This is what conservative fiscal leadership looks like: a broke Republican state party.  Grover Norquist’s right hand man, Ron Nehring has been running the CRP into debt and the proverbial ground.  Because he has been unsuccessful at fundraising a moderate with a big check book is trying to control the direction of the party.  This is what happens when you rely on big donors and not an army of small contributors.  They pwn you.  SacBee:

The California Republican Party once again faces an identity crisis heading into its annual spring convention, and this time a major donor is calling on the party to become more inclusive.

Businessman Lawrence K. Dodge delayed writing a check to help the party pay off $3 million in debt and wrote a scathing analysis of the party in a private letter, raising concerns similar to those cited by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he said Republicans were “dying at the box office” last year.

The internal strife comes as state records show the party continues to suffer a decline in registration and carry a debt incurred to help Schwarzenegger win re-election in 2006.

Their governor created a “scheduling conflict” and will not be attending the convention.  That is how highly he thinks of the direction of the organization.  He took them to the cleaners actually.  I am quite amused at the fact that he managed to convince them to dump a bunch of money into his race and then never actually helped them erase that debt.  That must rub them something wicked.

The conservatives are not pleased with Dodge and give his platform the worst insult a Republican can throw at a fellow Republican.

Mike Spence, head of the conservative California Republican Assembly, said of the moderate proposal that “Hillary Clinton could say every word in it and agree with 80 percent of it.” He also called Dodge’s letter, particularly his call for a toned-down platform, a “blackmail threat.”

Oh my this is fun to watch.

I do love the twisted logic Jon Fleischman uses to defend the exclusion of Decline-to-State voters from their presidential primary.

Jon Fleischman, a party vice chairman, said the party is stronger for having a closed primary. He is proposing a rule change that also would block independents from state primary contests, though GOP sources said the proposal is unlikely to pass.

Fleischman said the closed presidential primary will help the party unify, because GOP voters can be assured that only Republicans chose McCain. “I think John McCain is a stronger, more legitimate Republican nominee because he showed he could win votes from Republicans in California,” he said. “I know a lot of Republicans would be less excited about backing him if he had won because of crossover votes from decline-to-state voters.”

AKA McCain has serious problems within the Republican party and they were willing to deal with the long-term impact of snubbing these voters because McCain has issues this year.

I hope that works out for them.

Meanwhile, an old scandal reared it’s head again.  Did you know that the staffer who resigned last year over his immigration status was here illegally while he was working for Norqist’s Americans for Tax Reform?  Yes, the California Republican Party employed an undocumented worker.  It’s hard to know what pieces of this Chronicle story to grab.  It is all so delicious.

Michael Kamburowski, an Australian citizen who served briefly as chief operating officer of the state GOP, worked from 1995 to 2000 as a vice president of Americans for Tax Reform in Washington, D.C., an organization headed by Norquist – an architect of modern conservatism who has advised President Bush and top GOP political leaders.

For Norquist, Kamburowski lobbied Congress on dozens of issues, including immigration reform, according to his resume. He also directed the Norquist organization’s Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, an effort to rename public buildings to honor the former president.

But when he went to work for Norquist, Kamburowski had no legal right to live or work in the U.S., according to documents filed recently in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., in connection with a wrongful-arrest lawsuit he filed against U.S. immigration officials.

This guy was working on immigration legislation while he was violating current U.S. law.

Kamburowski quit his post with the state GOP in June after The Chronicle disclosed that he had sued the federal officials who jailed him in 2004 in an attempt to deport him.

At the time, he said he had a valid work permit when he was hired by state party Chairman Ron Nehring, who has done consulting work with Norquist. Kamburowski refused to discuss his immigration status when he first came to the United States in 1995 and was hired by the Norquist organization.

But documents filed late last year in the lawsuit – including portions of Kamburowski’s pre-trial testimony – show that he remained in the United States illegally to work for Norquist after he came to this country on a tourist visa.

There is absolutely no way that this guy was legally allowed to be in this country and it appears that he committed fraud while filling out his I-9 and that Americans for Tax Reform did not verify his legal status.

On the form, Norquist’s group was required to verify that Kamburowski possessed documents proving both his identity and his right to work in the United States – a passport, a permanent residence or “green” card and a Social Security card.

Because Kamburowski had no green card, the I-9 submitted by Americans for Tax Reform must have contained false information, said the experts who reviewed the case. Under federal law, employers who hire undocumented workers can be fined, and if they knowingly make false statements about an employee on an I-9 form they can be prosecuted, immigration experts said.

With staffers like this guy, it is no wonder why the CRP is doing so well.

We gripe a lot here about the state of the Democratic Party, but it is pretty clear that the CRP is a heck of a lot worse.