No, no, no and once again NO!
Perception, both in and out of the state, has made that a reality. It is simply UNTRUE. CA is actually a conservative state, but since both sides have taken your stance to be gospel-it has indeed become a socialists grab bag. The CA Republican is a laughingstock. They lose because they think they will find votes in the "center" whatever the heck that is. They dither, they talk out of both sides of their mouths, or they simply don't articulate the conservative viewpoint. Can anyone say Ahnold Buffet? In the rest of the state, outside of San Fran, this suppresses the Independent conservative vote. "Why vote at all?" so many say.
But the proof in the pudding is in the ballot initiatives. No double talking, no trust in a candidate, no BS. Just Law. Take a good long look at our most recent ballot initiatives, and you tell me-do conservatives not have votes, or do RINOs not have votes?
1994 - Proposition #184: Three-strikes, life imprisonment for repeat felons.
1994 - Proposition #187: Cut off state funds for Illegal Aliens.
1996 - Proposition #209: Ended statewide Affirmative Action
1998 - Proposition #227: Ended bilingual education
2000 - Proposition #22: Defined marriage as one man - one woman.
I think most states vote this way, when the issues are as clear cut as they were in these referendums. For example, where voters have clear choices between conservative judges and liberal judges, the conservatives win hands down.
To me, this clearness of conservative content is why Gingrich won so big in 1994. The Republicans lost that focus in later elections which is why things have been so rough. Even Bush wobbles, exactly like his father did. He was able to bring the Senate back into the fold (but just barely) only by his resorting to campaigning for certain congressmen with a clearly conservative message.
Conservatives, of either party, will vote for the politician who stands up for the major conservative issues. Here, as has already been posted several times, the real issue is the economy and how liberal policies and politicians have destroyed it.
The question is will McClintock run this kind of clear hard hitting campaign? If the Republicans can't settle on one candidate and go with a simple message, then they need to STFU and yield to Arnold. The damage has already been done by so many of them registering to run in the first place. As I understand it all the names remain on the ballot, even if someone drops out. Thus issues become secondary and name recognition (or glamour) takes over.
Under this scenario (weak conservative message) and with Republicans splitting away from A.S., then the illegal immigrant and hard line liberal vote has a strong chance of delivering the win to Bustamente. This is the reason the liberal media have made darlings of high visibility conservative pundits: their comments destablize support for Schwarzenegger.
I think the media, rightly or wrongly, view A.S. as the only real threat to Democrat retention of state politics. They have no care whether A.S. is a real conservative or not, but his candidacy frightens them. So they will publicize any willing tool they can find to achieve their goal.
They can be wrong, as they were in '94, but it takes a motivated conservative electorate to prove them wrong, as happened in '94.
The other thing which I think will help is the complexity of the ballot. Navigating a ballot with 195 names on it will take some language and alphabetic skills, which most illegal aliens and entiltlement babies don't have. It would have been simpler to ask each voter to write in his candidate's name. Give each voter a pencil (or crayons for Democrats etc.) and tablulate the results. It wouldn't even have required all the potential candidates to register! A much simpler method all the way around.
So what I'm saying is that the Republicans need to get behind one candidate and then for all of them to articulate a stong conservative message. "A contract with California", so to speak. The media wouldn't know which way to turn.
Thanks for providing this record.
When Californians have the opportunity to express their authentic political positions, we are a conservative, sensible lot.