Are Republicans Finally Learning to Count?
The Republican Party is despised, rejected, a party of sorrows, and its 2012 candidates acquainted with grief (with apologies to Isaiah and George Frederick Handel). But now some Republicans at last want to face that reality and make some changes. I call them the Republicans Who Can Count. The Republicans Who Can’t Count were on […]
A Coming Republican Wipeout?
A final look a the 2012 election results suggest this was not nearly as a bad a year for Republicans in California as it could have been. But 2012 also shows why 2014 could be the year of total wipeout for California Republicans, with the loss of half or more of the legislators and members […]
Voters Ice the Tea Party
It may not be what the Democrats and their amen chorus in the media want to hear, but the fact is that the Tea Party is rapidly declining as a political force in America. And it is not the Democrats, or the liberal media that loved to ridicule them, that is finishing the Tea Party […]
The Tough Job Facing Jim Brulte as GOP Party Chair
So Jim Brulte wants to be Republican Party chair to rebuild the party. To me, restoring the Republican Party seems nearly impossible in California, unless they were willing to swallow really stiff medicine and I’m not sure they are. But if they are, here’s what would need to be done, starting with their biggest problem: […]
The Final Indignity: How Republicans Lost a Safe Seat
For 26 days, Lancaster council member Ron Smith, a Republican, was an Assemblyman-elect, that is until the very last votes were counted in Los Angeles County on Sunday and by 145 votes Smith lost his seat to Democrat Steve Fox. Smith came out of election night several thousand votes ahead but a huge glut of […]
The Democratic Party’s Problem with White Folks
Demographics cuts both ways. While numerous commentators have skewered Republicans for alienating Latino and other minority voters in 2012, and the GOP is paying a huge price for it, there is another important demographic story: the collapse of the Democratic Party among white voters throughout America’s heartland. That collapse cost Democrats control of the House […]
How Republicans Misplayed the Race Card in 2012 – Just Like they Did in 1994
Eighteen long years ago, Gov. Pete Wilson in his 1994 re-election campaign injected the poison of immigrant bashing into the California body politic, and for 18 years this poison metastases into a cancer that slowly choked the California Republican Party to death. But in 2012, the national Republicans played the same poisonous game in state […]
How Proposition 30 and 32 Killed the Republicans
The good news for Republicans is that they are no longer a dying party. The bad news is that they are dead, and the final dagger into the corpse was the huge turnout of young voters on Tuesday – the exit polls show that 18 to 29 years olds made up 28 percent of the […]
Does Obama Have Coattails in California
Among the uncertainties of this election is the extent to which the expected Obama win in California will affect the competitive races; that is, will there be Obama coattails in the high turnout for a presidential election year. Fortunately, it is possible to make some projections on the Obama and Romney margins in the most […]
What to Make of the Prop 30 Field Poll
The Field Poll out this morning shows Proposition 30, the tax increase initiative, winning by ten points 48 percent Yes, 38 percent No. This is somewhat closer than Field’s September survey that showed Proposition 30 up 51 percent to 36 percent. These results are better for Proposition 30 than other polls that have shown the […]