Category: Politics

Not to be out done by President Obama’s claim that “you didn’t build that”, elected Republicans in California have made their own entry into the 2012 lexicon of stupid political statements.

Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway sent out a letter last week to people that had donated to the campaign of Andy Pugno. As a contributor to the Pugno campaign, I was a recipient of the letter. I almost didn’t open it but I did. Wow!

July 30, 2012
Dear William,

As a donor to one of the candidates running in California’s 6th Assembly district, I wanted to make sure you were updated with all the latest information from that campaign.

You may know that conservative Republican Assemblywoman Beth Gaines is running for reelection in the 6th district and she was challenged in the Primary by a Democrat and by another Republican, Andy Pugno.

The Republican Party officially endorsed incumbent Beth Gaines, as did our Republican Caucus. Beth is a valuable and effective member of our team, fighting for lower taxes, spending reductions and
upholding policies that promote strong families. For instance, Beth cast two key votes against SB 48, (the bill requiring the teaching of gay history in our public schools).
During the course of the Primary, Pugno made a written pledge to voters that he would not continue his campaign unless he was the top Republican vote-getter. As it turns out, he barely made it
into second place, far behind incumbent Assemblywoman Gaines.

Now, unfortunately, local newspapers report that Pugno is considering breaking his pledge and launching an expensive and counter-productive campaign against a fellow conservative. I and other
Republican Party leaders have asked him to keep his pledge, but so far he will not commit, and he continues to raise money for a campaign. He may have even asked you for money again.

As the Assembly Republican leader, I hope you will join me in urging Andy Pugno to keep his pledge and suspend his campaign, so we can all come together and concentrate on restoring
conservative leadership to the state.

Thanks for your support.

Sincerely,

Connie Conway
Assembly Republican Leader

Several thoughts ran through my head.
• First, days before this letter was received, the media had widely reported that the California Republican Party was over $800,000 in debt. How could they be in debt? Conway and her crew never campaigned against a single Democrat during the June election. She only spent money protecting incumbent Republicans from more conservative Republican challengers.
• Second, much of that expense was borne by billionaire Charles Munger. What part of Conway’s soul that she had left to sell will never be publically known? It is safe to speculate that the price paid included a provision that CRP will not oppose Molly Munger’s tax hike proposal on the November ballot.
• Third, the whole premise that Beth Gaines was properly endorsed by the CRP is a sham. Gaines did not meet the requirements to receive the CRP endorsement and any claim to the contrary is a bald-faced lie. On this abuse of power alone, the state chair should be forced to resign.
• Fourth, Gaines rejected to offer that whoever came in second should endorse the top Republican and not campaign.
• Fifth, this was the stupidest thing that I have ever seen in politics. Trying to get Pugno’s donors to pressure him into doing anything is illustrative of Conway’s lack of principle and ignorance of people that are governed by principle. Andy Pugno is not another business as usual person. He is a man of great principle and cannot be bought. Politics is not his life. Andy cares about the future that his children will inherit. He wants California to be a petty place for the next generation. This makes him a statesman not a politician.

My first action after reading the letter was to scan it and send it to Andy and a few others that folks. I was mad and insulted. I thought I was done contributing this year but now I would gladly write another check to Pugno. Beth is clearly wounded and weak or Conway wouldn’t need to initiate this stupid pre-emptive strike.

Later, Andy passed my name to a reporter at the Sacramento Bee. I went thru the above reactions with the reporter but all he could do was try to relate this letter to the Boston mayor that slammed Chick-fil-A. (He interviewed me the afternoon of August first.) Personally, I didn’t see the connection. He pressed me on this point which was really peculiar. The only thing I could come up with was that in both cases the people in power thought they knew better. I told him all we need is leaders that follow the rules and treat everyone the same.  I said that the market (or voters as the case might be) should be trusted with the decision.

Almost none of what I said made it into the article that he wrote. Frankly, it was a poorly crafted hit on social conservatives and supporters of traditional marriage. He just wanted to spank Pugno for his support of Prop 8. “But if Pugno were to win the Assembly seat, Democrats would make regular use of him to remind voters that the Republican Party is exclusionary, which would push the once-Grand Old Party further into irrelevancy in this state.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/05/4691334/bullying-by-pols-creates-a-backlash.html#storylink=cpy

I disagree. The California Republican Party is finding irrelevancy due to leaders like Gaines and Conway.

