Posted on 09/29/2014 1:25:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
California is morphing into a warmer Detroit with beaches and pneumatic blondes, but it doesn't have to be this way. Only liberalism could've taken the most beautiful, most hard-working, most entrepreneurial state in the union and turned it into a shabby province composed of deadbeat Oliver Twists holding up their bowls demanding more. Now that might be changing.
It might be changing because the GOP, believe it or not, may be learning to win again. It used to know how. I remember when California produced leaders like Ronald Reagan. Today, conservative Californians breathed a sigh of relief that they were only faced with Jerry Brown. If our next governor isn't wearing a Che T-shirt and a red star on his Mao cap, we’ll feel we got off lucky.
California’s GOP got fat, lazy and dumb, and for the last two decades has managed to fail at its most basic task, that of earning votes. And no, Schwarzenegger doesn’t count.
As a result, there's a Democrat supermajority in the legislature, but this cycle that's at risk. It's at risk primarily through the entrepreneurial efforts of a few Republicans who stopped waiting for others to make things happen and started making it happen themselves. One of them is David Hadley, who is running for the Assembly in the 66th District, which encompasses my own area of the South Bay of Los Angeles. Full disclosure: David is a friend and I’ve assisted his campaign.
I've also given him money. That's the thing. Lots of people have given him money. People, not unions, not PACs, not Soros-funded Astroturf front groups. People. Living, breathing human beings sick of seeing their great state run solely to enable welfare dependency and pursue bizarre leftist fetishes about gender-neutral bathrooms for kindergarteners.
David – by going out and talking to (as opposed to at) the people of his District – managed to raise more money than probably the rest of California’s Republican Assembly challengers in California combined. He broke the mold of the perennial GOP nominee who put his head on the chopping block every two years to win the usual 40% of the vote in a District that should by all rights be ours. And unlike our current assemblyman, a typical Democrat Party functionary in bed with the public employee unions, he's done by appealing to regular people.
Oh, and in the primary, where all candidates from all parties run to be one of the two candidates on the general election ballot, David beat the Democrat incumbent. That doesn’t happen in California – or so the experts said. And if David wins in November, the Democrat supermajority dies.
David is showing the way for the recovery of the Republican Party in California, but he also provides important lessons for conservatives throughout the country. For one thing, he isn’t a career politician. He's an entrepreneur, and I'm guessing he’ll be taking a dramatic pay cut for the privilege of trading glorious Manhattan Beach for sweaty Sacramento and the opportunity to mingle with the coterie of leftists, aspiring felons, and borderline sociopaths who make up the Legislature.
David is also a family man, and you can tell his character because his son is currently a cadet at West Point. Living in an affluent suburb, his son had the choice of what to do and where to go. He chose to serve his country. That speaks volumes.
Here’s the lesson, GOP – let’s get candidates who are the kind of people you want as a neighbors. Let’s choose candidates without creepy baggage. And let’s pick nominees who can string a sentence together and don’t feel compelled to opine on stuff they don’t understand, like – to take a totally wacky example that could never, ever happen – female biology.
This is exactly what I talk about in my new book Conservative Insurgency. We need to find sane and smart candidates in our communities and develop them as future leaders targeted at each individual district. Beyond the basis of common sense and character, what works in one place will be different than what works in another.
California isn’t Utah. A winning candidate here like David isn’t running on gay marriage; he’s running as a sure vote against repealing Proposition 13, which protects homeowners from having their homes sold out from under them because they can't pay staggering property taxes designed to fund the Democrat political pay-off machine.
His time-serving opponent has no answers for what ails California. He sat impotently as 5,000 good jobs at the South Bay’s Toyota headquarters moved to Texas. He talks about attracting green jobs, but Tesla choose Nevada because Elon Musk is liberal, not insane. There used to be a day when anyone on the cutting edge was on the edge of the Pacific. Now, the only thing California makes lots of is expatriates.
It breaks the heart of this 40+ year Californian to see what happened to his beloved state. Yeah, I joke about California, but this is my home and I'm not about to give up on it. Guys like David Hadley are providing the GOP some much-needed lessons in how to take back the initiative and how to win again, here in the Golden State and around the country. All we have to do is support those in the fight.
Needless to say, the article doesn't mention him.
61% of California is non-white.
About 50% of the eligible voters are non-white.
