What am I missing here?

As I watch the Sunday television political pundits, they say that Ohio Representative John Boehner, currently the House Majority Leader (pictured to the right), is set to ascend into the top position for Republicans in the House, with the only higher ranking Republican, Speaker Dennis Hastert, "taking the bullet" for the team," stepping away from Leadership. But apparently his fellow leader, Boehner, doesn’t feel that he has the same obligation.

Well, with every offense intended, Republicans lost Congress not because the Democrats suddenly discovered some sort of great plan for America – but because voters, and especially the Republican base, lost any faith in the Republican majorities in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives.

The… Read More

Bloomberg News profiles former California Congressman Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) who is now Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Chris’ campaign was one of my first, helping him by walking (a lot) of precincts back in 1998. Here’s the article:

SEC’s Cox confounds predictions Conservative ex-St. Paulite shifts from lawmaker to law enforcer BY BOB DRUMMOND Bloomberg News … Read More

Mike Spence’s excellent post below best describes a long running disagreement, between GOP Moderates and GOP Conservatives, about how the California Republican Party should be run.

Everyone complained about the Chairmanship of John McGraw (who I served as Treasurer for) from 1999-2001 but he was the only State Chairman I’ve seen that didn’t hand the keys to the Party over to the: 1. Party nominee for Governor or 2. Party nominee for President. He stood up to the Bush "people" in California in 2000 and was widely excoriated by party Moderates and some Conservatives for failing to "cooperate" (read, become the waterboy for) with Bush’s staff and volunteer leaders here.

Because of McGraw’s "lack of cooperation" (read: he told them to go to hell) we "reformed" the Party so that it is effectively controlled by a small group of leaders (making the Board virtually irrelevant) and handing the Party over to Gerry Parsky from 2001-2004 for the Bush re-election (in which they invested zero money).

The… Read More

Lynn Daucher’s election to the California State Senate matters. Right now she and her Democrat opponent, Supervisor (and former Assemblyman) Lou Correa probably both feel a great deal of empathy for both President Bush and former Senator Al Gore — as election day for Daucher (pictured to the right) and Correa continues to go on and on. You see, in this Central Orange County Senate District, represented by term-limited Democrat Joe Dunn for the past eight years, the votes are too close to call. When all of the election-day ballots were counted, Daucher held onto a razor thin lead — but that was with over 20,000 votes yet to be counted (late absentee ballots, those who brought their AB’s to their polling place, and provisional ballots cast by those who had some issues at the polling place). After several days of counting ballots (with several more days to go), today Daucher sits with an 833 vote margin over… Read More

Lynn Daucher’s election to the California State Senate matters. Right now she and her Democrat opponent, Supervisor (and former Assemblyman) Lou Correa probably both feel a great deal of empathy for both President Bush and former Senator Al Gore — as election day for Daucher (pictured to the right) and Correa continues to go on and on. You see, in this Central Orange County Senate District, represented by term-limited Democrat Joe Dunn for the past eight years, the votes are too close to call. When all of the election-day ballots were counted, Daucher held onto a razor thin lead — but that was with over 20,000 votes yet to be counted (late absentee ballots, those who brought their AB’s to their polling place, and provisional ballots cast by those who had some issues at the polling place). **There is more – click the… Read More

Below is an email I received by up and coming conservative activist and tommy girl t-shirt model Meredith Turney.

CRP Needs New Leadership In the months following the primary election, I have sat in countless meetings with the Schwarzenegger campaign and CRP leadership. During these meetings, the campaign hierarchy assured conservatives that the Victory ’06 program would help down ticket candidates. The "CRP leadership", including Duf Sundheim, addressed conservatives’ concerns by stating that Tom McClintock, Tony Strickland, Chuck Poochigian and others would all benefit from the governor’s campaign. Around midnight on November 7 th, we realized that we had been lied to, not just once, but repeatedly.

In the days and weeks leading up to the election, conservatives expressed our frustration that Victory ’06 and the governor were not in fact focused on "the team" but on re-electing a man who continues to search for his core values. I can’t tell you how many fellow Republicans I talked to who said that… Read More

Did I misunderstand him or did the governor just compare Mexican immigrants to children?

His point is exactly right–just because people yell for something doesn’t mean the rest of us have to give in. But I can’t imagine that Univision or La Opinion is going to be happy about his comparison of Mexican immigrants to his children. Probably about as happy as California Republicans are about his comments that it was time for "new blood" in Washington, D.C.

Here’s what the governor said, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Asked what would be his message to the Mexican people, Schwarzenegger noted his visits to date from his movie and bodybuilding days… Read More

As a member of the leadership team for our caucus, I must honor that our internal workings and decisions of our caucus must remain internal with the outcome being the aspect that we may or may not go public with. Obviously, with the new term and our organizational meeting on the horizon, the discussions turned to the leadership of our caucus. Controversy surrounded as to how that discussion would be carried out and when. Our unity being one of our most important assets in my 4 years in the legislature, I had great concern as to how this was going toplay out.

Our leader, George Plescia, inherited a situation not to be envied in terms of the transition. He jumped into the fire during the bond ‘negotiations’ and counter to what some may say, was not twisting arms of members to vote for any bonds. Nor during the budget, when more than the usual 6 Republicans usually needed to pass a budget were there. Members complaining about these issues and voting for them, look in the mirror.

It was a 2nd year of the session, an election year, where the leader’s job is to protect our targets and wage the battle on new seats that we… Read More