Writer and theologian Francis A Schaeffer (30 January 1912 – 15 May 1984) declared that we are living in the Post-Christian West. This was the impetus for his book How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976). The Court ruling today has pushed us further down the road of Western decline to the era of Post Constitutional America. The phrase was popularized in the book Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America (2012) by Mark Levin. The premise of Ameritopia is that people will trade constitutionalism for utopianism. While I haven’t read the book, the contrast would seem to explain the environmental movement and parts of the welfare state. This would dovetail nicely with the Obama agenda.

Scoffers think that conservatives like me are way off base about the ramifications of today’s Supreme Court decision on Obama Care. I would like to use a few illustrations to express my view of what happened today. All analogies breakdown at some point but here are a few good ones to try to share my point of view.

I spent over two decades in various parts of the Episcopal Church. The last two years was with outcasts from ECUSA (Protestant Episcopal Church). In the 1979 Prayer Book, much of the theological heritage that would get in the way of theological liberalism was relegated to the section in the back of the book for historical documents. These documents contained ideas contrary or embarrassing to the atheists in robes that pretend to be representatives of Jesus Christ. In the same way, the Supreme Court has relegated the last shreds of the Constitution to the index in the back of the history books on the American experiment.

Another way to explain this decision is from the book that I just finished called Ben Hur. Written in 1880 by Civil War General Lew Wallace, the book bears little resemblance to any of the subsequent movies. Towards the end of the book, Judah—the character played by Charlton Heston—enters Jerusalem to find that Jesus had been tried and convicted in the dead of night and that the injustice of his arrest was upheld and compounded by both Pontius Pilot and Herod. Judah tries to rally his troops to stop the proceedings only to find his men were active participants in the crowd yelling “Crucify him”. In much the same way, the injustice of Obama Care was upheld by those sitting in judgment of the law when they clearly knew that they were partaking of a grievous evil for the sake of political expediency. Judge Roberts played both Judas and Herod in this tragedy.

Another illustration is the conflict between Jesus and the religious rulers of his day. The leader in the time of Christ had so distorted the Law that it no longer bore any resemblance to the writings of Moses. Jesus was the one that spoke with Moses in the burning bush but when he tried to explain the Law to the rulers of his day they tried to stone him for blasphemy. They had so distorted and perverted justice that they could no longer recognize it. They called evil “good” and good “evil”.

My last illustration to explain today’s ruling is lethal exposure to radiation. You can’t see it, smell it or taste it but by the time you know it happened you are already dead. Yes you may walk around for a few minutes, hours or days but the effects are irreversible because by the time you exhibit symptoms the damage has been done. The ruling today forever laid to rest the concept that the national government has any limits. The government now has license to tell us what to buy, what to eat, where to live, what to drive and to literally determine how long we should live. Today the State declared itself as our “god”. It will take a while for this new found power to manifest itself to much of the populous but the nanny government of Michael Bloomberg has been pumped full of steroids and granted a nationwide franchise. The ruling elites now have the tools to bring us the dystopian worlds of 1984, Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged. The Republic is dead and it will take a period of time before the mind of the populous notices the death of the body politic. (If they have their “bread” will they even care?)

We often have used the analogy of the frog in the boiling pot dying as the heat has been turned up ever so gradually over time. The frog is dead before it realizes that it is boiling. Well today the water evaporated out of the pot and much of our populous yawned.

The words of Deuteronomy 28 verses 15 thru 68 echoed in my head all day today. Verse 15 reads,

But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.

Today’s decision may be an historic day but it is not one to be celebrated. The Rule of Law and the Constitution received an ignoble end.

It is clear to me that the California Republican Party is broken. What we learned from the leadership during the June election cycle is that they are not only unwilling to follow their own rules but think that the existing rules are a hindrance to power. The last vestiges of a bottom up organization were shed during this cycle. From this point forward, rank and file average voters will no longer have a voice directly or indirectly in determining who will bear the Party endorsement.

