To quote Yogi Berra, it was déjà vu all over again at the state GOP convention this weekend as the three candidates for governor insisted that the only problem facing California’s Republican Party is that it just hasn’t been conservative enough.
Never mind that the Democrats’ registration edge in the state is 44 percent to 31 percent and growing. Or that recent polls show that the increasing number of decline-to-state voters tends to identify with Democrats and, more importantly, vote like them. Or even that the distinctly liberal Barack Obama steamrolled the ever-so-conservative John McCain in California last November, 61 percent to 37 percent.
Nope, an even tougher conservative line is the key to victory in November 2010 and the candidates for governor were willing to play “Can You Top This?” in effort to show who’s the most conservative of them all.
“Don’t let people come in here and tell you that we need to reposition the Republican Party,” state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said in his speech to the convention Saturday. “And don’t let people come in here and tell you that we need to re-establish the Republican Party at the center. That is wrong, that is nonsense.”
But in order to show why the state desperately needs a more conservative administration, it’s going to be necessary for the gubernatorial wannabes to trash the state’s current chief executive, fellow Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
No problem, at least for former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. She noted with horror that since 2004, the year after Schwarzenegger took office, the state has added more than 40,000 new employees and that this year, in the midst of a deep recession, “California has actually hired 10,000 more bureaucrats,” she said. “Is it any wonder that Californians are fed up?”
Whitman once again promised to keep AB 32, Schwarzenegger’s landmark greenhouse gas regulation, from taking effect for at least a year, arguing that she’s going to make sure “there’s a balance between the right rules and a healthy economy.”
The governor already had dismissed the call for a delay in a San Francisco speech last week, saying Whitman’s pledge was little more than typical campaign rhetoric “and what (candidates) will do when they go into office is probably a whole different ballgame.”
Look for that quote to show up in a Democratic attack ad next fall.
Then there’s the campaign numbers game, which is likely to get even more heated as it gets closer to next June’s primary.
Whitman promises to fire at least 40,000 state workers, help private industry create two million new jobs and make at least $15 billion in cuts to the state budget, which, not surprisingly, she won’t identify until after she’s elected.
Poizner, for his part, will cut state income, corporate and sales taxes by 10 percent and capital gains taxes by 50 percent and trust in the power of supply side economics to make up for the billions in revenue it will cost the state.
The third person in the GOP race for governor, former San Jose Rep. Tom Campbell, has his concerns about Whitman and Poizner’s approach to government finance, which he sees as little more than taking a political stand and hoping for the best.
It’s not acceptable, he said, “to say ‘I’ll tell you once I’m governor,’ or ‘We’ll run this state like a business and that will find us the money.’”
Campbell was touting his own plan to cut more than $17 billion in state spending to help balance the budget, a plan http://blog.campbell.org/2009/05/17/a-specific-proposal-to-tackle-californias-budget-deficit/ the former state finance director has laid out in excruciating detail.
What he didn’t mention to the “no new taxes ever” crowd at the convention, however, is that his plan to close the current budget gap included a one-year, 32-cent a gallon boost in the gasoline tax, which would raise $5.8 billion
Despite Campbell’s long reputation as a moderate Republican, he’s been a politician long enough to know that “moderate” doesn’t set well with the grassroots activists who make up the bulk of the convention delegates. That why his Friday night speech http://blog.campbell.org/2009/09/25/tom-campbell-at-the-california-republican-party-fall-convention/ focused on his links to conservative GOP icons like former President Ronald Reagan, Rep. Tom McClintock and libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
But the best news for Campbell – and the party – likely came before the convention, when conservative party leaders dropped their plan to bar decline-to-state voters from the GOP primary.
Campbell’s chances in June depend on those undeclared voters. But whoever wins the GOP nomination is going to need those same decline-to-states come November 2010, so they need to decide now whether “all conservative, all the time” rhetoric is the way to lure their support.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.