Bill Simon- the "I Told You So" Candidate

Bill Simon’s campaign professionals are ready to unveil their new appeal to California voters with an “I told you so” themed media barrage and stump speech asking for a second chance in the upcoming recall election.

Simon is and was the “I told you so” candidate long before the recall was underway.

Suffering the barbs of “I told you so…” conservatives who stood by and supported Simon remember the “I told you sos” clearly.

After Simon failed to establish himself as a worthy candidate among Republican voters, Gray Davis rode to his rescue and trashed Richard Riordan during the Republican primary. Gray Davis should have been listed as Bill Simon’s greatest “in kind” donor during the primary as he was the most influential contributor to Simon’s primary win.

Conservatives were elated by what seemed to be a tactical blunder by Davis. Simon’s message was correct, and he offered a clear choice to voters, not an echo of a LA based liberal politician. Even before the budget fiasco, Davis was despised by voters in record numbers and had no strong support among his political base. By all calculations Gray Davis was doomed in 2002. Davis’ political existence was standing squarely in the jaws of defeat. Gray Davis needed a miracle, he needed a savior.

Time and time again Governor Davis was saved, snatched from the jaws of defeat by Bill Simon’s campaign. After Simon’s loss, many Republican moderates cried “I told you so” saying that he was proof that a conservative could not win statewide. Their “I told you sos” were dwarfed by many in the Republican establishment that correctly “told us so” before the general election that Simon and his campaign consultants were destined to lose. They correctly told us that it wasn’t the message but the messenger and his team of professionals who would dash Republican efforts to reclaim the Governor’s office.

Simon was an unproven candidate with a background of inherited wealth and questionable intelligence and judgment. He had hired consultants with poor to modest records who showed recklessness at best, gross stupidity at worst, in their boomerang attacks at Davis.

Conservatives who loved Simon’s message and were his most fervent supporters suffered daily body blows while opening the morning paper and reading his latest blunder. The cringe factor was almost too much to bear as bogus photos and unsubstantiated attacks wore down Republican troops. Throughout what will be remembered as one of the worst campaigns in Republican history, activists never lost sight that Davis was awful. He was far worse than Simon even on his worst day. Republicans and conservatives stood by Simon to the very bitter end.

Round Two, November 2003:

Simon’s campaign staff is saying he is the most likely candidate for voters to support in the recall. Supporting Simon is like eating raw sea cucumbers if you were marooned on deserted island. Without options, people are forced to make unpleasant choices: death by starvation or swallowing something that makes your stomach retch. Fortunately, Republicans have a clear option and choice for who they should support for governor. They will not have to retch and be sick to their stomachs from being forced, by default, to be with Simon as he campaigns. They have other very attractive and proven candidates to support, among those candidates was one who did much better in their statewide race than Simon in the last election.

Many Simon followers are in need for an intervention or deprogramming. Like members of the Jonestown cult, Simon devotees blindly worship the fact that he is not Gray Davis. They are willing to block out the fact that he lead all Republicans to political suicide in 2002 by his incompetence.

Bill Simon and his followers are willing to endure two sets of “I told you sos?” The first; their shoveling lame political pap, “we were right all along, Simon deserves to be the Governor. We told you Davis was bad.” The second “I told you sos” will come after the recall when Republicans of all stripes say, “Bill Simon running in the recall only served to confuse and alienate voters. His presence diminished the legitimacy of the recall effort. Simon managed to split Republican support insuring the election of a leftist Democrat.”

Signed,
Joe Cuffaro
A highly disgruntled and disgusted former Simon supporter.

See also MY new thread:

Why Bill Simon should do the RIGHT thing, and endorse Darrell Issa:
CA GOP's "shock and awe" option
An Open Letter to Bill Simon (continued...) ^ | July 22, 2003 | RonDog
Posted on 07/22/2003 9:58 PM PDT by RonDog

.

"The needs of the Many outweigh the needs of the Few - or the One" - Spock (from "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan")
. . . . Dear Bill,
. . . . Tomorrow you will face the most important decision in your political life: to run, or NOT to run in the recall election to replace Gray Davis.
. . . . Please do NOT run.
. . . . In fact, I contend that your duty to your Party and your duty to your State demand MUCH STRONGER action from you. I sincerely believe that you need to act BOLDLY (amazing your friends, and confounding your enemies) by endorsing Darrell Issa for Governor of California - NOW, before the recall election even begins...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread

Will radical Muslims sue you?

If anyone will improperly benefit from the terrorist attacks, it's the usual culprits – trial lawyers – and a new one: radical Islamicists. Lawyers and America's organized radical Muslims have developed a whole new litigation racket to clog the courts.

First, there is Arab-American Congressman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. Issa plans to introduce legislation to allow Arabs and Muslims who are "victims of racial profiling" to file discrimination lawsuits and collect monetary damages, "if profiling is not done properly." This is ridiculous. Basically, Issa is telling law enforcement: Don't do your job at airports and borders, or I'll help everyone sue you out of a job and a bank account.

