FLASHREPORT

I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, but, should a miracle occur, and Republicans avert the impending debacle that many of the polls now predict, we should recognize that such a victory would be a divine gift, and not the result of any thing we have done to deserve the respect and support of the American people.

We deserve to lose, because we have not been who we say we are.  We have spent so much time worrying about how we market ourselves that we have forgotten to worry about doing the right thing.  The most unfortunate thing about that sad state of affairs is we know what the right thing to do is, and people know we know.  We promise to shrink government, to cut taxes, to eliminate government control of peoples lives, to restore liberty and true equality, to eliminate government power, and to make government less of influence in people's lives.  People entrusted us with power to do just that.  We didn't.  We played politics with our principles.  More important, after people took power away from us for not living up to our promises, we still played politics with our principles.  The most recent bail out of the financial markets for their bad investments is just another example of how we have played politics and forgotten our principles.

Worse than all of this, the conservative movement, as a movement, both in California and nationwide, has been hijacked by people who use the principles of the movement to advance their personal interests.  I am the first to say that conservatives need an infrastructure of strategists, thinkers, and activists who make a living at politics, organizing the volunteers, doing the day to day work of the movement, including finding and advancing candidates who will do the right thing when elected.  The only problem is many in the conservative movement become more interested in making sure they are the ones running the movement, so that they make the money off of the movement, than they are in advancing the principles of the movement.  California has had its share of internal conservative fights that become personal vendettas rather than disagreements over the principles of the movement, or the direction the movement should take.  Many so-called conservative leaders have become more focused on destroying the reputations of other conservative leaders to protect or advance their personal financial interests or to protect their "turf" in the party, than actually using their positions of power and influence in the party to advance the movement.

The purpose of political action is to promote persuade people to entrust the leader with political power.  That is done by persuading people that the leader has a set of guiding political principles, and, once power is obtained, that leader maintains and expands his or her power by using that power to advance the principles he or she advocates.  Republicans in Congress, and many conservatives in California, have used their positions of power and influence to promote their personal agenda of power or money, and not to advance the principles they claimed they had when they were entrusted with that power.

Until we as a movement and a Party become true to our principles, regardless of the personal cost, we deserve to lose.  Right now, we deserve to lose.