The ballot initiatives lost because the Dems and especially the unions threw $200 million on ads. The way for conservative ideas to win in California or anywhere is that once you're in power, you use the bully pulpit to push your ideas, and even if you get defeated in passing the law, educate the public.
By ditching principles, and actually signing the other side's bills, you give the opposition moral cover that their ideas are winning because they convinced us they are good, not because they have more people in the legislature. This is a battle of ideas after all. Gingrich did not win back the House by accepting liberal ideas, even though for a long time he was in the minority. A principled minority can become a majority if it sticks to its principles and waits for when the party in power becomes arrogant. Then the minority can win and win with a mandate. That mandate allows the minority to push laws.
It is instructive to see what happened to the Republican party in Illinois. We were the majority for a long time until we became too liberal and too corrupt. We accepted that liberralism and corruption. Now we lost almost everything in Illinois, and the remaining leaders are so liberal as to be indistinguishable from the Democrats.
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DING, DING, DING -- "once you're in power". THAT's the catch.
Exactly. FIRST you have to get elected. Running to the right of Buchanan isn't going to elect anyone dogcatcher in CA. The ONLY way to get elected was with a moderate position, like Arnold, who is still facing an overwhelmingly Dem Legislature and powerful unions. He is governor, not emperor.
The way to take Republican power back is to slowly get more and more Republicans elected, NOT by attacking our own, and help the Dems take full control of CA again, including the governorship.