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Posted on 04/09/2004 1:22:44 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The Republican left
© 2004 Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
"In politics," Richard Nixon once astutely observed, "no victory is ever complete." No matter how overwhelming the national landslide racked up by one party, some particularly obnoxious representative of the defeated party will always ruin the victor's day by winning his or her personal re-election. And, within each party, there will always be those who insist on behaving as much like members of the other party as possible.
Thus, the Democrats have to live with the fact that Zell Miller is a Democratic senator from Georgia, even though he has just published a book denouncing the Democratic Party for having abandoned its historic principles, and has proclaimed his intention to vote for George W. Bush this November.
Conversely, Republicans have to face the fact that Arlen Specter is a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, and is seeking his fifth nomination for that office from Republican voters in an April 27 primary. To be sure, Specter is not a mirror image of Miller – he, too, will support Bush in November. But his voting record in the Senate is one of the most liberal of any Republican in that body.
He cannot plead that Pennsylvania voters force him to vote that way. His colleague, Sen. Rick Santorum, manages to get elected and re-elected with a much more conservative voting record. In 2002, the American Conservative Union rated Santorum at 95 out of a possible 100, while its liberal opposite number, Americans for Democratic Action, scored him at 5. Specter, on the other hand, barely reached 50 on the ACU's scorecard, and was given 35 by the ADA.
Then there are Maine's two female senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins – both nominal Republicans, and both relentlessly liberal. (Neither of them even voted for Clinton's impeachment.) And let's not forget Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, who likes to float rumors that he's on the verge of switching to the Democratic Party.
Fortunately these are all exceptions that simply prove the rule. One of the most successful political leaders in the Republican Party – Tom Fuentes, the GOP chairman in Orange County, the most Republican county in that supposedly liberal hotbed, California – is stepping down after 20 years. Orange, in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles, is a huge county. It has six congressmen (five are Republicans); five state senators (four of them Republican); nine assemblymen (seven of them Republican); and five county supervisors – all of them Republican.
How has Fuentes done it? Does he trim on issues and compromise on principles? Not at all. On the contrary, he is rigorously conservative. He is fond of citing Ronald Reagan as his exemplar on just about everything. To add insult to the injury this has inflicted on liberal Republicans, he has made it a point to open Republican meetings in the county with a prayer.
Needless to say, the liberal Republicans have spent a small fortune trying to defeat Fuentes. Four years ago, they poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign to take over the county Central Committee – and lost ignominiously. This year, under the name "the New Majority PAC," they fielded a pro-choice "moderate," Cristi Cristich, for a vacant Republican Assembly seat. Chuck Devore, a Fuentes protege who once worked in the Reagan administration, opposed her. Despite spending $875,000 on Cristich (who had backed Clinton in 1996), the New Majority lost nearly two to one – 22,122 to 12,684.
Fuentes' chosen successor, Scott Baugh, a former Republican leader of the California Assembly, is expected to be elected handily as county leader this month. To the New Majority's distress, he is every bit as conservative as Fuentes.
Why aren't there more counties like Orange? Maybe the question should be: Why aren't there more county leaders like Fuentes across the nation?
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