With the top two election structure that we now have in California, the Party chose not to implement an alternate system to allow voters that are registered as Republicans to vote on who will be their choice for nominee. After more than three years of inaction, direct representation was officially scrapped. Instead, a system that only those candidates endorsed by 2/3 of each County Central Committee that was included in a district could endorse a candidate and furthermore only when all counties in a district were in agreement would a candidate be called the Party nominee in the June election. The rules further stated that failure to meet this high standard would result in no nominee in the race. These rules were ignored at every opportunity where a current office holder did not achieve endorsement thru the established process. Instead a small group of unaccountable people within the State Party leadership just did whatever was expedient to get the result that they desired. The California Republican Party is now a top-down organization that has successfully insulated itself from any responsiveness or accountability to those that identified with the Party. They have rejected both direct democracy and representative democracy in favor of an elitist aristocracy.

The only issue remaining is why would anybody care to associate with an organization that not only doesn’t care about them but is openly hostile to their views and values? I didn’t leave the Republican Party but clearly they have left me—and many others as well.

The last hope we have of saving this state is thru the initiative process and if the Democrats prevail, that window will be closed to us soon. I’m rather pessimistic about our short term prospects for any positive change. I think that we will be wandering in the wilderness until the so-called “baby boomers” are taking a “dirt-nap” and a new generation comes along with a willingness to return to the bedrock values that made us a successful and prosperous nation. I believe this will happen one day but the likelihood of it being in my lifetime is clearly diminishing.

As a former political talk show host, my political rhetoric is usually saved for democrat elected’s and the Democrat Party, however what I witnessed in the days leading up to June 5th election have me furious. The CA Republican Party is broke, and very quickly becoming irrelevant in California politics.  As a result they had to rely on financial donations from one Charles Munger Jr. a liberal financier from the Bay Area who has already tried to water down the state party’s platform.

The CA GOP in coordination with Munger spent over 100k on negative ads in the 6th Assembly district.  The ads were used to attack republican Andy Pugno—a probate lawyer who was a lead counsel for prop 8.  The ads included a quote from CA GOP chair Tom Del Baccaro who referred to Andy as a “trial lawyer” using “misleading tactics to attack incumbent Beth Gaines.” Not to be outdone Jon Coupal—Director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association—claimed Andy “called Beth a moderate republican.”  Neither statement is true. The fact is Andy Pugno is an Estate and Probate Lawyer who very seldom is involved in trials and truthfully referred to Mr. Munger as the “moderate supporting Beth Gaines.”

One must ask why would Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway want to spend over 400k to support Assemblywomen Beth Gaines in a primary where she and challenger Andy Pugno have no major policy differences?  Wouldn’t that money be spent more effectively in November trying to hold more than a 1/3 minority in Sacramento? Maybe the money could have been better spent helping Peter Tateishi win a primary against a complete nut like Barbara Ortega?  No! Apparently Connie Conway ordered the hit pieces be sent attacking Andy Pugno. Well the legislature won the battle for Beth Gaines but at what price? We know their poor decisions resulted in a very wounded Peter Tateishi who likely will lose in the run-off in November, further hurting the GOP cause. The unknown factor in all this is what did the Republican leadership have to horse-trade with Munger to get him to bail-out Beth Gaines?
As a result of this week’s elections I have decided I’m done with “California Republican Politics”.

For those not familiar with me, I have walked more precincts and done more for the conservative movement than most in this county. If the Sacramento County GOP decides they want to nominate moderate candidates and spend donors’ hard earned money attacking conservative candidates, good bye!  Frankly, as a southern born conservative, the GOP in California is going to get exactly what they deserve in November—a very small, irrelevant minority!  Additionally; I am calling on Tom Del Baccaro and Jon Coupal to resign immediately before they do any more damage to their organizations.  I’m sure President Reagan was thrilled that his “11th commandment” was violated by the “latte drinking, Volvo driving, country club, liberal republicans both in the Capital and representing conservative groups on election night.”
—John M. Slamkowski, Elk Grove

Karen England and her splinter group—California Conservative Republicans—have gone nuclear yet again in their attacks on fellow Republicans. This time their ire is directed at proven conservative leader Andy Pugno. Andy has a twenty year track record of working in the trenches for the conservative cause.

In his time at the University of California Davis he built the college republican group to over 700 members and took over student government of this notoriously liberal campus. He went on to be chief of staff for Pete Knight. (Knight was the first to lead the charge that marriage should be between a man and a woman.) Andy then worked in the private sector as an attorney for local governments too small to afford a fulltime legal staff. This is where I first met and worked with him. I found him to be professional, knowledgeable and prepared. Andy later went on to Proposition 8 and the defense of traditional marriage.

Character is often defined as what you do when no one is looking. This certainly describes Andy.
His priorities are God, family and country.

