff in a great political sea. But we’ve got two things going for us.
The skiff we’re in is constructed of sound principles of conservative governance and it is seaworthy and water-tight.
And second, we are indeed rapidly making our way toward a great climacteric.
Last week, the Governor toured the country. He denounced those who disagree with his policies as “fanatics,” while he showcased the most radical leftists in California politics today – all in the name of “post-partisanship.” He promised the political extinction of those who will not fall in line with these policies.
As I read those speeches, it occurred to me that the elements of Greek tragedy are beginning to take shape. This opening act sees our hero, reeking of hubris, hailed as the savior of our planet after imposing the most extreme restrictions on human enterprise ever attempted in this country. He now boasts that his political opponents are prostrate at his feet.
The world’s spotlight is now squarely upon California and in coming acts the world will watch the actual impact of the Governor’s policies.
And it is entirely possible they may discover that European Socialism doesn’t work any better in California than it has worked in Europe.
I believe that events are now rapidly coming to a head and there can be only one of two outcomes.
Perhaps we are all wrong. Perhaps the unprecedented burden now imposed upon our commerce will produce a wave of new investment and innovation and environmental purity as the Governor has so loudly promised. Perhaps the unprecedented levels of deficit spending will send our economy into paroxysms of prosperity. Perhaps.
But there’s another possibility. There’s a possibility that we’re right, and that the inevitable economic realities of reckless spending and outrageous regulation are already beginning to destroy California’s once-vibrant economy in a dark and miserable example of human folly.
And we must be prepared for that possibility. In normal times, citizens don’t pay a lot of attention to public policy, and that’s why Democracies occasionally drift off course. But when a crisis approaches, that’s when you see Democracy engage. One by one, citizens sense the approach of a common danger and they rise to the occasion. They focus – they look beyond the symbols and rhetoric – and they begin to make very good decisions. Political majorities can shift very quickly in such times. Polls can reverse themselves almost overnight in such times. And I believe that day is now rapidly approaching.
This Greek Tragedy has already been set in motion and it will play itself out in the months ahead. In these months we should prepare for a political re-awakening of what Nixon called the “great silent majority.”
Reagan was right – we don’t need a new third party – we need to take back our perfectly good Republican Party.
I believe the CRA already occupies the central ground in this unfolding struggle.
First, we must restore to our party’s leadership men and women who believe that principles matter and that the principles of our party are sound, and that if we communicate those principles clearly, the people will ultimately agree that they are sound.
Second, we must organize on a scale we have never before attempted. Our people are angry – but they are also frustrated – they feel that their political efforts are futile and that’s why they’re not voting. We’ve got to find them, motivate them, communicate with them — be sure they are supplied with all the information and practical advice they need to engage in this political battle effectively.
And third, we’ve got to communicate at every opportunity – by taking our message to every corner of California. We must remind people what California once was – and what it can be again: A land of low taxes, plentiful jobs, the best freeways in the world, and the best public schools in the country, a land of affordable homes, abundant water and electricity. We had those things when we practiced Republican principles of limited government. And then we threw them away.
In short, we’ve got to raise the banner of bold colors and as the crisis deepens, the people will see that banner and rally. They always have.
Years ago, Ronald Reagan talked about glimpsing a shining city on a hill. I can tell you where that shining city is – it is right under our feet. And the only thing required to bring it back is to restore the basic principles of freedom that we have lost in California’s public policy.
Whether we like it or not, whether we choose to recognize it or not, whether we choose to act on it or not — our generation is already engaged in a great political struggle over the future of our state and of our nation. And hanging in the balance is nothing less than our freedom as Americans and our future as Californians.
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