Greetings from the California Republican Party State Convention. As you can see by the timestamp on this commentary that it is very late, indeed, and so this will not be a long one. The State GOP is gathered at the Renaissance Esmerelda Hotel in Indian Wells, out in the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles.
I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about Governor Schwarzenegger’s speech to conventioneers at last night’s dinner banquet. You can pretty much read about what he said in a plethora of articles highlighted on our main page (look for various comments from me in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and the San Diego Union Tribune).
In short, the Governor came before us, declared that the State GOP was in trouble, and in essence prescribed that the ‘cure’ for our party’s ills is to move to the left on major policy issues in order to capture the political center.
Frankly, and to be honest, I couldn’t disagree more. First and foremost, the purpose of a political party is to achieve it’s public policy goals. No where in our goal is a massive and costly government ‘intervention’ in California’s health-care delivery.
Anyways, pretty much everyone I spoke to tonight feels that the Governor was dead-wrong in his remarks and it certainly cast a pall on evening from those who were expecting much more uplifting remarks.
Fortunately two other Republican Governors spoke at the dinner, Governor Christ of Florida and Governor Perry of Texas. While I was not there for their speeches, I understand both were met with rousing applause and accolades. Perry specifically defied Schwarzenegger by talking about the importance of the GOP sticking to its guns.
Ahh, what a first day. Today my resolution to oppose the Perata/Nunez Term Limits End-Run comes up for a vote tomorrow morning in the Initiative Committee. Keep your fingers crossed..
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