Recall Sucking Oxygen From California Senate Race (Davis recall helps Boxer)

A meeting this weekend of 400 California Republican moderates was supposed to be a showcase for the party’s potential 2004 Senate contenders, culminating in a straw poll to bless a favorite.

Instead, the confab in the hills above Santa Barbara is likely to be dominated by talk of the effort to recall California Gov. Gray Davis (D).

Three potential Senate candidates are still scheduled to address the Brooks Firestone Republican Weekend, an annual event organized by Firestone, a former state Assemblyman and wealthy GOP power broker. But the straw poll has been scotched.

And now, two conservative politicians closely associated with the recall drive — Rep. Darrell Issa (R) and businessman Bill Simon, the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee in 2002 — have been granted speaking slots. While hardly the favorites of party moderates, both are considered likely candidates for governor if a recall election winds up on the ballot.

“We don’t exclude anybody who wants to talk to our people,” said Brandon Gesicki, a California GOP consultant who works with Firestone.

But the urgency of the discussion about the recall highlights a dilemma for Golden State and national Republicans as they seek a strong challenger to two-term Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) next year: The recall could wind up drowning the Senate race out completely.

“The recall’s affecting everything in California politics,” said Dan Schnur, a Sacramento-based GOP strategist who is advising one potential Senate candidate, Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.). “There’s no reason the Senate race should be an exception.”

“The Senate candidate will not receive any attention while the recall is on — that much is a given,” said one Sacramento-based GOP operative. “It could also affect fundraising.”

That’s not insignificant for a race where the Republican nominee will probably need $20 million to be competitive.

A UC Bezerkely ByProduct

Richard C. Blum
Chairman

Richard C. Blum, Chairman, began his career with Sutro & Co., Inc., in 1958. Mr. Blum resigned from Sutro in 1975 to form the predecessor to Blum Capital and at the time of his departure was a director, major stockholder and member of the Executive Committee of Sutro. Mr. Blum currently serves as a director on a number of boards, including the following portfolio companies: CB Richard Ellis, Korea First Bank, Northwest Airlines Corporation, Playtex Products Inc. and URS Corporation. In addition, Mr. Blum also serves as a director of Glenborough Realty Trust, Inc., and is Co-Chairman of Newbridge Capital. He is a former director of the following companies: National Education Corporation, Taft Broadcasting Corporation, Advanced Systems, Inc., Triad Systems, Inc., Sumitomo Bank of California and the Princeville Development Corporation. Mr. Blum is the founder and Chairman of the American Himalayan Foundation, and is Honorary Consul to Mongolia and the Kingdom of Nepal. Mr. Blum has a BA and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Business School at UC Berkeley. Mr. Blum also studied at the University of Vienna.

What Democrats fear most is California in terrible shape and the Democrats in total control. Then there is no one for the liberal left of center voters to blame but the Democrats. That could cause a re-alignment. But by fixing it so that Davis takes all the blame, Democrats could use the liberal bias of the state to stay in control of the state for the next 20 years.

That's it in a nutshell. And the critical factor, as always is the media. As long as they can spin for Democrats they'll do it. The situation you describe would give them no place to go. They'd have to pin the tail on the Donkey. If a Republican is elected as a result of the recall and cuts spending he'll get all the media blame for starving the homeless, putting cops and firemen on the street, the entire litany of liberal whining.

When your enemy is digging himself into a hole, by all means let him keep digging.

Meanwhile, can you believe all the media furor over the Chocolate Mountains gold scam? I read all about it daily in my local paper...NOT!! All I see published or broadcast is what a great idea locking all that desert up for the "endangered" tortoises is. The fact their eggs are being eaten by a flock of non-native crows who vary their diets with scraps from nearby fast food restaurants (which attracted them in the first place) never seems to make the local media either. Between the tortoises and suicidal California condors (who are kept from extinction by vast amounts of our tax money), most of southern CA will be off limits for humans soon.

The leftists (RINOs) have one and ONLY one thing going for them: fat bank accounts. Money in politics has one purpose: to attract votes. Money is not the only way to attract votes. God loved people less affluent than Brooks Firestone and made many more of them than He made of those as wealthy or wealthier than Firestone. GOP abortion mill operators are few in number. Except for RINO Riordan and RINO AHHHHHHHNOLD, few Republicans favor gay adoptions, tax increases, gun-grabbing, "arts" funding (think Mapplethorpe or those worthless Calder eyesores), and/or abortion on demand (particularly at taxpayers' expense).

Why sell your soul for big checks fom the terminally clueless when you can go directly to the people and organize the vote?

Our answer is to organize at the grass-roots, person-to-person, person-by-person, family-by-family, house-by-house, relative-by-relative, Christmas card list-by-Christmas card list, block-by-block, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, town-by-town, county-by county, legislative district-by-legislative district, congressional district-by-congresssional district and state-by-state.

We need to be willing to be rude to our opponents when rudeness is called for. If they are watercress sandwich RINOs or watercress sandwich scintillating visionaries aching for a President Hildebeest, they may well quit rather than have to experience our creative rudeness. We did this very effectively against McGovern in 1972 and it can be done again. In fact, when Reagan ran against the supposedly unbeatable Pat Brown, there were bumperstickers with a picture of a toilet and the message: If it's Brown, flush it!

Be prepared to be perfect ladies and gentlemen when that is called for. It is a sacrifice worth making when the cause is just.

WE need to use wedge issues viciously. What's the matter with Miguel Estrada? Doesn't he think enough like Pat Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Chuckie Schumer, Dianne Feinswine, et al., to qualify as a "real" Hispanic? How dare he think independently? Notice that even LULAC is backing Estrada which is like the NAACP going to war against liberals for a Bush nominee. Make them defend their bases in ghetto and barrio and wqatch the fur fly as they can't afford to compete as easily for suburban votes.

Laugh at the RINOs and Demonrats. If there is anything their inflated egos cannot tolerate it is being laughed at. They act like vampires dunked in Holy Water when dissed.

Instead of taking the approach as to races above the neighborhood level that we simply cannot talk to blacks or Hispanics or Jews or (name your supposed liberal minority) and instead of taking the tack that the Demonrats can have all those votes and the university and college votes to go with their exotic flora and fauna vote, thus allowing them to use all of their resources to compete for the white suburban base of the GOP. As the Demonrats have learned, they can peel off the gullible American vote in the suburbs with various well-advertised and substantially developed fantasies like environmentalism, global warming, soccer momism, pacifism, isolationism, it's for the children, for the children, Dubya wants your daughter to die in a back-alley abortion, look how mean those miserable Republicans are to poor Johnny Jihad when he is JUST A BAAAAABY, etc.

The notion which the spineless American community in the California GOP want to indulge is that if we just shuck off all those cumbersome old principles one by one, "we", whatever that may mean, might win once every several decades. Besides, Muffy and Skipper's Mumsy will keep those checks coming. Strategically, they take the idiot tack that what is liberal is Demonratic and we invite the Demonrats to compete with us for our voters. Enough of that noise. Take the fight to them and gut the Demonrat coalitions. Plenty of Mexicans hate abortion and homosexuality. So do plenty of blacks. Spinelss RINOs think it is just toooooo rude to go after a split in the Demponrats on issues like those. Doid they expect Democrat votes for Vote for Riordan, he is a better business manager? or Vote for AHHHHHHNOLD he has big muscles (most unfortunately between his ears!). IN the words of the immortal American philosopher Bugs Bunny, what a bunch of maroons!

Take Doofus's sorry backside to the woodshed and don't take any wooden Indians like AHHHHHHNOLD or Riordan in his place.

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