Author: Tony Quinn

If any evidence is needed that California Republicans remain brain dead about their problems with the growing non-white vote in this state, there is the move by far right GOPers to repeal the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship to American-born children of illegal immigrants.

Republicans have now lost all statewide offices, with the apparent defeat of attorney general nominee Steve Cooley, for only the second time since 1882. The exit polls also show that 2010 Latino turnout exceeded 2008 turnout by at least four points, and that Latinos voted Democratic by 65 to 85 percent, depending upon which exit poll you believe.

Republicans now have virtually no chance to ever elect anyone to statewide office again in California but they have not hit bottom yet. That will come in 2012 when the new Citizens Redistricting Commission redraws legislative and congressional district lines. Many of the safe, gerrymandered lily white districts Republicans drew for themselves in the 2001 redistricting will go, and in their place with be districts filled with newly enfranchised middle class Latino voters. Look for GOP legislative seats to flip to the Democrats in northern Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire where the Latino vote is growing rapidly.

Well, that was a good way to blow 140 million dollars. The Meg Whitman campaign will go down as one of the worst in California history, blowing a springtime lead and managing to lose in a massive Republican landslide year.

But that’s what you get when you hire Mike Murphy as chief strategist, as Whitman did. Last we saw of Murphy he had ruined the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2005 special election. Schwarzenegger’s defeat in that election was so thorough he had to all but become a Democrat to survive in office.

But nevertheless, there he was running Whitman’s effort. But he seems not to have understood the most basic law of modern politics: when you have an illegal alien problem, you get it out; you don’t wait for Gloria Allred to do it for you.

It is like Ronald Reagan talking to us from the Great Beyond – a slate card called "Continuing the Republican Revolution", put out by Orange County consultant Scott Hart, starts out: "President Ronald Reagan will be forever remembered on his upcoming 100th birthday. God bless him, and God bless America."

But President Reagan must have changed parties, because the positions on ballot measures encouraged on this card, complete with the Republican National Committee blue and red elephant logo, are exactly the opposite of the official GOP positions.

In September, I wrote a critical article on the Los Angeles Times/USC Poll questioning the poll’s methodology. I found it to be too heavily weighted to Democratic voters.

The Times/USC Poll is out with its October version. Once again I have looked at the methodology. The new poll shows Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman by 13 points, and Barbara Boxer leading Carly Fiorina by eight points. While these are somewhat greater margins for the Democratic candidates than other October polls, at least the October methodology seems to have improved over September.

There is no question there is a Republican wave building throughout most of the country that will probably deliver the House of Representatives to the Republicans. But polling just this week is showing that optimism for huge GOP gains in the U.S. Senate may be fading.

If the GOP fails to win the Senate in this wave year, Tea Party candidates, especially those favored by the California-based Tea Party Express, will be to blame.

Deceptive ballot measures are nothing new in California, but it is rare when an initiative is entirely a lie.  That is the case with Proposition 27, a big lie ballot measure to eliminate the voter-approved Citizens Redistricting Commission and return this vital function to self serving incumbent legislators.

Fed up with the dysfunctional legislature whose approval rating is now just 10 percent, voters in 2008 passed Proposition 11 to take the drawing of legislative districts away from politicians and give it to a 14-member Citizens Commission.  Voters said it is time to end the practice of incumbents drawing districts for themselves.

The reform the people passed in 2008 has gone spectacularly well; more than 30,000 citizens applied for the Commission, and the 60 finalists include Democrats, Republicans, Green Party members, political independents, whites, Latinos, blacks, Asians and Native Americans.  The Commission will reflect the diversity of the state, and will draw the new districts in 2011 according to specific and transparent criteria.

There
appear to be serious methodology problems with the Los Angeles Times/USC
poll released over the weekend that show Jerry Brown beating Meg
Whitman 49 to 44 percent.  This is a much larger Brown lead than other
contemporary polls, such as Field that shows the race tied, and Survey
USA that gives Brown a three point lead.

The major problem seems to be in the way the L. A. Times/USC
measures likely voters and party preference.  For one thing, the poll
shows Brown doing better among likely voters than the total electorate.
If we know one thing about this election it is that the turnout will
have a higher Republican tilt than the overall electorate.  In the
primary, with 33 percent overall turnout, 44 percent of Republicans
went to the polls while only 32 percent of Democrats.  The upshot was
that in actual votes cast, the Republican turnout was practically equal
to the Democratic turnout.  This is partially explained by hot contests
on the GOP side, nevertheless it is dramatic turnaround from 2008 when
Democratic turnout far exceeded GOP turnout.

The 2008 general election is a good place to start.
According to the California Exit Poll conducted by Edison Media
Research and Mitofsky International, the 2008 electorate self
identified as 42 percent Democratic, 30 percent Republican and 28
percent independent/other.  That turnout model produced a landslide
victory for President Obama in California in 2008.

Meg Whitman is getting it wrong.  Her attacks on Jerry Brown are sporadic, unfocused and in many cases just downright untrue.  She is trying to define him as a traditional tax and spend liberal, but that dog won’t hunt. 

The state budget increased by 120 percent while Brown was governor (1975-1982), says a Whitman website; well, budgets increased 120 percent while Ronald Reagan was governor (1967-1975).  As governor, Brown wanted to raise $7 billion in new taxes, she says.  Not true, wrote Ed Salzman, then editor of the California Journal, in a 1982 summary of the Brown years.

"Ronald Reagan left Brown in a fiscal Fat City (in 1975), with a healthy surplus and a tax structure that far outpaced the state’s needs.  Brown guarded that surplus in his first term, fighting off those who would increase spending."

In these dog days of summer the biggest political issue in America suddenly is a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero in New York City.  Over the weekend, President Obama waded into the mosque issue, probably to his political detriment.

The controversy has reversed the usual political roles: property rights conservatives say no to building a mosque on private property so close to Ground Zero; secular liberals, who would fight a Nativity scene on the courthouse lawn or a cross on public land, suddenly embrace the Islamic mosque in the name of religious freedom.  

Here are three reasons, secular, religious and historical why this mosque should be moved to some place other than Ground Zero.