I hate to be flippant but I can’t help myself. I spent six years toiling on the State GOP Board as regional Vice Chairman and than Treasurer. During this time we "managed" the State GOP Convention messages and tried to come out of every convention with a positive spin. In reality, that process is of little consequence to election outcomes.
The last GOP candidate for Governor to have a pre-primary endorsement got absolutely slaughtered in the general election. What hurt him the most was the security of not having to answer to his GOP base during the general election when it seemed everyone knew he was going to lose except him. And while Dan Lungren has gone onto a good place in the Congress, he’s been made even better by having to go through a tough, tough primary in 2004. You don’t forget lessons like that if you are smart.
Whether or not the Governor has our endorsement pre primary is irrelevant to his chances of prevailing in November. Voters don’t care whether we endorse him and neither do most conservatives. What they care about are issues and whether their nominee is true to general Party principles. Up to and including the special election, the Governor was mostly on track and it is clear that he isn’t on track now, especially on the fiscal front. I would argue that we were never really his base anyway. Arnold is a Third Party all to himself with close ties to Republicans on some issues, but that’s about it. His efforts to elect more Republicans in 2004 were valient and appreciated, but we saw very short coattails there. Lesson learned.
The upcoming convention could be of consequence to the outcome of Statewide elections but a review of the program convinces me otherwise. The workshops, while mostly productive, don’t address the single greatest challenge we fact this year – winning the political war against teachers, firefighters, nurses, cops and prison guards. Until we as Republicans devote a serious amount of time and training in dealing with these worthy adversaries we can pre-primary endorse, conventioneer and party ’til the cows come home at every convention. But in November, all it will be is goose eggs for our side – again.
February 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Mike hit the nail on the head. Now that Arnold has abandoned any attempt to be a fiscally conservative governor, he is really a party of one. That can be a lonely place on Election Day.
Arnold has some new political advisers who are a definite upgrade over the crew that managed the Special Election last year. Maybe they can still get control of the ship, but I am not counting on it.