A Campaign Dedicated to Losing
In the annals of California political history, very few campaigns have been worse than that which Steve Poizner has run for governor. But his keystone kops effort also underscores how very close the California Republican Party is to disappearing as a political force in this state.
Consider his latest. In an effort to brand himself the “true conservative” in the race, Poizner has evoked Tom McClintock in a new radio ad and web posting. It encourages California Republicans to support him because McClintock does.
Tom McClintock may be the single biggest loser in California political history. No other major party candidate has lost so regularly every time he has presented himself to the voters in a statewide election. Look at the record: in 1994, a grand GOP landslide year, McClintock was defeated for state controller. In 2002, a good GOP year nationally, McClintock again was defeated for controller. In 2003, he garnered exactly 14 percent running for governor in the Davis recall. And in 2006, he managed a fourth loss, running for lieutenant governor. With this record Poizner thinks voters should let McClintock pick the GOP gubernatorial contender.
Five Measures In All: How to vote? You have the ball.
Last week I conducted an interview for Reason Television, Is California Too Big To Fail, in which I talk about the pension tsunami facing California. I review Republican and Democrat resolve relative to our state budget crisis. And I make it clear that, in retrospect, Arnold Schwarzenegger should have received an Academy Award for Best Dramatic Performance in a Recall Election. Check out the Reason.tv interview to here.
Joel Fox asked me to follow up on that interview with a column for Fox & Hounds. I thought hard about it, and decided that I would treat readers to a review of the five upcoming June ballot measures – in rhyme! Enjoy…
The measures before the voters this June are only a few;
Compared with November when we will be facing a slew.
Thirteen through seventeen, the numbers assigned by Bowen;
To explain them all by rhyme, I had best get going…
The Endless Political Debate
Here’s something beer and politics have in common — an endless debate over what’s most important in their product. For those of you who remember the two decade long advertising campaign for Miller Lite beer, the question argued was the beer was good because of “Great Taste” or because the brew was “Less Filling!” In politics you hear the debate centered around whether a candidate must be faithful to a party’s perceived principles or be centrist enough to get elected.
What brings this to mind was a couple of questions from the recent USC/L.A. Times poll that caught my attention. The questions dealt with which kind of candidate the Republican Party should put forward. Should the standard bearer be a conservative who can rally the base? Or should he or she be more centrist to capture crossover voters from the Democrats and Independents?
The pollsters found that registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters who said they would vote Republican were fairly evenly divided on the question. These voters were asked whether it was important that the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator or Governor be a “true conservative.”
Weird Scenes Inside the Old Iron Curtain
The news lately has been filled with strange and disturbing events occurring behind what we used to call the Iron Curtain. Kyrgyzstan (the Kyrgyz Republic), that little dirt-poor, Central Asian country with the unpronounceable name that seems to lack important vowels, fell recently to protesters, amid charges that we backed the wrong horse (some would sarcastically say: again!) and reportedly drowning in corruption – all of which would not matter much to us 10,000+ miles away, except that the US maintains a critical military base there that supplies our stepped-up war efforts today in Afghanistan, and has had the immediate effect of halting our military flights out of there of late..
Then, terrorists blew up Moscow subways, striking terror into the hearts of rapid transit commuters the world over. But, last weekend’s news was the strangest of all – like something out of a ‘B’ movie script, dripping with irony and stamping a big “Huh?!?” on the sometimes frail distinction between reality and imagination.
It seems that the topmost echelons of the Polish government and military, all crowded aboard a creaky, notoriously unreliable, Russian-built commercial plane, were flying to Smolensk, in Russia, to commemorate, and most importantly, to finally (after so many decades) come to modern terms with, and understanding of, the horrific massacre of some 20,000 Polish military officers by Russian forces that happened 70-odd years ago.