In their ad, Karen and her gang are hitting Andy below the belt. They start the ad by purposely wrongly pronouncing Andy’s name and then accusing him of doing things that he has never done; including calling Gaines a liberal. (Charles Monger is the only liberal identified by Pugno in any of his ads. Monger is the billionaire liberal that is saving Beth Gaines’ butt in this race with his independent expenditures.) Then they make their main charge that Andy was allegedly not at a particular meeting of the CRP platform committee. If this is such big deal then why is there no documentation to back-up this ad on their website? Instead, this is just what it appears to be, a slimy last minute “hit piece” unfairly directed at Andy.

We all know that the CRP is both broke (financially) and broken (institutionally). The platform committee vote was the subject of much manipulation and most of the real work was done behind closed doors by a small subcommittee. The CRP chair should be the villain of this ad not Andy. I’m sure Aaron Park has this well documented on his blog should you care to look. But why should the truth get in the way of a good hit piece?

I responded as any person would in the face of such an attack on a friend, I sent Andy a check. I thought I was done with contributions this cycle but Karen crossed the line and made me contribute one last time.

Is the Republican Party, a grassroots organization or a top-down one? This essay is a brief look at the current direction of California’s GOP.

I once had a college professor—who was also an elected official—say that “the chief job of a politician is to get re-elected.” Those in power not only want to stay in power but they also wish to prevent any challengers from threatening their power. Both Parties are afflicted with this problem. Democrats tend to deal with this in private whereas Republicans do it more publicly and less deftly. The only thing that helps Republicans avoid publicity is that the media usually pays less attention.

Recently, I am aware of two incidents indicative of the decline of the Republican Party in California. Ironically, the death spiral of the party is nearly complete at the time that the state needs a principled conservative leader the most. My only question is will the Republican Party linger and continue to putrefy like a zombie from The Walking Dead or die swiftly and be replaced by a new one?

Both incidents that I discuss below illustrate erecting a wall of separation between the Party leadership and the rank and file people who self identify as Republicans. In short, the leadership wants to dictate what the Party should do and the less input from the public, the better.

Here in Sacramento County, the Republican Central Committee held its first ever endorsement vote for partisan office holders. This was a result of the elimination of the primary system because of the passage of proposition 14 a few years ago. Under the new system that governs elections beginning this year, only the top two candidates in June go to the November election regardless of the party preference listed on the ballot.

Sacramento’s Central Committee decided it was time to enforce its Bylaw provision that dues are required to be paid to vote. This “Pole Tax” was copied from the bylaws of San Diego County. The decision to enforce the requirement that dues be paid as a condition to vote was directed primarily at me. Throughout this term I have been allowed to vote and make motions or second them from the floor. The endorsement vote at this meeting is the first potentially meaningful vote the Committee has held since the officers were elected and the Bylaws approved. This is because the Bylaws vested all power in the Executive Board of the Committee. This draconian system has been in place for over a year.

At the endorsement meeting I was told that I was the only member who had not paid dues and I was singled out at the meeting for that reason by the Chair. (In fact several members have not paid the “tax” and some that had said they were doing so under duress. Other paid for their friends so they could vote. My source says at least three members have not paid).

I am on the Committee as an ex officio alternate for an Assembly candidate from the 2010 cycle. In effect, I represent the candidate elected by the Republicans in his district. Prior to the endorsement meeting, the candidate contacted me and told me that he would pay the dues so that I could vote. He has a friend who wanted an endorsement and felt he would need my vote. This is the only thing he has ever asked of me in my two years as his representative on the Committee. Out of respect for him I agreed to pay the $35 minimum. Dues are $100 annually unless members volunteer to work at party events and then they can pay $35. I put in my share of volunteer time, but it does not count toward their total because only their events count and not the work I do for candidates or Republican groups in the County. My Assembly candidate also spoke to the Chair prior to the meeting and thought they had an agreement.

At the meeting when the Chair singled me out for not paying dues, I talked with her and said that I had spoken to the candidate and was instructed to pay the $35 so that I could vote. Her response was that my dues were now $200. I said, “What?” “Oh, you owe $100 for last year and $100 for this year.” She said that dues were annual and I was in arrears. Then she countered with the offer that I could pay $135 and work off the rest. I again offered to pay $35 and was told “No.” When it was time to vote, I was sent to the back of the room.

