Posted on 04/28/2015 2:53:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Rep. Ted Lieu, in Silicon Valley on Monday and Tuesday to tour tech companies and pay homage to his alma mater, says the key to Democratic victories in 2016 lies on the other side of the aisle.
Ted Lieu“We want to see lots of Ted Cruz on television,” Lieu, D-Torrance, said Monday during an interview at a Starbucks in San Jose. “I want him to win the nomination on the Republican side.”
Even if that doesn’t happen, having such sharply conservative voices on the other side makes it easier for Democrats to underscore how large segments of the GOP are increasingly out of step with a changing national electorate, Lieu said.
“The rest of America, with every passing day, looks more and more like California” in its demographics and policies, he said. “The current path of the GOP is not sustainable.”
Already the shifting demographics in key Electoral College states make it hard to see how Republicans can win the White House, Lieu said, and while Republicans might control Congress for a few more cycles, “you can only redistrict so much” before the sheer weight of a changing electorate catches up.
Lieu – who in January succeeded 40-year incumbent Democrat Henry Waxman in a coastal district that runs from San Pedro up past Malibu – is in the Bay Area this week to meet with tech leaders, including a dinner Monday night with Silicon Valley Leadership Group members, and visits to companies including Oracle, SunPower and Intuitive Surgical. A self-described “recovering computer science major,” he’ll also speak at Tuesday’s event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Stanford’s computer science program, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1991.
Lieu said he sees the tech sector as “one of America’s and California’s competitive advantages,” but sees a need to build diversity in its boardrooms and workspaces just as in the rest of corporate America and government. “Government operates better if it looks like the people it represents, and I think that’s also true for the private sector.”
Lots more from Lieu, after the jump…
Lieu last week introduced H.R. 1971, the Climate Solutions Act, which essentially would implement California’s landmark greenhouse-gas emissions law on a national scale by empowering the Environmental Protection Agency to slash carbon pollution, implementing renewable portfolio standards, and setting strict energy efficiency standards.
He’s well aware that Congress is controlled by a party in which many if not most are still climate-change deniers, but he says he’s playing a long game.
“We deal with a thousand issues, but there’s only one that can kill humanity as a species,” he said. “I believe Congress will catch up to where the public is. … Everything seems impossible until it happens, and in a democracy, the side with facts wins.”
That requires bipartisanship, which he embraces. His office is directly across a Cannon House Office Building hallway from that of Ken Buck, R-Colo., who is president of the GOP freshman class; Lieu said they’ve been talking and planning some bipartisan events.
Lieu believes the angry, shut-it-all-down Tea Partiers elected during the depths of the Great Recession are giving way to a more thoughtful, cooler-headed class who genuinely want to make government work better. He’s hopeful that Congress can make some headway on important issues this year, before 2016’s presidential-year partisanship fully sets in.
On other issues, Lieu said he’s “not a fan” of giving the White House trade promotion authority to ink a deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal which Congress then could only vote up or down.
“I grew up in Ohio, I saw what NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994) did,” Lieu said – already-rich corporate executives and investors got richer while “the working class ends up losing.” And a recent trip to Vietnam convinced him that bringing that nation up to U.S. environmental and labor standards is “a pipe dream,” he said, so it will provide a cheaper, dirtier alternative to American jobs.
Lieu also talked about his work on a federal ban of “conversion therapy” that seeks to alter minors’ sexual orientation, or at least to ban federal funding for those who practice it. The idea that being LGBT is some sort of mental defect is archaic and ridicule-worthy, “but the folks who still practice it can cause great harm,” he said “To me, it’s the psychological equivalent of child abuse.”
And on California’s 2016 U.S. Senate race, Lieu said Attorney General Kamala Harris makes a solid front-runner. “Her profile fits very well with the Democratic Party, and I think she’s done a good job as attorney general,” said Lieu, who ran unsuccessfully against Harris in the 2010 Democratic primary for that office.
Well, how about he talk to us about HIV and Syphilis, and the 2 percent of the population that constitutes more than half of new cases of either of these diseases? Or can he describe to us why 2 percent of the population accounts for more than half of new HIV and Syphilis cases?
We're trying to stop the failed direction we are in. California is a massive failure. We want to avoid it.
We'll see who's out of step once the national electorate gets to hear -- for the first time in 30 years -- the message of liberty, limited government and Constitutional law articulated with passion, intelligence, integrity and optimism.
Compare that with the stodgy old, mean-spirited, fundamentally dishonest, divisive, disingenuous and fundamentally corrupt message of totalitarian leftist progressivism that hasn't worked even once in the 100 years it's been tried.
The biggest problem conservatives have had is that the core prinicples of America haven't been respected or defended or even articulated since the mid-1980s.
Cruz is the only candidate who can change that, and that's what it will take to win in 2016.
This guy would fit right in with the Communist People’s Republic of China. He talks about child abuse while promoting the homosexual lifestyle, Sickening.
Pieu on Lieu
In other words, Lieu is a racist. An ordinary Bigot who simply hates Whitey, and can't wait to take political power from Whitey.
This is the same buffoon that had no Idea TOYOTA, Torrance’s largest employer left, was leaving his City and State for Texas until after they left.
Another global warming hoax supporter wants more Ted Cruz on the air, wants Ted Cruz as the nominee, and he should definitely NOT be careful what he wishes for, for he will surely get it.
Lieu worked for me as a reserve JAG in AFSPACE. He was an undependable lib then and he hasn’t changed.
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