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Vern here. I decided to ask the Orange Juice’s Republican bloggers, as well as some of our good Republican friends, this question, in hopes of some scintillating and enlightening conversation:
“In the wake of this last election and the changing times and demographics, what do you see your Party having done right or wrong so far, and how would you like to see it change (or stay the same) going forward? I just ask as a progressive Democrat who would like to have a viable, reasonable, honest conservative party to butt heads with. Okay, go!”
Ryan Cantor, Orange Juice Blog:
The GOP failed miserably in three areas:
- Vision. We have absolutely no concept of what “good” looks like for the 21st century. The country’s perception of the Conservative vision is one of nostalgia. We can’t go back in time and that’s how people think of us. Our leaders aren’t willing to stake their political futures on being a bold visionary and that’s killing the party.
- Messaging. We can’t control the conversation and routinely get dragged down rabbit holes where we don’t belong. This has a lot to do with morons at the state and local level who happened to have a (R) sewn to their lapel, but it has a lot to do with the party elders/leaders wanting to be “right” versus “winning”. Your average Democrat is funnier, quirkier, and younger than your average Republican. Participating in a battle of zingers is a losing proposition for Conservatives.
- Plan. We have no idea where we want to take the country, so we’re obviously not communicating it well, and we’re certainly not laying out a road map for how we get there. The only plan that the public perceives a Conservative having is to vote “no”, to pitch fits, or to call Donald Trump when things don’t go our way. While we can’t be a party that only speaks in logical tones; we can hardly be devoid of logic like we are now.
We will never be able to match the Democrat [sic-V.] party in issuing free stuff or to keep pace in every social trend. We have to have more substance and beat the Donkeys with a vision for the future based on enduring American values that stand the test of time: If we don’t become the party that advocates for the perpetuity of the American Dream, we’ll continue to lose.
You want to be the party in power and lead America to its fourth century? Remind immigrants and citizens of why they, their parents, or their grandparents came here in the first place; don’t tell them why they should go home.
Cynthia Ward, “Think For Yourself OC” :
I am probably the wrong Republican to ask, since I have had issues with “the party” my entire adult life, but I still have no viable alternative party to register with. Before I say anything about the specific policies that make me nutty I have to say that the GOP is not losing to liberals, we are losing to our own lack of moral compass. We demand accountability in government, but our own Central Committee has not audited its books in years. We have a mess to clean up and we need to begin at home. So by no means am I going on the attack against liberals. The GOP has shot itself in the foot and then through the fog of pain managed to find the strength to reload and fire again into the other foot.
- The party of smaller, less intrusive government has been hijacked.
Instead of hard work and self-reliance, the GOP is embodied by special interests like OCBC, and OC Tax, trough feeders who decry welfare and union pensions while signing up for every “economic development” deal they can put their hands on. “Stop spending” means ALL of us.
Christianity is not a political party. Christ came to change hearts, minds, and lives, not legislation. When the church gets off our butts and becomes salt and light, as we are supposed to be doing, there will be no need to legislate morality. But Legislate your (my) beliefs into law and we create neither moral change nor legal reform. The President has no legal authority to overturn Roe v Wade on abortion nor Griswold v Conn on birth control. Why are we allowing the left to convince women this is our purpose? Let the church be the church and provide safe haven for every terrified pregnant teenager and we do away with the need for Roe v Wade. We must stop blurring that line of legislating religious beliefs, but by no means am I advocating for abandoning those beliefs. We who insist that government is not the answer for social programs then rely on government to be the answer to legislate religious behavior.
On that note, dictating who may or may not marry is not the sign of the party of smaller less invasive government. Europe issues civil marriage licenses and one may have a church wedding to bless that union (or not) and churches may opt out of participating in ceremonies they do not agree with. How did issuing a government license become a religious dictate?
