The recent California Republican Party convention in Los Angeles was by and large a pleasant affair. The Presidential straw vote kept interest high and the zeal of the Paul and Perry campaigns to buy registrations for their supporters made the event a profitable one for the state party.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The one real item of business – and contention – was consideration of the moderates’ attempt to water down the state party platform. The moderates essentially want to remove all social issues, but specifically abortion and traditional marriage, from the platform. In its place they suggest a platform of room temperature jello, at least on social issues, which they consider “controversial and divisive”.
The moderate faction that wants to bleach Ronald Reagan’s “banner of bright, bold colors” is lead by Charles Munger, Jr., a zillionaire from the San Francisco bay area. He has spent considerable time and money trying to change the party platform. Some of that money, or at least money supporting the moderate platform positions, was promised to conservative members of the platform committee if those members would vote to change the platform.
I have spoken with a platform committee member who was told that “up to $100,000” would be made available to that member’s local central committee if the member would speak and vote for the moderate positions. This platform committee member held fast to principle and opposed watering down the planks, but was told by at least two other committee members that they had received similar offers of large donations to their committees if the members would support changing the platform.
Happily the platform committee was more interested in presenting a true picture of Republican beliefs to voters than exchanging those beliefs for moderate cash, even $100,000 of it. That begs the question though of just where the moderates would take the party.
Their argument is that pro-life and pro-traditional marriage positions are what make it difficult for Republicans to win in California. We only have to look to the last election to see that their argument is hogwash. The top of the GOP ticket was occupied by Meg Whitman and Abel Maldonado, two politicians who never met a principle they wouldn’t change for political advantage. The face of the California GOP for the past 7 years had been Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ultimate political shape changer and prominent supporter of higher taxes, abortion and gay marriage.
Hey Charlie and you other moderates – we tried it your way in 2010 and got shellacked while the rest of the country, including states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, were electing hundreds of Republican candidates who were real conservatives. The California GOP candidate who ran on the most traditional conservative platform in 2010 was U.S. Senate nominee Carly Fiorina. Fiorina outpolled Whitman by 150,000 and Maldonado by 400,000. Voters were given clear choices of Republican candidates who waffled on the social issues and one who stood firm. They preferred the candidate who stood by principle by a wide margin. So Charlie, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
If Munger, et. al. really want to help the party they will stop trying to buy platform committee votes and devote their dollars instead to building GOP infrastructure in key counties. Those counties would include not only the Southern California and Sacramento area conservative bastions but also the moderate to liberal GOP “collar counties” surrounding San Francisco Bay. Voter registration, fund raising and “gotv” are inherently non-ideological. A rising Republican tide in these areas would lift the boats of GOP nominees of all ideological views.
We can only hope the moderates now understand that the California Republican platform is not for sale, and that bleaching to a pale white the Reagan banner of bold colors that lead to so many GOP victories is not a road the Golden State’s GOP will follow – at any price.
(Bill Saracino is a contributing editor to the California Political Review)
Why should this surprise anybody? GOP moderates have tried to use money to overcome their policy-position deficiencies since Rockefeller vs. Goldwater. The most relevant point of the article though is the vote totals for Fiorina vs. Whitman and Maldonado….that is the bottom line……conservatism still sells in CA better than finger in the wind moderation.
Bill Saracino’s column brings to mind the comment made by the late Senator Everett Dirksen at the 1952 Republican National convention, when from the podium, he shook his finger directly at Tom Dewey and growled, “We followed you before, and you took us down the path to defeat!”
For the most part, decades of moderate Republicans have provided us with decades of Democrat and liberal dominance. Liberals believe 2+2 equals six. Conservatives believe 2+2 equals four. Moderates want to please everyone, and want to compromise that 2+2 equals 5.
It’s pleasing that there are still leaders in our party who stand for principle and cannot be bought or bribed.
Allen Brandstater