What do you say when someone wants to run the oldest recognized conservative organization in California and her record is not one of supporting Conservatives for office?
Hypocricy 101.
This is not a debate about the Lib v Con saga – rather this is a discussion about what your stated values are versus your behavior.
Example: At the California Republican Party Convention in early 2011 – after she was an already declared candidate, Karen England supported the moderate Arnie Zeiderman over Conservative activist Robin Cook for CRP Vice Chair Northern Region. Zeiderman had said publicly that the Republican Party needed to back off of its’ rigid positions and compromise! Hardly a candidate that the CRA would embrace.
Karen England did.
On 9/8/2007, she was the presiding CRA officer that participated in chartering 4 fake CRA units – Yolo, Yuba, Tehama and Sutter. (You’ll hear a lot more about that later once the gag is off) These units were constructed to engineer the endorsement of Mitt Romney – a man who stated his pro-choice stance publicly and who brought socialized medicine to Massachusetts. Hardly a candidate that the CRA would embrace.
She is also closely tied to Assembly-member Jim Nielsen who is set to run in a Republican Primary against Dan Logue – the author of Prop 23. Prop 23 was an extremely popular issue to the CRA.
Nielsen’s history is a long one – including voting to give illegal aliens healthcare and voting against then governor George Deukmejian’s proposed tax rebate in the mid 1980′s as a then senator.
Nielsen was defeated in 1990 by liberal icon Mike Thompson (who went to Baghdad in the run up to the Iraq war) because Nielsen’s then-wife was caught using money from Nielsen’s campaign account for “personal use”.
Nielsen’s pattern re-emerged as an Assemblymember. He voted to put Prop 14 on the ballot and was making phone calls to try and get fellow Republicans to go up on prop 1A before bailing out and voting no. Hardly a candidate the CRA should embrace – yet the fake units Karen helped create were used to endorse Nielsen for his run for Assembly. (sounds eerily similar to the often lampooned CRA endorsements of Van Tran and Harry Sidhu?)
Similar to LaMalfa – a check of Jim Nielsen’s campaign finance reports shows POOF, cash to the Capitol Resource Institute! (Imagine that) This time, it was only $1,000 – so Nielsen got a bargain.
I alluded to the local fight in Placer. Karen England posted on her blog some amazing endorsements for Placer GOP Central Committee- Pro Choice, No on 8 liberals like Cheryl Bly-Chester who recently ran for Assembly up here for one. Another was Spencer Short, a Lincoln Councilmember facing a recall for amongst other things – voting to put the largest municipal tax increase in Placer County’s history on the ballot. In all cases, her endorsements were 100% at odds with the CRA.
Currently, Karen England is aligned with the who’s who of Placer’s liberal Republicans – along with the above two who won seats, her allies include the President of the Local CCR Chapter (a Pro-Choice liberal Republican Group) and Mike Holmes an Auburn Councilmember who recently endorsed a Parcel Tax Measure and who ran against Conservative Former Congressman John Doolittle in the 2006 and 2008 Primary. (Ironically, Doolittle was associated with the Capitol Resource Institute at one time)
It is hard to countenance such actions from a CRA member – but even more so from someone who sought the Presidency of the organization.
The lengths to which Karen went to overcome her liberal record have been the subject of several firefights on this blog and others – those lengths will be explored once the gag is off…
However, next up is an expose about how there is no honor in the Family Values crowd – especially when it came to the flow of money in to the Prop 8 campaign.
I am surprised. I thought a woman like her would practice what she preaches. She’s just as bad as Obama and Romney where they lick their fingers and go where the wind blows. Now she wants to use SB 48 as her meal ticket.
Even though I disagree with traditionalist icon Ben Lopez at least he’s consistent with his values and would deserve to rise up the CRA and CRP ranks than Karen.
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