- Deal with the changing demographics:
America is no longer the nation of self employed middle age white men ala Norman Rockwell. Women run our own companies, we vote, and we make the buying decisions in most households. Yet the GOP stand by these morons who spout ignorance about “rape rape” or “shutting that whole thing down” and wonders why they are losing women. Immigrants and children of immigrants trend far more toward family-oriented, fiscally conservative mindsets than native born citizens, yet the GOP ignores entire zip codes as though the Democrats have a lock on ethnic communities. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Republicans decry the welfare state, yet demonize an entire population of hard working self reliant employees simply because they work for government and are therefore unionized. But it is not the librarian who tanked the pension system, it is the middle manager collecting six figures for a job he is not qualified for because he was once someone’s Chief of Staff and needed a safe landing. It is the Republican leadership that gave away that 3 at 50 deal to suck up to a union leader they would never have their pictures taken with that cost us that money. And do not get me started on the lifetime pay and perks of elected leaders for a part time temp job. But please, continue to make the guy who fixes lawnmowers at my local park seem like the center of evil, that’s a great way to build the party.
Wise up, realize this is not your grandpa’s world, and it can no longer be your grandpa’s political party. Put down your cigar and single malt, collect your car from valet parking, and get out beyond the confines of the Balboa Bay Club to find decent hard working people who simply want to see their taxes pay for basic services, and then help them run for office. Quit looking to your moneyed friends to perpetuate the same recycled losers who run for every election (see Harry Sidhu for a prime example) and recognize there are good men and women out there whose love for country and community exceed their bank balances, but if the party gets behind them they could be great Republican leaders.
- Quit blaming the Left:
We lost, fair and square. We can whine about the liberal media failing to report on Benghazi but the RNC ran ads on every one of those media outlets and networks, where was our report on Benghazi? Our own candidate didn’t bother to hammer Obama with it during a debate on Foreign Policy, how can we blame the liberal media? We let the worst President in the history of our nation kick our teeth in, and we let liberal spending overtake State leadership all over the nation. We lost because we stopped being who we are supposed to be. Once upon a time we were the party that believed in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, now we pocket stimulus money for our businesses while griping about spending. If we live out our beliefs and help our neighbors instead of expecting government to do it, we render FEMA irrelevant. Hey, thanks for the trailers but we got it already, go on back to Washington. Instead we are the ones selling FEMA trailers to the government. We lost because the American people see the BS that the RNC is shoveling. We lost because we deserved to. And until we clean up our own act and return to the party of smaller government we will continue to lose.
“Over But Not Out,” Orange Juice Blog:
The party has many ills. That starts with its leadership which creates and attacks bogeymen, like Food Stamp recipients and public sector employees, while Rome burns. They attack others but offer nothing to move the state or country forward, just attack, attack, attack. Throw in rampant cronyism, at least at the local level, that rewards friends at the expense of taxpayers, and ignores the reality of changing demographics. They have become the party that wants to go back, while the world is going forward.
The party is controlled by wealthy extremists who telegraph that they smirk at the average citizen – except that is when they want their vote. Elitist, tilting at windmills, playing to emotions seeking the comfort of days gone by. By imposing litmus tests – Obamacare, abortion, gay marriage – they have alienated increasing numbers and succeeded in becoming irrelevant in California. Will they eventually succeed in doing the same in Texas – a good laboratory to watch.
I read that former Governor Wilson spoke at the Republican “celebration” here in OC on election night, and in an attempt to raise the spirits of a crowd that by then knew they had been whipped in the Presidential race, urged a focus on public sector unions and their benefits. This while Prop. 32 was also going down in flames, in part due to resentment of the big Republican money that poured in from out of state for the yes on 32 campaign. This little performance by Pete is a great illustration of just how out of touch the so called Republican leadership has become. Pete, your time is long over!
Yes, I am a Republican and have been for over 50 years. But it is harder every day to resist moving over to the Independent camp.
Let’s see how Mr. Schroeder’s DUI changes the landscape around here. End of another King Maker?
