Print | 
SendPosted on 06/08/2003 11:25:01 PM PDT by cgk
California's runaway recall
Robert Novak (archive)
LOS ANGELES -- The movement to replace just re-elected Democrat Gray Davis as governor of California is beginning to look like a runaway train with nobody at the controls. The state's voters may go to the polls this fall to decide whether Gov. Davis shall be removed, would then probably vote him out and, on the same ballot, select his successor. Nobody can predict that successor, or even whether the winner would be a Republican or Democrat.
While bipartisan establishment politicians remain in denial, realists now are taking the recall movement seriously. Dave Galliard, a Sacramento-based political consultant seeking signatures for recall petitions, says 520,000 voters have signed. He is aiming for 1.2 million, providing insurance that the required 897,000 valid names are collected. If this is done by July 18, an election must be held in September or October. Gov. Davis, at 21 percent approval in a recent private labor union poll, cannot be expected to survive.
That is not what President Bush's strategists want to hear. They fear the recall could elect a popular Democrat to replace the weakened Davis, making it more difficult for Bush to carry the state that would ensure his re-election. They cannot stop the train at this point, however. The recall movement has characteristics of anti-establishment resentment that in 1978 passed the famous Proposition 13 tax cut.
Seven months after winning a second term against neophyte Republican candidate Bill Simon, Davis has lost support from everybody except organized labor. His campaign team, headed by Garry South, is reassembling to fight the recall. But this is the same team that won in 2002 by savaging Simon without defending Davis, who never prepared voters for his tax increases to solve the state budget crisis.
Similarly, Republican leaders have changed their attitude since a recent visit to the state capital in Sacramento by the conservative congressman who triggered the recall movement: Rep. Darrell Issa, a multi-millionaire entrepreneur. Issa called Republican Leader Jim Brulte off the Senate floor to detail his plans to fund the movement -- $700,000 contributed by him so far with more coming. Since then, Brulte's hostility to a recall has changed to neutrality.
As the recall originator, Issa must be considered a leader in the winner-take-all non-party election on the same ballot as the Davis removal question. But he is not the only Republican hopeful. State Sen. Tom McClintock, an anti-tax advocate, is running to Issa's right. Simon, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Secretary of State Bill Jones have been privately testing support.
All may be dwarfed by a liberal Republican: former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. After losing to conservative Simon in the 2002 GOP primary, Riordan has asked for White House help in clearing out the rest of the Republicans. Since that is patently impossible, Riordan may run as an independent.
Gerald Parsky, the investment banker who is Bush's main political agent here, has not joined the recall movement. "I understand why people in California would be upset by the financial crisis," Parsky told me, "but my first priority is the re-election of the president and getting the financing necessary to accomplish this."
Other Republican critics of the recall see a nightmare scenario where Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the state's most popular politician, enters the race and easily wins -- replacing a 21 percent favorable Democrat with a 62 percent favorable. But Feinstein is on record against Davis's recall and can hardly urge voters to vote for her on the same ballot.
The same conflict afflicts other Democrats who are more likely to run than Feinstein: Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, State Treasurer Phil Angelides and maybe San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. It least affects State Senate President John Burton, who detests Davis and is ready to run. (One of Burton's supporters, a well-known Democrat, told me he is tempted to sign a Davis recall petition.)
Fear by leading Republicans that any one of these Democrats probably will replace Davis reflects the GOP establishment's defeatism, resulting from the state party's 2002 wipeout. The prospects for a recall, however, have lifted spirits of California grassroots Republicans, who hope a low-turnout autumn election will defeat the Democrats. Whether or not that appraisal is realistic, it is becoming too late to stop the runaway recall.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Robert Novak | Read Novak's biography
Screw California, dammit! California is a lost cause. Nobody knew what the Boston Tea Party would lead to but sometimes the pipples just get so pissed off they have to take action regardless of what someone else's political ambitions are. The 2004 election is not going to be another nail-biter.
This Compassionate Timidity is pissing me off.
Just think, now Nevada can have a real coastline!
