Cal Grant financial aid, fee waivers,for illegal immigrants in a bill, SB 1, passes off of our floor tonight, 45-29.… Read More

IS PHIL ANGELES CRYING? I’m sure Phil Angelides is crying somewhere right now, depressed that he is not in Sacramento to sign the outrageous shift towards socialized medicine that has been passed by legislative Democrats and placed on the Governor’s desk. Much time has been spent on this page criticizing Governor Schwarzenegger for his own proposal to significantly increase the size of government and state government’s role in health care. That said, today is a good time to take a pause, and appreciate that the extreme agenda of Don Perata and Fabian Nunez is too far to the left, even for the port-side shift of Schwarzenegger. The Governor has vowed to veto AB 8 and he should be applauded for doing so. Perhaps if Mr. Angeles is bored, he can print out a copy of AB 8 on his computer, and sign the bottom of it. That’s about all of the relevance that he will have in this process — thank goodness! THE LINE IN THE SAND ON REDISTRICTING REFORM Lost… Read More

Just six years ago, our two oceans protection strategy crumbled.Radical Islam’s resurgence came swift and deadly.Central Europe faced the same resurgence just 324 years ago.

My family visited Vienna last summer. When we asked the hotel’s concierge where we would find Monuments of Vienna’s most important day, the Siege of Vienna by Muslim Jihadists in 1683, the otherwise bright guide didn’t understand my inquiry.

In Sept 11 and 12th of 1683, the Ottoman Turks, after years of planning, had Vienna under siegeby hundreds of thousands of soldiers. After hundreds of years and countless victims conquering Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania and most of eastern Europe, the Turks were determined to conquer Europe. The most effective soldiersfor the Turks armies were the legendary Janissary. Mostly composed of Greek and eastern European Christian boys seized from their families to create a "new soldier". Much like the modern day totalitarian armies, boys, as young as… Read More

I keep hearing persistent feedback that there are some legislative Republicans who think that the legislature granting a big pay raise (plus) to the CCPOA is a grand idea. Clearly the Governor does not, I and I have been critical.

This is the Governor’s statement: "I did not veto $700 million from the budget to give it all to CCPOA in a backroom deal. This bill makes an end run around negotiations and mediation, reverses an arbitration decision that saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars, kills any hope for management reform, and reinstates, in full, the contract signed by Governor Gray Davis. This is the same contract that Republicans and Democrats derided as the biggest sweetheart deal in California history." Please educate me on the CCPOA side of this equation…. Someone? I am truly open to hearing both sides of this issue. Drop me a line here.

Thanks in advance.… Read More

Senator Don Perata took the lead in pulling hte plug on redistricting reform. So, unless a redistricting reform measure qualifies for the ballot via signature petitions, don’t look for it on the ballot next year.

Of course, it is now full-speed ahead to kill the Perata/Nunez Term Limits Weakening Initiative that is on the February ballot. If we aren’t going to have fair districts, the last thing we need to four and six more years of Perata and Nunez, respectively.

These guys need to go find jobs in the private sector, where they cannot torture the taxpayers anymore.… Read More

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… Read More

I didn’t go to the California Republican Party convention this past weekend, but I did read Governor Schwarzenegger’s already-notorious speech. You can read it here.

I don’t think any serious Republican disputes the Governor’s assertion we need to bring more independents into the party. That’s not exactly a revelation. We are losing folks to the DTS column.

But it’s hard to take the Governor’s prescription seriously, in no small part because it comes from the Governor.

Let’s take this line for example:

But being a Republican is important to me. This party is important to me.

Really, Governor? The moment Phil Angelides won the Democratic primary, it was crystal clear you were going to be decisively re-elected. If the party was "important to you," expending serious resources to help elected other Republicans to statewide offices would have been a concrete way of showing that. The reality is Arnold is all about… Read More

From today’s WSJ Political Diary… (Thanks for the shout-out!)

Governor Moonbeam II

California Republicans met at their convention near Palm Springs this weekend and heard two starkly different messages. Their own "post-partisan" governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, called on them to embrace the fight against global warming, support huge tax increases required by his universal health care plan and otherwise move to the center. Otherwise, he warned, the GOP would be "relegated to the margins of California’s political life."

The governor’s message was received with tepid applause, with some delegates sitting on their hands. The atmosphere dramatically changed only minutes… Read More