I could vent on many facets of this event but I will limit comments to the best two arguments. First; members of this committee either directly or indirectly are elected by the people as their representatives.  Requiring a “pole tax” is contrary to both the spirit and letter of the law in a representative republic. No barriers should be placed between people and their representatives. Second, the current leadership of the Committee is hypocritical on the issue of dues. These are the same folks that protested and did not pay dues to a previous Committee leadership for the same reasons that I have stated both here and in previous blogs. Clearly their position is not one of principle—in the past the wrong people were in charge but now the right people are in charge—so dues should be paid.

I was relegated to the back of the room and became an observer to the events that followed. As it turned-out, none of the votes were close so had I voted it would not make a difference. The consultants in the group made sure that their clients were endorsed.

This endorsement dance was played-out in many counties of California prior to the State Republican Party weighing-in on CRP endorsed candidates.

The California Republican Party has had several years to decide what should be done now that traditional party primaries are abolished. They have done next to nothing about it. As a stop-gap measure, they voted a year ago to adopt the “McClintock Plan.” This was a compromise between the “Nehring Plan” and the “Legislative Plan.” It was spearheaded by Mike Spence and subsequently endorsed by Congressman Tom McClintock. The McClintock Plan—which was adopted by the CRP—is this: each partisan legislative race was to be treated like a Special Election. Each county central committee in the district would have to endorse the same candidate by a 2/3 majority for that candidate to secure the official endorsement of the CRP. This would give the candidate—in theory anyway—access to money from the CRP and inclusion in any slates sent to voters in the state.

The CRP had decreed that all endorsement votes were to be completed on or before March 8, 2012. Please note that the filing period for these offices did not close until close of business the following day. (I really dislike taking such votes before all candidates have even entered the race).

For example Beth Gaines—a first term Assemblywoman—is running in a district that includes portions of Placer and Sacramento Counties. Under the existing rules of the CRP—the McClintock Plan—she needed to be endorsed by both county central committees to secure the CRP. Her opponent in Placer was endorsed on a Wednesday (3/7) and the next night she was endorsed by the Sacramento committee. Under the CRP rules, there can be no endorsement by the CRP in this race.

However, when the CRP Board met to review the various local endorsements, a curious thing occurred. In race after race, the results of the various committees were nullified or ignored and current office holders were given the CRP endorsement even when they did not qualify under the rules adopted by the CRP. Even the aforementioned Mrs. Gaines was endorsed by the CRP—even though she was not entitled. (Entitled? That’s irony!)

The CRP Board went even further in their “star chamber” tactics. Before a single vote was ever cast, they winnowed a field of about 12 Republican candidates for US Senate to one with another wave of their magic wands. A vote of no more than 24 political elites on the CRP Board purported to speak for more than five million republicans without any of them being allowed to vote. Talk about disenfranchisement!

Do you see the theme here? To paraphrase a book by Laura Ingraham, the Republican motto in California seems to be “Shut-up and Vote How You’re Told.” The CRP wants your campaign contribution not your opinion. My reaction to this is if I wanted to be told what to do by a bunch of elites that decide what is best then I could always join the other party. Ronald Reagan once said that he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, they left him. I seem to be in the other political party that has now left Reagan. Oh well, I’ve always been a Conservative first and a Republican second.

No, really. By sending all the job opportunities to other countries he is not only diminishing the superiority of America and making us a socialist country but he is solving the immigration problem without bothering to secure our borders. In fact he is making us into such an unattractive place that soon our own people will be going elsewhere to seek opportunity and freedom. Maybe ABC got it wrong on how we become Amerika.

Attached are a few photos of the Occupy Sacramento protest. This group is conveniently located across from my employer so I get to see them in action.

The way this protest works is that a handful of people arrive each morning and set-up their operation.

In the early afternoon, a trickle of people begins to arrive. The crowds build as the television news trucks begin to arrive around 4 pm. Once the news crews get their obligatory live-shots for the 5 & 6 pm news, the protesters can go home.

This arrangement allows the media to perpetuate the lie that this is a widespread movement when they know it’s a staged event. They get ratings and the protesters get millions in free propaganda. So much for death to corporate greed.

This brings me to my other point which is if corporations are so evil, why do these folks use the Internet, wear clothing made for corporations by folks paid what many of their ilk call slave wages and coordinate via Smartphones designed and built by other evil conglomerates of business monopolies?

