The party nominated Rinos and are shocked that Republican voters stayed home.
Posted on 11/16/2010 8:49:44 AM PST by NormsRevenge
The pro-Republican wave in the rest of the nation on Nov. 2 is likely to pay dividends for the party for years to come, with the GOP so strong in the state legislatures, which control post-2010 census redistricting, that gerrymandering alone may yield 20 more House seats for the party in 2012. But in California, Republican prospects could scarcely be grimmer.
Exit polls showed independent voters were overwhelmingly opposed to all but one of the statewide GOP candidates. Independents were key to Republican gains elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the long-expected emergence of Latinos as a dominant voting bloc appears at hand. Exit polls showed they accounted for 22 percent of voters, up 10 percent in four years, and heavily favored Democrats.
Once again, this tilt contradicted outside trends. Nationally, Nov. 2 was a historic day for Latino Republicans, with three big wins in swing states. Marco Rubio was elected senator in Florida and Susana Martinez and Brian Sandoval took the governors’ races in New Mexico and Nevada, respectively.
In those states, the GOP’s pro-entrepreneur, pro-growth message and social conservatism resonated with Latinos. Here, Latinos have made California by far the most Democratic of the most populated states.
To consider just how weak California Republicans have become, paradoxically, one should consider the only state race they have a chance of winning. As hundreds of thousands of late ballots are being tabulated in the attorney general’s race, Republican Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, has been swapping the lead with Democrat Kamala Harris, San Francisco’s district attorney. Cooley is a pragmatic, admired prosecutor with vast law enforcement support and bipartisan backing from newspaper editorial boards and civic groups. Harris’ office has been embroiled in a messy scandal involving its drug lab. She has been trashed by law enforcement leaders and is easily caricatured as a San Francisco liberal because of her opposition to the death penalty for a cop killer. Yet the latest count shows her up by 14,000 votes.
This should shock GOP leaders into realizing they have to change their fundamental approach to win over moderates and independents of all ethnicities. Instead, we have seen scapegoating – Martin Garrick of Solana Beach was ousted as Assembly Republican leader. And we have seen denial – state GOP Chairman Ron Nehring declaring failure not on the issues but “in how Republicans communicate.”
That’s not how it looks to most people. Instead, the California GOP seems to be contracting at a time when Republicans in the rest of the nation are making inroads with new constituencies.
And so California’s state government will continue to be dominated by Democrats, even as polls show utter disgust with the Legislature, anger over high unemployment and a desire for sweeping change. A party that can’t make gains against a status quo this discredited needs to do some profound soul-searching – not make excuses.
California is the canary in the coal mine. This is our future as a nation if the current immigration fueled demography continues.
The most shocking part of the article was the claim that there was a CA state GOP. I had no idea.
Exit polls showed independent voters were overwhelmingly opposed to all but one of the statewide GOP candidates. Independents were key to Republican gains elsewhere.
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Cooley is the last GoPer standing, for now.. until the provisional ballots get tabulated..
The Ca Gop is dead..
Not even the TEA Party could save this relic from the past.
There, fixed it.
Hispanics voted for leftist Jerry Brown 2 to 1.
The Democrat vote fraud apparatus in California is formidable - it’s probably good for 5% rather than the 1% or so in other states. Nevertheless, the Kamala Harris example is instructive - this woman had no business ever even becoming San Francisco’s DA. But her looks and ethnicity got her votes from many people who cast ballots for no other reason. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the only Republican capable of getting votes from this segment of the California electorate, which seems to grow larger each year.
The best thing we can do is just let them go their own way, and vehemently fight any attempt by the federal government to bail them out.
When it all comes crashing down (and it will), Californians will finally be ready to consider alternatives. Until then, they will refuse to acknowledge that the mess they've made.
Meanwhile, if you live in California -- it's time to get out. I realize that many of you have family roots there, and perhaps economic ties. But, if you stay, you'll just feed the beast and postpone the day of reckoning.
It is the future of the GOP wherever it runs candidates who are liberals or ineffectual moderates.
CA have the government they deserve. Let them go under.
The party nominated Rinos and are shocked that Republican voters stayed home.
Just in the first half of 2010, 84 companies have either left or made concrete plans to leave. With them are going the producers. The result is fewer of those who actually work, pay taxes and drive the economic train.
It's not so much the CA GOP is ineffective; it's just that so few Republicans and conservatives remain in that state.
Uncontrolled Third World immigration shall eventually lock the Decomcrats into permanent power. The rest of us shall have to endure poverty to pay for them and criminal assaults to keep them amused.
Those who are holding onto the notion things will get better are pursuing a false hope. The results of 2 Nov's election say it all. The state is foundering and the majority is OK with that.
Escape while you can, folks. It's too late for CA.
Barbara Boxer did NOTHING to fix this problem... yet, she was re-elected by a landslide. Can anything be more indicative of the fact California is a lost cause?
Most of the “Latinos” in California are sub-literate illegals who would never vote Republican because they can get more handouts from Democrats. Sucking up to the Mexicans is a fools errand for the GOP. California is dead.
The fact of the matter is that California republicans have, long, epitomized the moderate, country-club, go-along to get-along, wobblies, which the rest of the nation has rejected. I doubt that there’s a conservative among the lot of them! How does one rally-around a party which promoted Arnold Schwarzenegger or Meg Whitman?
California will resemble the movie “Escape From LA” before the mind numbed denizens of that state come to their senses and realize what they have done to themselves. By then it will be too late. Conditions there are rapidly reaching the point of no return.
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