Posted on 11/04/2010 11:25:19 AM PDT by SmithL
alifornia Republicans woke up Wednesday with a political hangover. Nationally, they celebrated the GOP's taking control of Congress, but their dismal showing in California gave them a lingering headache.
Many of them wondered how they missed the national wave - and differed on which direction to go next.
They lost nearly every statewide office, drubbed by double digits in most of the races. Meg Whitman couldn't win the governorship despite straddling the political middle and spending a record $160 million. Carly Fiorina couldn't roust Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, despite tacking right and exploiting Boxer's low approval ratings.
For months, party officials boasted that their ticket was its most diverse ever. It included a pro-choice former corporate executive (Whitman); an anti-abortion ex-CEO (Fiorina); a pair of very conservative legislators (Tony Strickland and Mimi Walters); a not-so-conservative Latino who had been appointed to the job he sought (Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado); and a charismatic African American former NFL player turned businessman (Damon Dunn).
All of them lost....
Part of the reason, as Fiorina said in her concession speech Wednesday in Irvine, is that "we could not overcome the (2.3 million) registration advantage the Democrats have, particularly in Los Angeles."
Whitman started making in-roads among Latino voters by spending $12 million in Spanish-language advertising and outreach. But any goodwill evaporated in October after Whitman struggled to handle revelations that she had employed - and fired - an undocumented immigrant as her housekeeper for nine years.
"It's a white party" in an increasingly diverse state, said Robert Huckfeldt,... "What you saw in this election was a lot of partisan voters coming home to their party."
Every Republican paid for the Legislature's agreement to raise taxes as part of the 2009 state budget deal. "It damaged the brand,"
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Could it be that most of the producers fled the state a long time ago?
Yeah, I don’t listen to them that much, especially now. I would flip over during commercial time on Hewitt’s show
and there they’d be, bashing Whitman. At least Whitman
had the guts to go on their show, Brown didnt.
California Republicans, American TeaParty supporters and Republicans in general should consider themselves fortunate that they will have no fingerprints on the fiscal disaster squarely ahead of the Moocher Republic. Sacramento, with its incestuous relationship with the public employees unions, has run out of fraudulent accounting tricks and will soon be in a full court press asking citizens in the sister states to make her whole. Let them suffer the consequences.
Same product.
Different label.
So though I loathe Arnold in general, he originally tried and everyone punked out.
After that he got along, which I did not like.
“I think we’re perilously close to this situation in Oregon and Washington too”
That’s because all the nuts who destroyed CA are moving to these states. And they are bringing their state destroying ideas with them.
Since when are people looking to shrink government, balance budgets and looking to make a state business friendly put into an extreme anything category?
In another thread Fox business news was talking about the Build America bonds which have become a source of state funding especially in Cali. Cali can’t borrow money on their own but these bonds have an interest guarantee by DC where the Feds pay 35% of the interest on the bond. This year Cali used these bonds for roughly 30% of the revenue side of their budget. Also a lot of bailout money has found it’s way to certain states to halp them in the short term.
California jumped from the frying pan into the fire on tuesday. They’re going to eventually default and this new congress will not be there with a bailout. Not a good place to be.
Lemmings always rush to the sea before committing mass suicide.
Your analysis is correct. As long as politicians take from producers and give to those who vote for them, the ballot box cannot rectify the problem.
The Republican Party, rather than standing up for what is right and best for California, runs as the liberal lite party, and the people choose the real thing.
Advent of Motor Voter eased the way for registration of many illegals.
1. Republicans who can see the looming disaster should either pull an Ellis Wyatt & move to Colorado (or elsewhere)
2. Pull a John Galt & take menial jobs to minimize their contribution in services and taxes to the corrupt state government hence hastening the collapse.
3. Or, if real hardcore, drop out and join the mooching which should even further hasten the collapse.
We got to get rid of Rove
Rove holds no public offce, so how do you propose to ‘get rid of him’? Gonna put a green light on him?
I think you are right about that. It will be interesting to see how things unfold over the next two years.
Nature's course could be 10-20 years. I wish they could go bankrupt today, but it won't happen so quickly.
Also, I very much fear that either Washington WILL bail them out, or they will take the USA down with themselves.
“From Mark Steyn:..........
Precisely right, and well stated as is always the case w/Mark Steyn.
CA will just have to be kept around as an example of what happens when the tipping point is reached. CA will just have to go on its merry way towards whatever failing, bankrupt end it wanders off into. And as such, it will become a paradigm of socialistic and welfare state decay. And that’s that.
I live here, I hate it. But I can no longer lament it. I will move. Simple.
In addition to the facts you mentioned, I’d guess that in CA many of the wealthier areas (for example San Francisco) also vote heavily Democratic. If they ever get tired of eve-higher taxes, the GOP may stand a chance. Why that has not happened already I don’t know.
Producers ought to weigh, very carefully, the option of leaving the state altogether.
No producers, no state income.
No state income, no funds for the mess of bureaucracy and social machinations that have put the state in the mess in the first place.
Let it become a place of poverty, and let those producers who remain, who thereby cast their vote for the ideas of the majority and the mess that’s been created, shoulder the entire load.
It’s a hard choice, yes. It’s a beautiful state, yes. I don’t see any other way out for CA at this point, however.
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