Posted on 12/16/2008 12:44:34 PM PST by SmithL
It's no secret that in the past 30 years, Californians have become more tolerant of gay rights, as have millions of other Americans. But in California, according to data reported last Friday at a conference of pollsters by Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll, the change of attitude was almost entirely among Democrats and independents.
Republicans are almost exactly where they were in 1977.
So does that just make the GOP a party of genetically slow learners, a claque so rigid, insular and detached from changes in the real world that they either don't know or don't care? Their extortionate demands in the face of what the governor, once their hero, called the looming "financial Armageddon," in the current budget crisis make that a credible theory.
The more plausible explanation is that these aren't the Republicans of 1977. They aren't moderates like Bob Monagan, Bill Bagley, Ken Maddy or Pete Wilson, or pragmatists like Ronald Reagan, who in 1967 approved a major tax increase to resolve a prior budget crisis.
Today's GOP is a very different party, a hard-line group of self-insulated ideologues, more like a political cult than like an inclusive party that stretches its core principles to be inviting to people at or beyond that core.
The biggest increase in voter registration has been among independents, who now represent 20 percent of California's electorate. Democrats and Republicans have both lost market share. Both have been driven, or driven themselves toward the ideological margins.
The self-marginalization has been far greater among Republicans, who exclude independent voters from their primaries, who have made no effort to reach out to California's fast-growing minorities, Latinos especially, or for that matter to women. Many voters who would once have been Republicans, and a lot who probably were, are now independents and even Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
How stupid of the GOP in California to “marginalize” itself by agreeing with the majority on homosexual marriage.
/s
Apparenlty Mr Schrag hasn’t learned that you cannot get out of debt by continuing to spend millions on unaccountable pipe dreams, and that eventually you have to stop spending at a faster rate than the money comes in.
Ah yes, the old “Republicans need to be more liberal meme”.
I find it fascinating that all these liberal pundits and reporters are so concerned about the Republican party and “what it needs to do to get back on track”.
Like the GOP should take advice from a radical leftist like Schrag.
If the Republicans proposed budget cuts were passed, how would CA state government spending, per capita, after inflation, compare to what it was in 1977, when Republicans were “moderate”?
It takes grand use of logical gymnastics to blame anything wrong with California on the GOP.
Heck, I am pretty sure it is illegal to mention the GOP in California unless of course you are blaming the past, current and future problems on them. Then, it is not only legal, it is highly encouraged.
Talk to hand Sac Bee.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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