Low Conservative Turnout: Another Reason Why Arnold's Supported Propositions Losed

Polipundit.com ^ | 11/11/2005 | Jayson Javitz

[SirLinksalot]

KALIFORNIA

I found this article to be interesting:

“Schwartzenegger Takes Blame in Vote.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051110/ap_on_re_us/schwarzenegger;_ylt=Aoa2l8UqhNfIz6Kdr0w_UT.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-

Well, obviously, that’s the only thing he can say at this juncture.

But, quite frankly, there’s another side of that story.

As alluded to yesterday, here are the turnout percentages from several of the largest conservative-Republican strongholds in the Golden State:

Orange County = 38%. San Diego = 46%. San Bernardino = 36%. Ventura - 47%. Riverside = 37%. Kern = 41%. San Joaquin = 39%.

For Pete’s sake in Iraq they got 60-plus percent turnout. Under direct threat of being killed or maimed.

Yet a whole bunch of self-styled conservative bankers, lawyers, money managers, doctors, and business owners, from places like Newport Beach, Woodland Hills, Bakersfield, Redlands, and San Diego, couldn’t be bothered to show up and to vote last Tuesday???

Give me a break.

For the past twenty years all I’ve been hearing from (non-voting) conservatives out here is that if only a Republican would come along and push for conservative principles, they’d stop staying home and fully would support him or her.

Well, sure enough, in this case Arnold and the local GOP went ahead and placed on direct referendums several measures for which conservatives have been pining – including a parental notification/abortion measure, mandatory spending austerity, and stricter tenure requirements for public teachers – and conservatives responded by . . . . . . staying home in droves.

No, I’m not excusing the poor campaign that Arnold and the local GOP operation put together.

But if we’ve reached the point at which affluent conservative Republicans need to be picked up in buses, taken by the hand, led to the polling booths, and told for whom or for what to vote, then we have much deeper problems than the milquetoast GOP leadership in D.C.

We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

At least as far as the Golden State is concerned.

[SirLinksalot]

I dare say that in 2006, if the GOP loses people in Congress and Senate, it would be for the same reason In 2005 -- CONSERVATIVES WHO WERE ENERGIZED IN 2004 STAYED HOME IN DROVES.

[EagleUSA]

There is little Repub leadership, if any, in California. I am sure there is alot of frustration with the liberal death-grip in Sacramento. Yet, that is no excuse not to vote to fight the socialists who are taking this state down.

[coloradan]

They losed! Loster!

[Izzy Dunne]

Why Arnold's Supported Propositions Losed

"Losed" ??

Whatever happened to English?

[LdSentinal]

Why wouldn't conservatives come out and vote for notifying parents when their children are getting abortions? Are they retarded?

[jmaroneps37]

Golly gosh! Those Mexifornia conservatives really showed Arnold, didn't they?
You people are a joke. Here's a guy that is trying to keep your state from slipping into a cess pool and you kick him in the butt. Yeah, you show'im alright.

[SirLinksalot]

I cannot blame conservatives for being less than enthusiastic. The GOP has a 55-45 majority in the Senate, and yet, as Powerline observes, they still manage to do a swan dive on the budget...

---

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Republicans in both the Senate and the House were in disarray today. In the House, the party's leaders had to yank their ballyhooed $54 billion budget-cutting bill when it became apparent that their attempted compromise had failed to garner majority support. In a slap at the party's conservative base, the leadership agreed to cave in to the environmentalist lobby on ANWR oil drilling, an absolutely inexcusable move in a time of high oil prices. At the same time, "moderate" Republicans still failed to support the measure because they apparently can't stomach even the slightest budget cuts, notwithstanding the nation's current deficits and unprecedented spending increases.

That was bad enough, but what the Senate did may have been even worse. The Senate Finance Committee was unable to get behind an extension of the President's tax cuts, even for a single year, let alone permanently. Olympia Snowe was the villain here, but, to be fair, all Republicans (and Democrats) who have supported tax cuts while also voting for mushrooming increases in spending are equally to blame.

So the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot once again. The national media are having a field day, recording the party's panic and disarray. What I want to know is, what is the source of the apparent malaise on the Republican side of the aisle?

Almost exactly one year ago, President Bush was re-elected with more votes than had ever been cast for a Presidential candidate, breaking Ronald Reagan's 1984 record. Not only did Bush sweep to victory by a three million vote margin, the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate, the first time this trifecta had been accomplished since 1964.

Since that triumphant moment, what has sent the party into a tailspin? Has the economy collapsed? Not at all; it is humming along as strongly as ever, steadily putting more distance between America's prosperity and that of Europe and Japan. Have the terrorists attacked successfully, exposing a weakness in our domestic security? No. Astonishingly, we have now gone more than four years without a successful attack on American soil, even though newspaper headlines reveal, on an almost daily basis, how bloodthirsty our enemies are. This is an extraordinary record, of which all Republicans should be proud. Have there been setbacks in foreign policy that could explain how a party that was triumphant just twelve months ago should now be in full retreat? Not at all. We continue to make excellent progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On a number of fronts, liberty has made progress in the vital Middle East. And no foreign power even imagines that it could rival the United States in influence.

