As long as I have followed politics closely — since Junior High school in the 1970′s — I’ve said political consultants will be the death of the Republican Party.

And now, finally, a political consultant finally agrees with me. “The way it works is this–ever since we centralized politics in Washington, the House campaign committee and the Senate campaign committee, they decide who they think should run,” Pat Cadell said at the CPAC conference. “You hire these people on the accredited list [they say to candidates] otherwise we won’t give you money. You hire my friend or else.”

“Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday with a… Read More

The Republican National Committee is finally going to catch up with the grass roots.

In a report to be released Monday, the RNC will declare that “the new political geographical center of the political infrastructure will be precinct organizations.”

Well, well, well – it’s about time.

This isn’t some minor tweak. It’s a tacit admission that the “preferred” method of voter contact, forced upon the grassroots of our party for a decade, has been a flop – a gigantic failure that has resulted in more defeats than we can calculate.

In 2004, my county party was pressured by an RNC employee to, in effect, dismantle the strong precinct organization we had built in San Diego County, and in effect turn all of our volunteers over to the RNC/Bush campaign so they could be pulled out of the precincts and herded into phone banks.

RNC staffers were being evaluated by the number – not the quality – of “voter contacts,” and a phone bank can generate a lot more contacts per hour than a precinct walk (the fact most of those contacts have zero impact on voter behavior was conveniently overlooked).

Apparently, no… Read More

There has been considerable discussion in GOP circles lately about the party’s problems with Latinos, Asians, gay people, single people, young people, secular people, and half a dozen other segments of the electorate. This is a discussion worth having, but there is a part of this conversation that is not yet part of the debate: what these segments of the electorate largely have in common is they live in urban areas*.

Within my political lifetime the GOP has been all but driven out of the major urban areas of California… mostly into the deep suburbs, x-urbs, or rural turf. Take maps of what party holds which seats of the State Assembly or Congress in California over the last decade and you can watch our retreat in slow motion. As urbanity expands, the GOP contracts. Urbanity is continuing to expand. Seats that were considered ‘safe Republican’ are now in the mix.

This week I had the opportunity to speak as some length with one of the last Republican partisan officeholders to represent a major city. He got it: the culture of people who live in urbanized areas is simply different than people who live in other types of communities. Republicans,… Read More

I attending my first Conservative Political Action Convention back in 1988. I’ve attending many since, off and on, over the last quarter-century. CPAC, as it is called, is the single largest conference where conservatives gather from all around the country. The agenda is jam-packed with some pretty amazing speaker. The strong majority of the speakers at this annual event, sponsored by the American Conservative Union, and held in the Washington, D.C., area — are very conservative. There are, of course, a few stand-out not-so-conservative speakers (Donald Trump?) — but by and large there is an impressive lineup of speakers over three days.

If you are… Read More

SACRAMENTO — California politicians have added more anti-gun laws, but have yet to offer any real violent crime solutions.

Anti-gun lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly have been busy with legislation aimed at guns and ‘gun violence,’ whatever that is.

Is ‘gun violence’ similar to ‘SUV violence, knife violence or drug violence?’ After all, SUV’s, knives and drugs are responsible for killing many people each year, according to lawmakers’ definitions.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks 16 ounce sodas kill.

Another ridiculous bill, SJR 1

The Senate passed a resolution Thursday by Senator Lois Wolk, D-Davis, urging Congress and President Barack Obama to enact a comprehensive gun violence prevention policy, including prohibiting the sale of military-style assault weapons, “high-capacity magazines,” and encouraged strengthening criminal background checks.

But mostly, the resolution is another silly California finger-wagging measure aimed at shaming the rest of the country into following the Golden State’s tarnished lead.

It is apparent Wolk and colleagues are feeling emboldened by President Barack Obama’s… Read More

Today the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association formally served the California State Board of Equalization, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and Department of Justice with a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s “Fire Prevention Fee.”

The wheels of justice grind slowly, but I’m pleased that this vitally important lawsuit is moving forward. Recent revelations regarding the state’s misuse of fire fee dollars have only strengthened our case that the ‘fire fee’ is really an illegal tax.

I plan to formally join the lawsuit by filing an amicus brief on behalf of the California taxpayers I represent. I’ve opposed the fire fee both during my time in the Legislature and as an elected member of the State Board of Equalization. But I’ve also encouraged impacted Californians to pay it because it is current law.

So far most taxpayers are doing so. Between August and December last year, the state mailed more than 760,000 bills for fiscal year 2011-12. As of March 1, about 72% of bills have been paid in full and 6% paid… Read More

Here is our eighth installment of this popular feature on our site. This is a “double edition” as we are playing catch up, as my travel schedule precluded a column last week…

TheFlashReport Idiot Of The Week Awardis bestowed upon that pubic official (or high profile person engaged in politics or public policy) who does something completely idiotic. With a state as large as Californian, which seems to have a higher-than-average amount of folks who either don’t think about what they do — or even worse, they think about what they do and still act like idiots — we suffer from no shortage of potential award winners. As in previous columns, we… Read More

SACRAMENTO — Californa’s desire to be the first state to do everything has never been more evident now that Obamacare has been signed into law.

And California lawmakers haven’t let any grass grow under their feet since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. In January, Gov. Jerry Brown issued a proclamation to convene an extraordinary session of the Legislature to continue the work of implementing the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Obamacare cheat sheet

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as federal health care reform, or Obamacare, the state has the option to expand its Medi-Cal Program to cover over one million low–income adults who are currently ineligible.

Unlike some states, which have refused to implement the Obamacare health exchanges, California has embraced the federal health care plan and already began the process of implementation.

This means beginning January 1, 2014, the federal government will pay all of the costs associated with the Medi-Cal expansion, and do this for three years. Beginning January 1, 2017, the federal government will begin to decrease its portion,… Read More