Progress Report!
Ping to those who posted questions on the earlier thread, for any further questions.
As before—seeking more light than heat!
Please keep questions framed in as positive a manner as possible but do not refrain from asking the tough, necessary questions.
Mr. Nehring:
Can you explain your plans to prevent conservative California residents from relocating to states like Texas? What incentives are there for us to stay here in CA; what will the CAGOP do to keep us here and turn this state around?
My original question stands.
Why isn’t anyone from the CA GOP trying to explain to people in simple terms that tax hikes on gas/oil mean tax hikes for everyone? Businesses do NOT pay taxes, their customers do...
For the most part, there is no difference between the two belt way parties. They’ve proved that for years now.
The faster everyone realizes this, the better. Will people wake up to this eventually? I’m not confident.
What is it going to take for the CA GOP to go up against the unions? This state is being crushed by the budget for STATE EMPLOYEES. Soon, they will outnumber taxpayers in the private sector. As illegals continue to come to CA and exploit the system (does anyone dispute this?) it is becoming more and more difficult for those who pay into the system to cover those who take out of the system. What is the Republican strategy for educating the public about the real drains on the state budget and where is the GOP proposing to make cuts in the budget?
Mr. Nehring,
Several interrelated questions:
1) When the state was facing imminent bankruptcy in February, an astonishing fact came to light: it could fire every one of its approximately 300,000 employees and the budget still wouldn’t balance. That means the budget deficit isn’t due to the services being provided but due to redistribution. What is the California GOP’s plan to address this?
2) What is the California GOP’s plan to rein-in runaway entitlements?
3) What is the California GOP’s plan to eliminate funding of medical, educational and other services for those in the country illegally? Might doing so reduce the number of those in the country illegally, the way not leaving out catfood reduces the number of stray cats in your yard? Would that be a good or bad thing, Mr. Nehring?
4) If state spending increases had been held to the level of inflation for the past decade, the state would be in surplus today. What is the California GOP’s plan to reduce state spending below this level?
5) What is the California GOP’s position on soliciting and accepting Federal money to help with the budget deficit? (Note: this is a trick question.)
6) California’s unemployment is at a record for the past half century. Seems to me you can’t have employment without employers, who are fleeing because of confiscatory taxation, overregulation, and “green” initiatives that have increased costs. What is the California GOP’s plan to make the state more hospitable to doing business?
7) Math problem: The State recently raised the sales tax by one point. In terms of percentage, how big an increase was this? (Hint: The answer is not “1%”.)
8) Why did the massive, double-digit tax increase mention in (7) not solve all our problems?
9) If higher taxes are a good thing then why not set the tax rate at 100%?
10) Finally, what is the California GOP’s plan to make the California GOP worth more than a bucket of warm spit? Give us a reason to come to the polls, sir, and maybe we will. I am talking about principles, not charisma, sir. After the disastrous Governor Schwarzenspender, we’re all charisma’d out.
Topics 1 and 2 cannot be separated.
Either one IS Conservative, and the principles have their outworking in EVERY arena of one’s life, or one is NOT Conservative. The underpinnings of Conservative thought brook no compromise, otherwise they would not be “Principles” would they? Likewise, the Conservative lives a rigorously uncompromising life, and demands as much from Government in its adherence to Constitutional limits.
Perfection? Not hardly.
The effort to attain it? Absolutely.
That one who claims to be a Fiscal Conservative yet supports abortion on demand is no Conservative; they only seem to behave as one in the arena of finance because that is the result obtained when their utilitarian philosophy of human life is applied to money. Their compromises on the moral front bear witness to a fatally flawed worldview that — soon or late — will lead to bad policy, bad legislation, bad votes, and bad news.
Is it any wonder all the bad blood in the GOP between nominal Sunday afternoon half-conservatives, and day-in, day-out Conservatives from Main Street, U.S.A.?
If you want to make a Liberal happy, compromise with them.
If you want to make a Conservative happy, be uncompromising.
The GOP spends FAR too much effort at making Liberals happy; the GOP cares FAR too much what Liberals think, and FAR too much about how they feel.
THE ONLY THING LIBERALS NEED TO FEEL IS THE SEARING PAIN OF IGNOMINIOUS POLITICAL HUMILIATION IN VOTE AFTER VOTE AFTER VOTE!!!
The Nation, and the GOP, have suffered no end of damage from muddle-headed fools who erroneously assert that a given candidate for office should be run on the GOP ticket “because they’re a solid fiscal conservative, but electable in their social views.”
TRANSLATION: We’re too scared to run a balls-to-the-wall Conservative who actually believes the stuff that Reagan said, so here’s this life-size cardboard cut-out to vote for instead.
So, they get on the ticket, and — most of the time in CA — get positively STEAMROLLED by the decidedly Left candidate on the ballot. Still, on occasion, one of these half-a-loafers gets elected, and we get some decent votes limiting taxation, unburdening business, and keeping a check on spending, but in non-fiscal areas they give away the store. Sure, the taxes stay down, there’s fresh paint on the walls, and the customers have money to spend, but there’s nothing in the stockroom to sell them, so...what was the point, again??
ONE DOES NOT WIN BY HALF MEASURES.
ONE WINS BY TENACIOUS, PERSISTENT, UNRELENTING ADHERENCE TO A “WHATEVER IT TAKES” MINDFRAME DEVOTED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF SPECIFIC GOALS.
THAT sentence bears NO resemblance whatsoever to today’s GOP!
NONE!
And THAT is a damnable shame for which there is NO EXCUSE.
So then, Mr. Nehring, exactly what strategy are you putting in-play to bring CAGOP out of this fog?? What bold, decisive, Conservative moves are you absolutely committed to making that will haul the CAGOP ship of State around to a Principled and Constitutional bearing, and sound the death knell of wishy-washy compromise du jour RINOism in California?
What ever happened to the answers to the first batch?
It would be awesome, if the same thing can also seriously be done with each and every state GOP chairperson, prior to the November ‘10 elections.
Well...perhaps the”New GOP” will..
self-impose term limits...
eschew ALL K St. lobbying.
maintain that all their Federal candidates and lawmakers maintain their PRIMARY offices in their district....DC can make do with electronic communication...
describe mandated de-regulatory and de-tax postition their candidatesmust adhere to to obtain party funding...
Ron conducted a Leadership Institute workshop I attended several years ago. Sharp guy with good grasp on the fundamentals of political organization.
Bookmark and bump for last call.