The GOP Still Not Catching On

Republicans in California still don’t look like they are getting it through their heads what will make them more popular. The new session doesn’t even start until next week, but each week it looks like the GOP caucus in each house is moving further right than they already were.

In the Assembly two weeks ago, Republicans voted down Plescia as Minority Leader because he was seen a too conciliatory. Indeed, he was pragmatic and understood that the only way to remain relevant in what appears to be a nearly permanent minority position is to bargain with the majority party. As a result, there was significant give-and-take in the budgeting process, a budget was passed on time, the legislature was seen as being the most productive in decades, and the big winner was the Governor.

To replace Plescia, Republicans tapped Mike Villines of Clovis—a hard-line Republican most recently known for his fierce opposition to the budget and bonds. The GOP would have been hard pressed to find a party leader less bipartisan than Mr. Villines, who will almost certainly try to use his position to attack the wildly popular Republican (perhaps the ONLY wildly popular Republican left in the USA) Governor’s position on a number of issues that GOP leadership might see as un-Republican.

In the Senate, incumbent Minority Leader Dick Ackerman isn’t sitting too comfortably on his thrown. Reportedly, he hasn’t been able to secure enough votes to guarantee his reelection to the post, although he has more votes than Jim Battin, his main challenger. This could potentially lead to a compromise candidate—which might not be too bad.

Unfortunately, in order to be reelected, Ackerman has promised to take a harder stance on budget issues. That is, he wants to oppose the Governor’s pragmatic and centrist attempts to form a budget that serves the needs of Californians while simultaneously reducing wasteful spending. In the process, it appears he will be throwing away his good working relationship with Democratic leader Don Perata.

The problem with all this is that the GOP hasn’t figured out why nobody in California likes them and how the Governator became so popular (even though EVERYBODY hated him a year ago). It wasn’t bad spending, poor Republican turnout, or just Bush’s coattails that have led to the Blue Wave. Governor Schwarzenegger has mastered the technique of giving voters what they want.

An old professor of mine once explained that all voters want three things and that anybody who can figure out how to give all three will win every election: 1. Lower taxes, 2. More government services, 3. a balanced budget. While we all know it is impossible to give all of these all of the time, Governor Schwarzenegger has done extremely well by keeping taxes down (he hasn’t raised taxes), keeping services high (and proposing new popular public services regarding the environment and healthcare), and paying down the state’s debt.

The GOP could easily catch on to his strategy and ride it to further victories, but have chosen to fall into irrelevancy instead.

A Bad Year for the Roses

No, I am not talking about the Rose Bowl. My hopes are still high that Cal can pull a victory against the University of South Central this weekend. In fact, I will be blogging about that that at some point this week.

Today I am predicting another bad year for the Republicans. As everybody in politics knows, the campaign starts the day after the previous election, if not sooner. Why then are the Republicans already failing?

When the voters very clearly tell you that things need to change, it would be logical to change in the direction the voters intend. Not so, according to the choices currently being made in Sacramento and DC.

Republican members of the California Assembly look like they will soon replace George Plescia with even-more-conservative Mike Villines from the Fresno-Clovis area to be the new Assembly Minority Leader. True, Plescia was no strong leader for the GOP. Susan Kennedy referred to him looking like a deer stuck in the headlights and Governor Schwarzenegger expressed his concern that Plescia couldn’t control the “wild-bunch” of Republicans in the Assembly. Still it makes little sense to find a more conservative member to lead our party out of the current quagmire. At this rate, expect the California GOP to be even more irrelevant than it already is.

But it doesn’t seem the national party is any smarter. In the Senate, it looks like the minority leader will be Senator Mitch McConell, an anti-gay “Christianist” that votes a straight Republican ticket. That doesn’t sound like change to me, folks. Why don’t we see if we can find somebody closer to the status quo? Is Dick Cheney eligible for the post?

We can’t expect the foolhardy crowd in the House to provide our party with any good leadership, can we? The three favorite candidates to move into Pelosi’s old office when she becomes Speaker are John Boehner, Joe Barton, and Mike Pence. Boehner we can all remember from his role in the Foley scandal and cover-up where he may or may not have told Speaker Hastert what he knew about Foley’s indiscretions. Pence is an extreme conservative hoping to bring change to the GOP by being even more rightwing. Barton long spouted the necessity of traditional family values before his divorce in 2003 and marriage to another woman soon after. He has received extremely large contributions from energy companies while consistently denying the existence of global warming. When he seems to be the more moderate of the candidates for the job, the GOP is in trouble.

Unless the Republican Party wakes up and realizes it needs to change, it will continue to fall by the wayside. I expected the recent election to be a sufficient wakeup call, but apparently was wrong. What will it take to make the GOP move a little left?