To hear California Republican apologists, their party’s collapse in the 2010 elections in the Golden State are due to a bad “brand,” as Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli report:
“Republicans, as a brand, are dead,” Duf Sundheim, the former state GOP chair, told the gathering Saturday….
“There’s a brand problem,” agreed Republican Jim Brulte, former state Senate minority leader.
California voters supported a number of conservative ballot measures, yet not a single conservative lawmaker for statewide office, Brulte noted. Voters made it clear they “just don’t want Republicans in office.”
Heh. If only it were that simple, guys. As I explained after the election, the CA GOP has made itself unelectable by being a white man’s party. It’s not a branding problem – it’s that Californians do not want the Republican agenda. The party’s right-wing base hates public services, hates Latinos, hates young people, and hates 21st century California. No amount of new branding can change those underlying facts.
As to Jim Brulte’s point about ballot initiatives, if he and his fellow Republicans were so confident that voters agreed with them on tax policy, why are they unwilling to let Californians vote on taxes? The truth is that on taxes too, Californians don’t agree with Republicans. If voters are told to pick schools or low taxes, even Republicans know that voters will pick schools. This would expose as fraudulent the GOP/Norquist claim that voters dislike taxes, and weaken the collapsing Republican political position in this state even further.
There did appear to be some Republicans at the Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies conference who understood the basic problem they face:
“Republicans need to learn how to talk to non-traditional Republican voters,” said Bettina Inclan, who worked on the communications team for losing California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner. Not just Latinos, she said, but African Americans and young people, too.
Republicans will remain dead in California until the party “decides it won’t be hostile to people who aren’t old and white,” said Darry Sragow, interim director of the USC/Los Angeles Times Poll and a longtime Democratic strategist.
Both assessments are correct, although it’s surprising to see this coming from Inclan, whose former candidate Poizner demonstrated exactly the kind of politics that have doomed Republicans with his attacks on Latinos and immigrants in the GOP primary. While I wasn’t at the IGS conference, I certainly do hope that Inclan acknowledged that fact.
While other GOP apologists like Tony Quinn think that their party’s setback is temporary, noting that California Republicans bounced back from big losses in the early 1960s with Ronald Reagan in 1966, the fact is that their party is destined for the margins, and is already becoming a small fringe group with declining influence over our state’s future.
As I explained back in November, California politics are realigning into a new system dominated by two blocs – progressives, who believe that a strong public sector and economic democracy are the way to build shared prosperity; and corporate elites, who desire an economy dominated by a few wealthy people and with little to no safety net, but who also are “socially liberal” (meaning they support Latino civil rights but don’t care if they or anyone else can actually make ends meet). San Francisco and Los Angeles already exhibit that new two-bloc system, and 2010 was the election that showed it has arrived at the state level as well.
With both a top-two primary system and new districts coming into force next year, the stage is set for the permanent marginalization of the California Republican Party. With a base that hates everything about 21st century California, no candidate can make it to the second round without making that base happy – and yet any candidate that does so will therefore lose the general election because voters won’t accept a candidate who appeals to the GOP base.
Until that GOP bases ages away or moves away, the party will remain unelectable, and the corporate elites will simply run their own candidates, under their own silly brands, while progressives have to fight battles within the Democratic Party and on the ballot to stop the corporate elite from taking over our state.
i agree with u that progs vs corporatists is the real alignment in this state-but its not just CA, its the whole country. unfortunately i think social identity issues still-i think-r what most voters use in determining party registration (or not) and who they vote for. the dem party has ALOT of people who r basically conservatives/corporatists but do not like the Christian right, they believe in global warming & do want some govt svcs-mainly for the purpose of $$$/profits.
the gop has many people in their base who think corps r out of control & have too much power-but r socially intolerant (rascists, homophobes, xenophobes, etc). and as for global warming, they believe that carbon tax, etc will further hurt their economy/jobs further-they believe the govt has already hurt their economic prospects enough & believe this will hurt them further. im from coal country (wva/sw pa) and i know/have seen this for myself.
That would be fine if there were no more social conservatives — but there are. Plenty.
I hope that what you’re saying isn’t true, because if so the libertarian elites will just do what they have traditionally done on the national stage (and here): form an uneasy “Romney-Huckabee” coalition between corporatists and traditionalists. You can’t just wish away social conservatives. If it were possible, we would already have done it.
While other GOP apologists like Tony Quinn think that their party’s setback is temporary, noting that California Republicans bounced back from big losses in the early 1960s with Ronald Reagan in 1966, the fact is that their party is destined for the margins, and is already becoming a small fringe group with declining influence over our state’s future.
It is important to realize that Republicans had blacks
to run against that fueled their rebound, peeling off urban (white) ethinics from the New Deal coalition. There is no
such group this time (I mean, there’s Latinos, but the Reps
are already demonizing them). As Latinos become a greater and greater share of the electorate (Whitman won among whites), Republicans will be forced to change nationwide. Our goal as progressives is to wait until the Latino minority is numerous enough to prevail politically.
Obviously, the GOP is a failure. I think its important to examine why. Is the entire agenda of the GOP a complete failure? The success that they have had with initiatives suggests that some of their ideas can be popular, but the failure over many elections shows that electing people statewide is a bridge WAY too far.
Of course this last election was a total washout for them. 2008 was such a washout that the Obama campaign used all of their volunteer resources in California to make calls into other states.
2006 was nearly a washout. Schwarzenegger was not as much a Republican as a pure corporatist. I don’t think the GOP can claim a victory with his election. Steve Poizner, who in an earlier life was a moderate Republican, beat Cruz Bustamante by painting him as a crook.
So it’s been years since the GOP has had a legitimate success at the ballot box. Why is this? I think Robert has it almost right–he lists all the things that the GOP hates. But I think it has more to do with hatred itself. People don’t like haters.
Hatred can work accutely, but not chronically. For example, you can win a hate-fulled initiative campaign but the object of the hatred will never, ever forgive. And they will work to defeat the haters for as long as they can remember the insult.
I remember Prop 14 that would allow people to refuse to sell or rent property to anyone for any reason. The obvious target was blacks who wanted to move out of the cities. The initiative passed, was deemed unconstitutional and generally forgotten by all except blacks. How much have they warmed to the GOP since then?
Prop 187 went after the Latino population. That is a constituancy largely lost to the GOP for generations. Various initiatives have pitted gays against traditional conservatives. Once again, gays are a constituancy lost to the GOP for generations.
Hatred is a loser. I have to work harder to not hate the GOP especially with the likes of Cheney, Palin, Bachmann, Beck, Limbaugh, etc. But I have to say, it is a real challenge.
held on the legislature has made it possible for them to rule without being a majority party.
This has made them politically lazy, deferential to easy money from large donors, and easily intimidated by small blocs of single-issue voters.
I think that a return to majority rule would actually revive the GOP in California.
However, the crystal ball is cloudy. We took minority control of the budget away from them, but handed them new power over regulatory fees. The open primary will probably empower big money in new ways, and our initiative system remains a loose cannon on deck, as always.
Are social conservatives going to end up closer to the corporatists or to the progressives? The majority of “social conservatives” in the state today are of color. If anyone doubts that, look at the demographics of Prop 8. So I wouldn’t be surprised if social conservatives join the progressives – after all progressives and social conservatives both support a larger role for government, don’t they?
Pombo, Doolittle, Cunningham, Issa, Denham. There are more. I just can’t think of their names right now. But California has elected some doozies. And we still are. Denham is brand new, and Issa got re-elected. I hope you’re right and they turn out to be unelectable under the new top-two rules. But there are some places in the state where I’m not sure that’s true.