Just shows the power of Gray Davis and his 10 million dollars worth of advertising. It shows Davis can destroy a liberal Republican any day he choses to do so.
We will soon see how much easier it is for Davis to destroy a Conservative Republican.
That is apparent from Simon begging for help from Bush and the National Republicans. When Davis was spending 10 million dollars to nominate Simon, Simon told the national party to butt out. He didn't need them to get active in the nomination process. He said he could win on his own with the active opposition of Bush and the RNC. And of course Simon did win.... with a little help from his friend Gray Davis.
But Simon has to figure out a way to win with out the help of Gray Davis. You know he doesn't think he can do it or he would not be begging to everyone for help. Simon has been down on his knees beggin Rush and Gerry Falwell to pressure Bush to help him.
Simon is on his way to a Goldwater style defeat. Like Goldwater he wears his conservative opinions on his sleeve. Simon did not learn that the conservative path to success is a veiled pitch. He things Barry Goldwater won.
All he has to do to figure it out is look at the first Campaign of Ronald Reagan for Governor. Reagan must have said a million times that he was a former democrat whose views had not changed. Reagan claimed the Democrats had changed not him. Reagan constantly reminded voters that he was a Card Carrying union Member who had been elected twice as president of his Union.
Reagan structured his campaign to appeal on economic issues, he never mentioned social or moral issues unless the press really leaned on him.
Dan
I'm not sure that you are on the mark, CT.
I think that you see Simon running to the center already, and Bush sent feelers to the Simon campaign two weeks before the primary.
I don't think that Simon is going to make the mistake of going to the voters with a platform that calls for a return to the Gold Standard or abolition of the state Dept. of Education.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Why are you such a RINO?
On just one of your points here, you're misleading. Simon is not Barry Goldwater and he's not running for President. You've mislabeled this contest to make typical and stale RINO points.
And in general, in all of your recent posts I've perused, if we're to believe you, you want all GOP candidates to win "the easy way" by being DIABLAs.
You'd have us all marching to the agenda of the left; merely dragging our feet like diffident little children. Is that you?
Never daring to take the agenda in the opposite direction for fear of appearing outastep to who? The media? We're changing the nations' focus here at Free Republic. (God bar CFR.)
Following your lead, how do we preserve freedom if the purpose of the pro-freedom party is to merely slow our incremental slide into Statism? Those two directions are discordant. For freedom, what you are prescribing is death.
C'mon Common. Grow a God-inspired freedom-loving heart. You can be a champion and carry the rest of us with along with you.
Best of all, you can breath free; you'll have core principles you can live with. No longer a tool of Statists, you'll be a human being,
Go Freepers!!
Go Simon!! Av
Regardless, I would agree that Riordan would have made a decent candidate except 2 things happened. One is that Riordan's attractiveness as a candidate was that he could beat Davis. Polls have shown that is no longer ture. The second is that the claim that a moderate can only win CA is bunk because candidates like Matt Fong and Tom Campbell have been crushed, not edged, but crushed just as bad as more conservative candidates like Dan Lundgren.