There are a number of stories today about a likely scenario where a truly bi-partisan agreement* in Sacramento may lead to the California Presidential Primary being moved up to the first Tuesday in February in 2008, clearly increasing the relevance of Californians in influencing the selection of Party nominees for President and Vice President. I’ll be weighing in on this issue later in the week. Unspoken of in these stories, however, is a subtext that I have heard bantered around that by having a statewide Presidential election in February, 2008, separate from legislative elections that would still take place in June, legislators hope to take a crack at loosening California’s term limits laws, passed by the voters, which say that a legislator can serve only three terms in the Assembly, and two terms in the Senate. I can only say that the legislative placing a measure on the ballot to relax their own terms is a fools errand. Term limits are popular with the electorate, and there is simply no practical way voters are not going to see a move such as this to be anything but self serving. I guess language could be placed in the measure that says that relaxed… Read More

There are a number of stories today about a likely scenario where a truly bi-partisan agreement* in Sacramento may lead to the California Presidential Primary being moved up to the first Tuesday in February in 2008, clearly increasing the relevance of Californians in influencing the selection of Party nominees for President and Vice President. I’ll be weighing in on this issue later in the week. Unspoken of in these stories, however, is a subtext that I have heard bantered around that by having a statewide Presidential election in February, 2008, separate from legislative elections that would still take place in June, legislators hope to take a crack at loosening California’s term limits laws, passed by the voters, which say that a legislator can serve only three terms in the Assembly, and two terms in the Senate. I can only say that the legislative placing a measure on the ballot to relax their own terms is a fools errand. Term limits are popular with the electorate, and there is simply no practical way voters are not going to see a move such as this to be anything but self serving. I guess language could be placed in the measure that says that relaxed… Read More

Californian Republican National Committeeman Tim Morgan, yesterday, was elected Treasurer of the Republican National Committee. He penned this commentary from his hotel room at the Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C., and we feature it today…

This has been a bittersweet meeting of the Republican National Committee. On the one hand, we lost the election last fall and Democrats now control Congress just up the street from where we’ve been meeting. House Minority Leader, John Boehner of Ohio, on behalf of his colleagues in Republican leadership, said during the Thursday luncheon that he apologized for the Republican apostasy in forgetting the small government principles that secured our control of Congress in 1994. I was sitting with the Ohio Party Chairman and his staff who concur with Mr. Boehner’s assessment of the political situation here. … Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court has just announced it has decided to accept the appeal in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC and John McCain this term and it has established a briefing schedule. The case involves review of a lower Federal Court case that emasculates regulation of issue-oriented speech during pre-election periods in Federal elections that mentions candidate’s names, but does not contain "express advocacy." If the Supreme Court upholds the lower Federal court decision, the so-called "McCain-Feingold" law regulating Section 527 political committees will largely be gutted.… Read More

It would appear that the Governor is prepared to draw a line in the sand over whether the payroll and income tax increases that he proposes as part of his government-mandated healthcare proposal are, in fact, taxes!

The plan, in an of itself, is a repudiation of a lot of rhetoric that we have heard from Arnold Schwarzenegger going back to well before his election as Governor, as he has touted himself as a strong advocate of the free-market system. You can ask any of the centers of free-market thought from around the United States — the Cato Institute, the Foundation on Economic Education, the Heritage Foundation, the Reason Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute, the Claremont Foundation, and even our friends at the Wall Street Journal — I have personally spoken with or corresponded with folks from all of these bastions of free-market thought — and they are consistent with their opposition to the Governor’s proposal.

That said, the Governor apparently seems intent to refuse to allow the tax increases that would pull in billions of dollars in coerced revenue into state coffers to actually be called taxes. Governor, we have news for… Read More

My friend Grover Norquist passes this on from the White House office of Public Liaison:

Please join a special White House Conference Call on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 4:30 P.M.

We are pleased to announce that Monday’s call will feature Karl Rove who will give a preview of the President’s State of the Union Address. The call-in information is as follows:

Phone Number: 888-552-8613

Participant Code: 7759471

Leader Name: Tim Phelps… Read More

FR friend Ron Nehring (pictured to the right), the incoming Chairman of the California Republican Party in just a few weeks, is out in Washington, D.C. for the Winter meeting of the Republican National Committee. There, the RNC members are gathered to elect new officers for the 2007-2008 term. Here is Ron’s "live" report, received literally moments ago: California’s Tim Morgan, Republican National Committeeman and CRP Rules Committee Chairman, was moments ago elected Treasurer of the Republican National Committee by acclamation here in Washington, D.C. The RNC is meeting here at the Grand Hyatt for its bi-annual organizational meeting. Among the… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail, read by business and political leaders around the nation:

Girl’s Talk

It was inevitable that after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his ironclad pledge against tax increases last week by proposing a universal health insurance plan that his old liberal critics would begin to taunt him.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a veteran Arnold adversary, was first out of the gate. "This is a plan Assembly Democrats could have written," he crowed. But even more stinging was the New Republic. In its latest issue, its editors recalled the governor’s… Read More