If Simon had any trace of a spine, he could've whupped Davis. Davis' pained attempts to tie Simon to Enron went unanswered. Even though Davis received the single-largest contribution from Enron of any politician ($200K), Simon didn't feel the need for any sort of counter-offensive.
Instead, Simon played nice and kept quiet, then finally made a pathetic 11th Hour TV spot with his wife where he practically apologized for everything Davis accused him of and assured California voters that he really wasn't a bad guy after all.
And let's not forget the infamous bogus fund-raising photo, the Davis campaign's October Surprise that Simon's camp fell for hook, line and sinker.
Despite the fact that Simon ran one of the weakest campaigns in recent memory and made every mistake he possibly could have, he still took 43 of 57 counties (or something like that) in the state.
To suggest that the Democrats who have run this state into the dirt can't be beaten by anyone but a RINO is absurd. We don't need Riordan. We just need a real conservative with some balls.
No, he most certainly is not. His lifetime ACU rating was 70%, not Conservative, but not liberal.
"You are using the same logic I was using, even a liberal Republican is orders of magnitude better than a Democrat."
See above. Huffington could claim to be a moderate, Riordan would've been in leftist Jeffords territory had he served in Congress. Riordan was more comfortable with the leftist DiFi than moderate Huffington, which is why he endorsed her, as he enjoys endorsing leftist 'Rats. A claim you haven't refuted. How many authentic Republicans you know go all out for 'Rats and give them big $$ ?
"And it's easy for you to talk, you don't live in California,"
Uh, most of my family is in California. Let's see how many people in CA can even NAME the legislative politburo leader thugs, I can. I'm very familiar with the drug-addled Burton.
"but I do and I am darn tired of all the leftist politicians, who are making this great state practically unlivable,"
You are a walking contradiction. You're tired of leftist pols, yet you are championing the biggest LEFT-WING RINO in the state of CA after that scum Parsky (with Brooks Firestone bringing up the rear). I told you that I just got finished having a Riordanite Governor and he left the state in shambles, and bequeathed us my ethically-challenged 'Rat ex-Mayor to succeed him.
"and when we finally have a chance to get a Republican in office, the Republicans are their own worst enemies, by insisting on unelectable conservative candidates, letting the Democrats continue their rule."
Do you even KNOW what a Republican is ? Anyone who thinks Riordan will usher in some non-leftist agenda while proclaiming Mike Huffington is "lots more liberal" than Tricky Dick must obviously not. It's clear you didn't even read the part about Reagan. Having an "R" after ones name doesn't make them a real Republican.
McClintock
Tom McClintock
McClintock
Tom McClintock
If the GOP opts for snobocracy and refuses to work for the votes of socially conservative Democrats, the GOP will be rendered an historic curiosity. An already existing model of politically irrelevant snobocracy exists in England in the form of the Liberal Democrats, a merger of the Social Democrats who split with Labor because they recognized, like Henry Jackson here, that to be liberal did not REQUIRE one to be such a da*n fool as to kow tow to communists and the Liberal Party (gentlemen who did not like to rub elbows with workers). The Social Democrats such as Roy Jenkins are now dead and their name is misappropriated by the racist and snobbish Liberal Gentlemen's Club.
The United States has had little truck with snobocracy as a tradition in electoral politics since Andrew Jackson's election more than a little while ago. Turning the GOP into soulless, clueless, polo playing, baby-killing, lavender cuddling, disarmed, ohhh so guilty, money-changers is not a prescription for success or even party survival. The answer to Riordan and others like him is NOOOOOOO!
I was there, it's no secret what I was doing last fall. Riordan was no help, zero, zip, nada.
The view of the Margaret Sanger/Dykes on Bikes wing of the California GOP is that guys with big bucks and no clues are somehow entitled to run the cocktail parties at the governor's mansion, to line their pockets and those of their pals with fat jobs and contracts and to do so by distancing themselves from all those embarassing troglodites who resent Skipper marrying his heartthrob Lance and Muffy getting her twelfth abortion since her debutante ball because she just keeps on making "mistakes".
