Last weekend, about a thousand members, alternates and guests gathered at the California Republican Party Convention at the Renaissance Esmerelda Hotel in Indian Wells in the Coachella Valley/Palm Springs area. As is typically the case, we’ll be sharing some stories and happenings from this event over the next few days.
First and foremost, we’re pleased to announce the return of our highly-acclaimed, caddy and pithy "Winners & Losers of the CRP Convention" column, which we should be featuring at the end of this week. While your trusted FR team had many of our team members on the ground, looking over the convention for nominees, we typically get some of our best suggestions from FR readers. If you have a nomination, you can e-mail us here. As always, we ensure the confidentiality of anyone who contacts us.
I’ll start by fast forwarding to a couple of results from the weekend that I want especially emphasize. The first is that convention delegates unanimously put the party on record as opposing the ballot initiative sponsored by Senate President Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. In a resolution that instructs the party to prominently display opposition to this measure, where feasible, on the party’s voter-contact mail, the CRP attacked this measure as a brazen effort by termed-out liberal politicians to try to circumvent voter-approved term-limits. Also, in a significant and important decision, despite the efforts of Past CRP Chairman Bob Naylor, the initiatives committee and convention delegates unanimously voted to endorse the California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act, a measure that will reform California eminent domain laws to protect all property owners from abuse. Also in a unanimous decision, delegates condemned efforts by the California League of Cities to push a legislature sponsored ballot measure, ACA 8, as an effort to lock into the State Constitution the ability of governments to continue to abuse eminent domain. The State GOP also opposed a potential initiative, similar to ACA 8, that the League is threatening to file. I mention all of the CRP positions for and against ballot measures here.
Getting back to the "big picture" on the convention…
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
**There is more – click the link**
September 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Time for the CRP to start an advisory petition urging the Governor to switch parties. If he truly desires to be a majority party so bad and is willing to sell out all that right then he should just join the Democrats. Time for a good ol’ fashion purging!
September 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
It was hard to open a cupboard at the convention without John looking over your shoulder to check out what was going on. One of the hardest working people at the convention. John’s dedication to keeping active Republicans informed is an invaluable service.
Keep up the good work!
September 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
The stubborn adherence to a philosophy that (to quote the Governor) is “dying at the box office” has been revealed by science to be a brain deficiency
on the part of conservatives.
September 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I had an opportunity to speak to Senator McClintock in a small group environment and he definitely is resolved to stand for principles and is holding stead fast on his belief that we must not compromise.
Outside of our figurehead leader, I truly enjoyed the weekend. I would like to extend a personal thank you to Jon for working so hard to let us remain Republicans. Your visible and behind the scenes work is greatly appreciated.
Now if we could only get you two as Gov and Lt. Gov :-)
Richard Rios
September 10th, 2007 at 12:00 am
What Arnie says – despite his straying from the reservation on bonds, creation of a gov’t healthcare monopoly and the ‘global warming’ enviromorass – has more than a grain of truth in it.
Given CA demographics, Republicans are starting to become nonelectable to statewide office due to perceived – correctly or not, but that’s the fault of party image makers! – ties to the prototypical Orange County ‘religious right’ and ‘anti-choice’ factions.
Hordes of generally conservative suburban middle- and upper-middle income voters who are anti-big-govt and anti-tax-increase nevertheless continiue to shy away from voting for R’s because of perceived anti-choice stance and because of concern of religious bent (“Creationism”, “Intelligent design” or whatever pen name these idiocies have today) creeping into science curriculum of their school children. Time and again, surveys matters of ‘choice’ are a statewide concern.
I believe I could get a pleasant- looking Republican elected even if he railed against global warming nonsense and waved assault weapons around – as long as he voiced ‘choice’ and keeping religion out of school science classes. He’d probably get 5 extra points on top of that if he waved a bag of dead babies around.
Before you read too much about me into this, I’m not ‘pro choice’, and frankly I don’t give much of a hoot about it. I just can see the writing on the wall and I hear comments from tons of neighbors and folks situated to wanna vote for Republicans if this issue were put to bed. But I want some general Republican ideas to gain and retain traction, and Republicans in CA seem to – on a progressively worsening basis – not to be able to generate viable candidates for statewide office almost completely due to this (magnified somewhate during Bush lame-duck status + war).
We can now win more elections for R’s in CA getting a fair fraction of the broad swath of middle-ground voters (that a generally “small gov’t” antibureacracy conservative message can reach) than we can by trying to continually appeal to the small fraction of Bible thumpers on Orange County.
As a California gun owner and one of many who primarily votes “guns first”, this distresses me. I now have to regard “Christian right” candidates for statewide office as anti-gun because they dominate the party’s primaries and end up being nonelectable, leaving a likely anti-gun Demo to walk away with general election. When there’s no credible competition, the Demos can veer far to the left. So in many ways the political label “pro-life” must, de facto, be regarded as “anti gun” because it also means “we don’t want to win.”
Don’t blame the messenger, look at the numbers. Go talk to voting middle- and upper income homeowners in suburban areas. There is simply a large fear of the religious taint in the Republican party. Women ain’t gonna vote anti-choice in appreciable amounts, and parents wouldn’t mind if their kids got a good science education so their kids don’t have to be WalMart door greeters due to not being hireable in many fields.