Only 53% of whites voted for Mitt Romney, which is well to the Left of the national average of 59%.
Maybe California can elect “Republicans.”
But they won't be Conservatives.
That said, I agree, the author is delusional. Hadley's strong showing in this relatively white and wealthy district means nothing whatsoever for the state as a whole - which is lost to the GOP.
It is incredibly naive to think/suggest that racial demographics has no effect.
California is a leftist state -- and has been for at least as long as I've been alive.
Thanks...
Your “orange dot” map is a classic.
I miss California. But I sure don’t miss California.
Born I Fresno. Raised in Tahoe. Studied at FSU. Left in 99. Would love to move my business there but that would be suicidal.
The Dems own California. Let t hem reap what they have sown. The state must collapse, implode, before you can start throwing out the Democrats..
Yep. What nearly unrestricted immigration did to California the GOPe proposes be done to the rest of the country. After the election.
I think as long as there is one dollar left to be taxed and spent on themselves and the free-loaders, the liberal democrats will remain in control of Californica.
It’s an addiction its voters must learn to overcome if they want to reverse the decline. They must go “cold turkey” at the polls and elect more conservatives leadership, something statistics indicate won’t happen overnight if ever in the urban areas.
Many of the free-loaders are anticipating coming to Texas and turning it blue. Let me assure you, you will not be as happy with Texas. We have better jobs and opportunities. You might be tempted to take one and find you yourself working and earning a better living after the migration. Don’t subject yourself to these temptations...stay in the paradise you helped create.
America needs to stop exporting American jobs.
American needs to fight for jobs here.
All Americans. We can fight amongst ourselves as to where the jobs go, but we must stop sending American jobs elsewhere.
Right now.
What I think is delusional is taking the Left’s talk about the blank slate humanity seriously, that is a lie and it is why the left talks about human sameness at any one point in time then goes full multi-cult race baiting. What can be done? First don’t sound like a stupid drone who discounts people and thinks everyone is a white liberal/conservative just itching to come out. This has been tried for decades and only gets white conservatives called “racist” by the low lifes of the left. Then when a candidate is grounded in reality connect with the audiences conservative inclanations while ripping the Left’s whacked white libtard craziness.
The 9th circuit court will always ensure that conservative’s votes are meaningless. You can vote in this guy and a dozen others, but the 9th circuit court will overturn everything just like they did with Prop 187 in ‘94 and Prop 8 in ‘08.
My opinion, how do you change the 9th circuit court? When they can all get replaced, then states like CA stand of chance of recovering.
True...but as technology changes, old jobs disappear and new ones are created.
America needs the leadership to recognize the world of new technologies that affect our lives. It needs to level the playing field to encourage competition and new job creation to exploit those technologies to our benefit.
Instead, America’s current generation is blinded by social engineering and too much government intervention in our lives. Mistakenly trying to fix the past and not looking forward into the future and the next generation.
Californian isn’t worth saving it’s turn into Mexico so sad.
Californian isn’t worth saving it’s turn into Mexico so sad.
Here is where I part company with most of the posters here. H*ll yes California is worth saving. It is my home and I will be damned if I let the RATS drive me out. CA has about one tenth the US population. There are probably more Republicans here than in any other state in the Union including Texas. (That’s hard to tell because Texas voters do not state party preference when registering.)
It’s easy to give up and say it hopeless but as the saying goes it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
As the article says one way to start is to end the RATS supermajorities. That is doable since until 2012 they did not have it. BTW, they do not have a supermajority in the Senate because 3 of the RATS are suspended for being indicted or convicted. Without the RAT supermajority the Pubbies can stop a lot of the tax increases and efforts to gut Prop13.
I have contributed to Hadley even though I do not live in his district and disagree with him about Prop8. I have also contributed to other swing districts. You can find them by looking at the 2012 results in Ballotpedia.com for close elections.
I was not aware of that myself until recently when, here at FR, someone posted a detailed list of un-Conservative things that Reagan had done and said while in Sacramento.
There are probably more Republicans here than in any other state in the Union.
Not so sure about that I live in Ca. too and Sacramento is owned by the democrats and they have made the mess the states in it’s now Mexico and the democrats won’t change for the better they have an agenda to spread socialism and the slackers always vote for them.
Look at how many illegals Obama&co have dumped in the states.
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