Riordan, the "fiscal conservative", must have recognized qualities that the rest of us missed when endorsing and funding that riot-cheerleading Waters woman for Congress.
Door-to-door gun confiscation such as Riordan salivates over? Now, there is a program for Republicans to crave! But, but, but Riordan is a good man of business who can manage California as governor better than Grey Doofus! Don't we understand: Good management will save us! Of course, your average goldfish can do a better job of managing than Doofus and very possibly do a better job of leaving your guns alone than RINO Riordan but never mind!
We are cutting off your nose not ours and that is a necessary task until the RINOs are run out of GOP politics in California. The preconditions of the restoration of civilization in California are: the prompt evaporation of this Parsky clown; a Republican Party that is once again genuinely Republican; the hard grassroots effort to elect a larger Republican farm team at the level of county supervisors and state legislators; the hard and vicious use of wedge issues to split the Demonrat Party and particularly to attract working class Democrats who are social conservatives to cross the line to the GOP; purge the voting lists of phonies and the dead and prosecute those responsible for the fraud. When Californians have done all that, California will already be far better "managed" than it is under Doofus or would be under RINO Riordan and the Demonrats will be in unfunded disarray where they belong.
It is the policies , not the label, that is important. If the new Republican is for abortion,for gun control,for more taxes,...why bother ?
If the choice is Democrat-socialistor Republican-socialist ,the conservatives wil stay home.
Right, because handing out petitions at a church would be an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
Gag me with a spoon!
So much of this describes the Nashville GOP. Wealthy elitist snobs who don't leave the Country Club except to travel to one another's mansions while entertaining the 'Rat thugs that have run the city for one and one-third of a century (since about the time Ruthie B. Hayes pulled up stakes and said to all the newly-enfranchised Southern Black citizenry, "Hey, dudes, it's been real, but I can't give this job up to some guy named Sammy Jo Tilden. C'ya !). Don't get me wrong, they're nice enough to pony up the dough for the national GOP (and quite a chunk of change, too), but when it comes down to party-building in their own backyard, their one (out of 10) Belle Meade Republican is good enough for them. Bullcrap, it ain't good enough. 40% of the vote we get in this county, and the 'Rats claim it like they own 90% ! What a joke.
Also, RINO Riordan will deal with guns like he dealt with No Parking signs. Grab the guns and apologize later. It is easier to apologize than to get permission, right? All you seem to care about is taxes (and probably not all of them) and business. Why should Republicans primarily motivated by their RTKBA, social conservatism, religious conservatism, actual family values and what not vote for Mr. Businessman who wants to kill kids and grab guns? The election of Riordan would merely mean that there is one party in California and no purpose in politics. Allegedly good management is a crashing bore and certainly not a fit purpose for political war.
In the Palo Alto Daily News "snapshot", one of four "issues" highlighted is Education. Riordan says absolutely nothing about the abysmal content of of public education and Mr. Management only wants to nibble around the edges of the major disaster that is government education (particularly in California), rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This is nothing more than the insipid razzle-dazzle of Lindsayism in New York. Endless "reorganization" of disastrous government agencies with no visible results other than hiring his cronies to replace the other guy's cronies. If RINO Riordan really wants to help poor kids, he can voucherize California gummint education. Not likely! After all, being governor is a social opportunity. His wife's friends will be soooo impressed that Dickie will be governing the wogs.
I am also imagining that Riordan will want to give in to the hand-wringing polo players and art afficionados on the death penalty and to substitute rehabilitation of mass murderers for transportation of them to where they belong by injection. RINO Ryan cleared death row by clemency on his way out of public life. Just think what RINO Riordan can do for the even splashier butchers and kid-killers in California! They are jussst sooooo misunderstood. We have to be nicer to them and maybe they won't rape and murder kids. Maybe some nice publicly subsidized art programs? Macrame for murderers? Wahabi edumucashion for Charley Manson? If they still rape and murder kids, at least RINO Riordan can tell his wife's artsy and craftsy friends that he did not sink to the level of those horrid, uncultured, dreadful right-wing nuts who actually think crime should be punished.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.