So what has happened in the past twelve months to terrify so many of our Republican office-holders? Two hurricanes struck, and some observers accused a federal agency of responding too slowly to one of them. Tom DeLay was indicted, in what was basically a bad joke, by an absurdly partisan and utterly discredited Texas Democrat DA. An aide to the Vice President has been accused of lying to a grand jury about telling the truth to the press about a mountebank Democrat's lies about the administration. And the President's poll ratings--more or less irrelevant, given that he can't run for office again--have dropped into a range occupied, at one time or another, by every President from Lyndon Johnson to the present.

These are pathetic reasons for our representatives in Congress to be in a Chicken Little mode. The Republicans are rapidly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and it's hard to say who is more to blame--the Congressional Republicans, some of whom are afraid of their own shadows, or the White House, which, in studiously refraining from responding to the most outrageously unfair and blatantly partisan attacks launched against an American administration in 145 years, seems intent on a weird kind of martyrdom.

It's no wonder that Republicans across the country increasingly regard their elected representatives as gutless wonders. There is no objective reason why 2006 should be a disaster for the party, but it will be if our representative don't stick together and show the voters that the Republican party still stands for security, common sense and limited government. That's still a winning combination, but only if our representatives vote for it.

---

Mark my words...

If the GOP losses the House and the Senate in 2006, it will be mainly because conservatives are DISAPPOINTED and will refuse to vote.

[pctech]

And if that happens then we can look forward to 50 or more years of liberal rule in both houses on Capitol Hill. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.

[MineralMan]

Shouldn't that be "loosed?"

[johnmecainrino]

Gop doesn't have a 55-45 edge.

Chafee, Snowe, Collins are not republicans and there are a whole lot more.

The problem isn't with conservatives in the house or senate it is with the main street republican rino chris shays crowd.

We need to gut the rino crowd and be in the loyal opposition. Being in the minority with the rino's will still suck. Rino's make us look weak when we can't get anything done and the public wrongly percieves us to have a majority. And in the minority the rino's like shays will make us look weak by agreeing with Pelosi all the time.
Take the rino's out and we have 190 house seats and 45 senate seats that is why we can't get anything done.

Losing the majority in the house and senate mean nothing. We never had a majority to begin with. Why would anyone care if we were in the minority we already are. Reid can get an investigation by calling rule 21.

It's not like we have 60 conservative senate seats and 218 conservative house members and we could lose that advantage in an election. We are in the minority now.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I've said this before: life in California is too good and too easy right now. Even Republicans who are hurt by the Democrat tax-and-spend regime aren't hurt badly enough to bother going to vote against it. The Democrats have done a great job of plucking the most feathers from the proverbial goose with the least amount of squawk - and until something they do directly affects the quality of life of the millions of wealthy suburbanites (ala excessive 70's property taxation leading directly to Prop 13), the essentially libertarian-minded California voter isn't going to bother going to vote on anything they have to spend more than 30 seconds of work to understand.

Most California voters are not liberal - they are just apathetic. And where apathy reigns, Democrats never fail to seize power.

[GOP_1900AD]

Those are typical turn outs. We never get 60%. This article is a poor analysis.

[bethtopaz]

i agree - it's unforgivable! Next time the proposition should be for PARENTAL AUTHORIZATION, not just a lame NOTIFICATION. PARENTS -- take back your kids!!

[Redleg Duke]

I agree! You sent all of us a message! That message is that you so-called Republicans or Conservatives aren't willing to fight for yourselves, so why should the rest of us?

[Torie]

The figures reflected the statewide percentages. Try another theory.

[Arizona Carolyn]

I have never, ever, not voted in my life.... I will vote every election until I draw my last breath. If there is any one thing that ticks me off is anyone staying home and not voting... and for those who do not (vote) they have zero right to have an opinion on anything political and deserve the government they get.

[Arizona Carolyn]

and that is a stupid, ansanine reason not to vote.... sorry, but true and absolutely no excuse. It's pure laziness because if there isn't someone worth voting for then people didn't do their jobs before the election to get good people in there to vote for!!!

[HardStarboard]

>>>They losed! Loster!<<<

Full conjugation of the verb (or is it an adjective?) "losed";

Losed, loster. lostest.....

[elbucko]

We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

And we will see looking back at us the smug mug of David Drier!

The damage to Arnold had already been done by his "moderate" advisors long before this special election. I voted, I always do, even for dog catcher, but I had to ask myself that if these initiatives were legislative bills sent to Arnold to sign into law, would he sign them? I had my doubts!

[Who dat?]

Yet a whole bunch of self-styled conservative bankers, lawyers, money managers, doctors, and business owners, from places like Newport Beach, Woodland Hills, Bakersfield, Redlands, and San Diego, couldn’t be bothered to show up and to vote last Tuesday???

I couldn’t be bothered to “show up” last Tuesday.

A lot of that is because I’m an absentee voter.

That said, I voted for most of the propositions Big Dummy was pushing. Not because of Big Dummy though.

And, if you look at the results I see turnout at 41.5%, not 38%, and I see that the county went the same way I voted. We also managed to beat B, C, D, and E.

That said, don’t mistake it to mean that I’d vote for Schwarzenegger under any circumstances. I point that out because some people might mistake my support for some of the propositions he was in favor of as my thinking he’s worth a S – which is not the case.