Your trusty FlashReport Publisher has been to every State GOP Convention since 1988 and I can tell you that as far as these events go, this one is perhaps one of the most sparsely attended gatherings to which I have ever been. Why is the attendance so low? First and foremost, it is a weekend in August, which traditionally is vacation time for many people. That has been a factor with a number of people who told me ahead of time that they would not be here. But the "I’m on vacation" cases do feed into a bigger set of folks who are not here. Those people, and I have spoken to a lot of them, just did not feel like making participation in this convention a priority. This is not an indicator of support or lack of support for the Governor or the GOP ticket — but, it is an indicator of depth and intensity of support. Understand that the people to whom I am referring are not average Republican voters, but rather these are among the 1400 members of the Republican State Central Committee — leaders within the party.
Our Party Chairman Duf Sundheim and other GOP big wheels such Californians for Schwarzenegger Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt are very quick to talk about extensive survey data that shows how an overwhelming percentage of Republicans are supporting Governor Schwarzenegger’s re-election, and how Phil Angelides is having a lot of trouble getting core Democrats to say that they are going to vote for him. This is great news — but is not "game, set, match" because you have to factor in the "intensity of support" issue because the real question, say for GOP voters, is not whether they will support the Governor — it is whether they are excited and revved up to make sure they vote, and get their friends and neighbors to vote as well.
I know, because I am one, that a significant number of conservative Republicans are just not excited with the political landscape in America right now. I feel that GOP politicians at the national and state levels are in a ‘disconnect’ mode on two absolutely key issues important to GOP voters — immigration reform and the proliferation of government spending.
Grassroots GOP activists (the ones I deal with a lot as I am very involved in trying to ensure a high Republican turnout in Orange County, from where I hail) are quite angry with the position of President Bush, the U.S. Senate leadership, and for that matter, Governor Schwarzenegger on the issue of illegal immigration. The fundamental disconnect comes from the fact that conservative Republicans see this is as a law and order issue, and expect public policy proposals to be shaped around the idea that these 12 million or so folks are criminal aliens, that they have broken the law. Instead, there seems to be some sort of "these folks just want to be part of the American dream" sympathy play at hand. Well, that’s fine and dandy EXCEPT that kind of disconnect between GOP leaders and conservative voters leads to apathy. The kind of apathy that is not indicated in ‘survey data’ (all Republicans are loyal enough to tell a public opinion pollster how much they hate Democrats under the worst of conditions) — but it is the kind of demoralization that shows when many hundreds of State GOP delegates find ‘somewhere else’ they need to be than at a convention that comes within 100 days of a very important election.
The other major issue of course is spending largesse, and this issue is largely a sore spot with Republicans because somehow the promise of Ronald Reagan, of a limited government, has been hijacked and the size and scope of the federal government is significantly larger than ever before, and this is with a Republican President and Republican majorities in Congress. The problem is best optimized when even the Congress (which is a tad more conservative in its policies than the Senate) cannot even must up the votes to cut federal spending across-the-board by even 2% let alone 5% or 10%. With the fattening of the bureaucracy in Washington comes a rise in cynicism of Republicans nationally. So take this as a framework when we then look at the fact that here in California, the Governor is championing a historic package of borrowing tens of millions of dollars through bonds to finance a radical agenda of ‘build-build-build’ here in the Golden State. The reality is that this message is just what we do NOT need to be bringing to conservative voters. And here this weekend, the absence of so many conservative delegates increases the likelihood that the remaining GOPers might sign off on support of one or more of these packages because of top-down pressure to do so combined with the fact that everyone is so scared of Phil Angelides’ potential victory that they don’t want to give the Governor a black eye.
Well, I can say this with no hesitation — the very best thing that Republicans can do at this convention is to vote NO on all five of the bond measures that the Governor is supporting this November. This is because it is the job of the party to turn out Republican voters on election day. The Governor’s support of the measures might arguably help him to get moderate Democrat, Decline-to-State, and Republican voters who vote to cast a ballot for him. But motivating and turnout out hard-core GOP base voters will be a lot more difficult for the Republican Party if we embrace massive government spending as a political party.
The argument against all five bond measures is simple, and is the same. The state government already takes in a mammoth amount of money from taxpayers each year — the budget this year was well over a HUNDRED BILLION dollars, with state revenues higher than ever in the history of California. Assembly Republicans championed a pay-as-you-go system for using current dollars to pay for infrastructure. That was the right thing to do. By passing these bonds measures, we say that instead of using the more-than-adequate tax dollars already collected to pay for infrastructure, we will borrow the money to do so, and then the liberals who control the legislature can continue to spend like drunken sailors on their social engineering programs. As a matter of fact, considerable pressure will be off of Democrats to do the right thing, as they chortle over another vast amount of money going to feed the government behemoth.
So this morning I will be going to testify against the party endorsing these spending proposals. I’ll report back to the thousands of FR readers as to whether my arguments were compelling or not. But I will tell you this — the GOP is at a crossroads here, and to embrace the spending packages this weekend is equivalent to turning a deaf ear to the concerns of grassroots Republicans who are unhappy with the over-spending by government.
Have a great day!
Care to read comments, or make your own about today’s Daily Commentary?
Just click here to go to the FR Weblog, where this Commentary has its own blog post, and where you can read and make comments.