If the Republican party wants to maintain viability & relevancy in California it needs to take the blinkers off, STFU about “pro-life” stuff, and publicly kick a few Christian Right types to the curb: these folks are perceived, somewhat correctly, as a milder form of a Christian Taliban.
Bill Wiese
San Jose CA
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
OK you can crawl back in you hole now Bill … Danney
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Well Bill, I hear what you are saying…but there has to be a way not to compromise principles and state the principles of our party in such a way as to be relevant to more voters in the middle as well.
Unfortunately, there have been a few people in history who have taken a militant stance on both sides of the aisle, and that does not make a party attractive to many individuals who do not wish to be involved in controversial issues and activities.
Most people seek peace and harmony because this environment facilitates the pursuit of happiness, something we all desire.
Unfortunately, the partisanship of politics seems to germinate and “flower” into arguing and disharmony.
Hopefully, the various discussions in the next few months will arrive at a resolution for the February convention.
Our common goal is we all want to be a stronger party…and here’s to that goal.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Is the CRP leadership going to provide some leadership on this?
How about some direction, a vision for the Republican Party in California.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I’m shocked to learn that Jon Fleischman prefers red meat to reasoned discourse about how to make the Republican Party relevant. I guess Jon belongs to that wing of the Republican Party that wants to send a message instead of win elections. If his wing keeps it up, there well soon be so few Republicans in the legislature that we will no longer be able to stop the Democrats from passing every left wing off the charts bill and overriding the Governors veto. So keep it up right wing and lose it all.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I am all in favor of reasoned discourse, Bob. I think that it is very reasonable to advance the political agenda of a party around certain core beliefs. We need to market our ideas, but not change our principles. Bob, do you think that our party should stand for bigger government? For more regulation and taxation? That’s the conversation that we’re having here.
Some people want to make this about “social issues” — the reality is that the Republican Party supported the Governor in his re-election despite his liberal views on social issues. The heartburn is now over the Governor’s desire to garner GOP support for higher taxes and more regulation… We certainly are not going to beat the Democrats by trying emulate them.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
To respond to Bill’s comment, I don’t remember any of the down-ticket statewide candidates in 2006 focusing that much on social issues. McClintock, Strickland, and others campaigned primarily on reducing taxes, spending, and waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
Our governor, on the other hand, supported the bonds and global warming bill, and is now pushing for state-mandated health insurance. Given your specific concerns, Bill, I’d throw in your lot with the conservative wing of the party, not the Schwarzenegger folks.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Rohit,
You are indeed correct in that the down-ticket candidates did not focus on social issues.
They lost in part, however, because of the general taint the Republicans in CA have acquired – it’s a ‘slop-over’ thing. Out in the burbs here people won’t vote for dogcatcher unless he’s pro-choice. The candidates weren’t a failure, the party failed them due to poor marketing.
No one seems to have talked to these people. They’re fundamentally fiscally conservative/small-gov’t, but the Republican party is perceived as run by a bunch of benighted OC Bible thumpers.
Yes, I agree our Gov is wrong to support the various things he has.
But despite that, his point is correct.
It’ll take 5-10 years to subtract out the religion and anti-choice elements of the party. Kicking these people – a relatively small faction – to the curb can let us win again and get people better than Arnie RINOs.
It doesn’t matter these days what an R candidate says in CA, folks automagically will assume religious right. Tom McClintock, a fine guy if there ever is one, continues to be identified with the religious right.
If you want an essentially conservative message to get thru and win, you’ve gotta have winners.
Whether you like it or not, Repubs have fatally hung their hat on these two social issues so much that even when it’s never mentioned by a candidate it still hangs over the room.
I don’t give a damn about choice issues but I know when we’re beat, and I see this as putting the R’s in the tank in CA for another 2 decades.
Again, my comments have nothing to do with siding with Arnie’s bonds, healthcare, global warming, etc. My comments are about his message about Republicans in CA in general, and what he’s left unsaid.
Bill Wiese
San Jose CA
September 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Jon, you need to read the Governor’s speech. He did talk about holding the line on taxes. And he vetoed the Democrats grab legislation on health care. He also said that he believes and tries to advance the core values of the Republican Party – taxes as low as possible, environment (think Teddy Roosevelt) individual initiative. As I listened to his speech “stink bomb” did not enter my mind. But it did yours. Why is that?
September 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Republicans are leaving the Party BECAUSE of so called “leaders” like our governor (unfortunately our President on Immigration and a few corrupt individuals as well), who have abandoned our Party’s principles of governing.
It was so ironic to hear the very person (Arnold) who has helped cause the problem, blame conservatives again!
Arnold unfortunately has a narrow and negative view (like his democrat wife and chief of staff) of what it means to be conservative.
Republicans stayed home last November because they are demoralized by folks like Arnold. Do you really think that Republicans voted for Arnold at the top of the ticket and then DID NOT vote
for our down ticket Republicans? Fat chance!
Conservative means a lot more than pro-life and pro-gun and it is insulting to define us the way Arnold has. The conservative message is a positive and winning message if communicated well.
If we continue to abandon our Party’s principles, there will be no reason to have a Party.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I’m getting the impression that none of you either heard the Governor’s speech or have read the speech. So here is a place where you can read it. After you read the speech I think you will agree with Governor Schwarzenegger and not with Jon Fleischman. Please go here: http://www.rrcgop.org/Schwarzenegger's%20Fall%202007%20CRP%20Speech.htm