A reason we have so many terrorists within our borders, right now, is that law enforcement officials were restrained from examining enough individuals that fit an ethnic profile, due to political grandstanding like Issa's. To this day, U.S. Customs officials are required to give complaint forms to all people stopped at the border and/or frisked. This guarantees that too many criminals and terrorists won't be stopped and will pass over our borders, legally. Issa will make it even worse.

When, according to Issa, is profiling not done properly? Apparently, it's when you are a congressman, an hour late for a flight and not allowed on the plane, as happened to Issa recently. He arrived for an Air France flight on Oct. 4, after the time required to conduct an adequate security check. He had all the signs of a suspicious passenger – a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia via Paris, an Arabic surname, and a late, harried arrival. The airline told him he'd have to return for the next flight, like any non-congressman in the same position.

But instead of playing by the rules set for us regular people in this time of heightened security, Issa had a tantrum and demanded to board, accusing Air France of profiling. Issa has a history of whining about "profiling". As head of a California Arab-American group, he signed a proclamation decrying the "profiling" of alleged Asian spy Wen Ho Lee. At a June House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Justice Dept., he raised pointed questions with Attorney General Ashcroft, decrying the use of profiling and secret evidence against potential terrorists.

Though he is a Christian-Arab, Issa is the congressional sycophant for Salam Al-Marayati, head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who compared Islamic terrorists to Patrick Henry. Issa and Al-Marayati must have confused, "Give me liberty or give me death," with "Give them Islam or give them death."

Then there are AP reports that the Council on American Islamic Relations – a self-styled Muslim civil rights group that the FBI identified as a front-group for the Hamas terrorist organization – is gathering a list of hate crimes and referring "victims" to trial lawyers. But, just like slip-and-fall fakeries, there are few meritorious cases among the alleged "incidents of hate" and a lot of exaggerated opportunities for ambulance-chasing trial lawyers. In the past, CAIR's examples of alleged discrimination and hate-crimes consisted of arrests and deaths of known terrorist leaders and articles exposing radical Islam in publications like Reader's Digest, the Dallas Morning News, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Then there is CAIR's own hate-crime against Islamic scholar Khalid Duran. A heroic Muslim-American scholar who has for years dared to speak out against radical Islam and its support for terrorist groups, CAIR and other "mainstream" American Islamic groups hate him. And Duran committed the additional "crime" of serving as translator and senior adviser for the 1994 documentary "Jihad in America," which exposes Muslim terrorist elements that flourish throughout America, including CAIR's antecedent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Recently, Duran sinned again, writing a children's book promoting understanding of Islam, "Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam for Jews." He committed the cardinal sin of enlisting the American Jewish Committee to publish it. That earned him a fatwah (religious decree) from Lebanese Muslim cleric, Abd al-Mun'im Abu Zant, to kill Duran. CAIR defended Abu Zant. Shouldn't that make CAIR a defendant in a hate-crime lawsuit?

The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee is another group. AP reports it is busy compiling trumped-up "hate-crimes," rounding up trial lawyers and engaging in its own frivolous litigation explosion. The AAADC opposes profiling terrorists – not surprising, since its key Michigan regional official, Imad Hamad, was a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist, according to the INS which opposed his U.S. citizenship.

But AAADC has no problem profiling other Americans, who are not Muslims or Arabs. Manny Cetner knows about AAADC's profiling and fabricated hate-crimes. In Cetner's West Bloomfield Township, Mich., neighborhood, where most residents are Jews and Christian Arabs and get along peacefully, a Muslim resident, Ben Nouri – with the help of the AAADC, brought a $10 million dollar discrimination lawsuit against Cetner and the two other Jews (but none of the non-Jews) who sit on his neighborhood association board. Their "hate-crime" against the Muslim: enforcing Township grading and structural codes to prevent flooding damage to neighboring homes. The phony lawsuit is draining Cetner and co-defendants financially.

With radical Muslim groups' litigious maws in full force, every American should watch his pocket book and worry about his security.

Debbie Schlussel is a political commentator and attorney. She is a frequent guest on ABC's "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" and Fox News Channel.

That's a bit of revisionist history. Simon was beginning to establish himself as more people got to see Simon and that snake Riordan for who he truly was. Davis just made the job easier for the conservatives, but the tide was turning long before Gray got involved. All Davis, Bill Simon and Bill Jones had to do was tell the truth about Riordan and Riordan was toast. Somebody on Riordan's team forgot to tell Riordan how to run a primary campaign. He thought he could waltz in and be annointed. Too bad.

That said, I kinda fall into the "Simon had his chance" camp and am hoping for a different candidate to take the gauntlet. And like the primary, I'm not liking my options.

BTW, this sounds like TeamRiordan, not "TeamSimon"

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