Agreed, on the other hand Senator Gaines beat out two other Repbulicans by running on his conservative credentials and agenda (cut spending, balance the state budget, etc.).
I'd have to do more research on Dave Cox's voting record (untimely death during the summer), but I think the cause of conservatism in the state spikes noticeably upward. Still very much in the minority, it is, nevertheless, another voice for common sense within the chamber.
I agree that it has to start somewhere. One election, one elected official at a time, we must reclaim our once-great state of California.
If someday we can even make California a competitive state — purple is much better than blue — that would change the electoral map profoundly.
We have to have hope. It may be a fool’s hope, but better a fool’s hope than despair.
Just think how hopeless things seemed for conservatives and the GOP in 1974, following Watergate.
Yet Watergate cleared the way, eventually, for Ronald Reagan. It placed the Dems. in the position of undertaking their usual over-reach. It made 1976 possible.
But more importantly, it made 1980 possible.
Reagan never quit. He loved the United States too much. George Washington never quit. Abraham Lincoln never quit. FDR, as misguided as he was about economics, never quite when it came to World War II. Churchill never quit. George W. Bush, despite his mistakes, never quit.
So in 1980, to paraphrase what the joyous people of England said in 1558 when Queen Elizabeth I took the throne, “God gave us our Reagan.” (the original phrase, following the miserable years of Henry 8, and Bloody Mary, was “then God gave us our Elizabeth)
Valley Forge and the toll of a necessary war on President Lincoln — as documented by the increasingly gaunt photos of Lincoln over the final five years of his life — should be proof enough that people who were far greater than us never quit on the United States.
Until you can spend the entire winter in a forest in a pup tent about 18 miles from Philadelphia, until you can do that, let us never complain about any burden we must carry today to improve our nation’s politics.
God didn’t give us our George III, or our Jimmy Carter, or our Al Gore.
Instead, God gave us our Washington. God gave us our Lincoln. God gave us our Roosevelt. God gave us our Truman. God gave us our Reagan. God gave us our George W. Bush. God gave us our Tea Party.
This nation has a calling. It has a duty. Several times, it has been called to be the defender of liberty worldwide. Start with the Spanish Armada, and you will see that a higher power has guided the emergence of liberty between the shining seas.
A force being our comprehension has determined that the United States had to be in the right place at the right time. WW1, WW2, Soviet Union, Islamo-fascism.
Liberty and this nation were born with a hostile sea between it and the warlords of Europe and a vast sea between it and the warlords of Asia.
This experiment in Liberty couldn’t have been born and nurtured anywhere else geographically.
This nation has a calling. That calling, that fate, that “rendezvous with destiny” isn’t easy. It’s hard.
Then again, just ask Jesus or Lincoln and they’ll tell you:
It’s hard to be God’s spear.