They are in reality just spoiled and ungrateful children. They are full of envy and jealously.

This is just an independent expenditure campaign to help re-elect Barack Obama. Barry Obama was a community organizer and so are they. What do you think Obama was doing before he entered politics?

The photos attached are of some of the core support vehicles that are running the occupy Sacramento protests. Read the stickers and you know everything that you need to about these people.

UPDATE 11-03-2011

Occupy has traded the old white truck for a U-Haul rental. This vehicle is parked on the perimeter of the park. By using a blue handicapped placard presumably they no longer need to pay for parking.

Today as I walked around the park, on the ground I saw a publication from the Watchtower proclaiming the end of poverty. Ironically it was not far from the tree where the homeless often nap.

 

The California Republican Party is going through the process of looking at the Party Platform. This ritual—which occurs every four years—has seen a marked change from previous meetings of the Platform Committee. This year, the “moderates” briefly succeeded in stripping all references to social issues from the platform. Some were subsequently re-inserted in generic ways while some are no longer in the draft constructed by a sub-committee of the Platform Committee. Abortion and marriage went from an entire section for each issue to one sentence in the new draft while opposition to euthanasia has been completely deleted.

Here are the parts of the platform document that reference abortion, guns and marriage. The underline means that text was added after being removed in the original draft. (Abortion and gun ownership are never mentioned in the new proposal. Marriage is no longer defined as being between one man and one woman.)

We believe in the sanctity of human life; therefore, we believe in the protection of all innocent human life.

The Republican Party supports traditional marriage as the foundational unit for our society and key for the future of our children.

We support our Constitutional Second Amendment rights.

 

Here are portions of a recent news account of the changes.

A proposed rewrite of the California Republican Party platform retreats from opposition to same-sex adoption, domestic partner benefits and child custody, avoids any mention of overturning Roe v. Wade and drops a demand to end virtually all federal and state benefits for illegal immigrants…

…The current platform, adopted in 2008, says state guns laws “disarm law-abiding citizens” and calls for the end to waiting periods to purchase firearms and inclusion of a right to carry concealed weapons in the state constitution. In the proposed version, a single sentence is included on gun ownership, saying the party supports Second Amendment rights.

A detailed section titled “The Right to Life” vanishes, including a call to reverse the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. It would be replaced with a single sentence on the protection of innocent human life, and the word “abortion” never appears.

The proposed platform states the party “supports traditional marriage,” a significant rewrite from 2008, when the platform said marriage should be defined as between a man and woman, and schools should not teach homosexuality as an “acceptable … lifestyle.” Californians have twice voted to outlaw same-sex marriage, but a federal judge last year declared the latest ban, known as Proposition 8, unconstitutional. The ruling is being contested in court.

It also drops a sentence opposing assisted suicide, as well as a line saying the party supports stem-cell research “that focuses on cures, not destroying innocent human life.”
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/08/05/moderates-try-to-push-calif-gop-toward-center/

The Party has been moving in this direction for many years but it appears that the Party is close to abandoning any mention of social issues. Ironically, party affiliation has become a distinction without meaning under the open primary rules that voters will be under in 2012. By eliminating one of the cornerstones of conservatism in the platform, people are now offered even less reasons to identify themselves as Republicans. Due to stalling and lack of vision, the Party has virtually assured themselves that few if any endorsements will be had during the next cycle. (They have no effective plan to function in the “Open Primary” environment and keep deferring the issue to future conventions.)

These trends plus the proposed reapportionment maps insure that the Republican brand will further erode and become literally a third party in California. Decline-to-State will soon pass the Republicans as the second largest party in California.

Lastly, who do Conservatives have to thank for their declining influence in the Platform Committee? Karen England. The week-end when she, Mike Spence, Ron Givens and the gang were trying their hostile takeover of CRA was the same week-end when elections were held by delegated to the California Republican Party to select members to represent them on the Platform Committee. Once again the circular firing squad turns victory into an opportunity for self-immolation.

I have been reading Exodus to my six year old son and it reinforces the idea that we Republicans will be wandering in the wilderness until this corrupt generation passes away. Perhaps by then the “Promised Land” will just be a mirage in our rear-view mirror. Our momentum now is to return to Egypt. If “moderate” Republicans get their way, they will be walking arm-in-arm with the Democrats as they lead us down the road to serfdom.