Matt Munson, Orange Juice Blog and Inland Utopia:
I think the Republican Party has done wrong entirely in California and the nation as a whole. What has happened in California is happening to the rest of the nation. Expect Arizona and Texas to change big time in the next four to eight years respectively. California used to be reliably Republican until 1988, and this will happen in many states if we do not start becoming inclusive and responsive to the concerns of the people of our nation.
I think for the California Republican Party to succeed, they need to dump the Charles Munger Jr. influence and the influences before the Munger infusion. What happened before Munger did not help and what happened with Munger did not help either. What Charles Munger Jr. did to my party was basically chemotherapy to demonstrate that without reaching out to people who do not fit the stereotypical mold of the Republican Party. Which led to 1974 like results on Election Day. The best advice is to leave the Republican v Republican races to their own devices, and focus on the real races which are the R v D races. Since we got distracted, this was one reason the California Democrats got the supermajority in the legislature.
My other suggestion is to get candidates that fit the district profile. Donna Lowe in AD 41 would of been perfect for the 2001 era District 59, but today’s district 41 did not want her. Republican volunteer organizations and caucus groups should recruit carefully.
I do not expect State Senate Republican leader Bob Huff to visit some Latino families in Monterey Park nor him breaking bread with Log Cabin Los Angeles at Mickey’s. Republicans need to reach out and expand beyond their comfort zone to reach out to new voters.
The election of 2012 was not about the economy, it was about how the Republican Party was symbolically against people instead of being for people. People were fed up being targeted against and they voted for Obama and the Democrats even though they did not have much to show for in the economy. No more lame comments about rape, instead of forcing women to keep their rape conceived children how about giving monetary incentives so the children can be adopted out? Strip out the statements condemning the LGBT population from the California platform, come up with reasonable policies that deal with the reality of the undocumented in our nation instead of just throwing them out or racial profiling such as with SB 1070.
California is not Alabama nor Oklahoma and Republicans MUST face this fact up front. Embrace the Latinos, embrace the gays and change will happen. We want a robust economy so public services can be funded. Because we are squeezing the state out with taxes and odious regulations, people and their small businesses are fleeing which provides a revenue crunch. Making taxes reasonable and regulations easier to comply would be the best way we can raise revenue instead of a tax increase to compensate.
…
(Was hoping for something a LITTLE more optimistic…
To be updated as we hear from Boutwell, The Pot Stirrer, Bartlett, Bushala, Barry Levinson, and/or Tim Whitacre.)
Whoops – Bartlett says he’s too MAD to write anything right now – mad at DEMOCRATS, who he’s sure are gonna tax us all to death. That’s not good!
Hey– you other three bloggers, wanna start a political party? 🙂
*The Republican Party in Orange County still has some great folks in it. But those that watched Rick Rieff on OC Insider saw a Scott Baugh as demure as we have ever seen him. Harsh reality is like that. Kind of reminds us of the look on faces after the 2nd OC Vote Against a Airport at El Toro. If they could have an Irish Wake……to lift their spirits(no pun intended)……well …. even that might not be helpful.
They can all look back and say – we should have propped up Norby more……after the fact of course. The question that arises is two fold: (1) Where did the Leadership let the voters down? and (2) How much did some Tea Party pressure (if any) have on the philosophical meltdown alienating hispanics, asians, women and younger voters?
As we looked at the voting patterns here in the OC – they seemed pretty familiar. No giant erosion…..just about 7% across the board. Folks like Darrell Issa still got 66% in the OC….but due to the Redistricting….he only got 61% across his district. Dana didn’t get his usual 67% …actually there were a lot of 60% plus votes for the usual suspects. The Norby v. SQS seemed an anomaly….but a very pivotal one.
Right now the Republican Party in OC is a House of Cards. Unless there is serious Hispanic recruiting….and the Skip and Slide YAF doesn’t get out and start recruiting on all the school campuses…..OCC, Saddleback, UCI and others…….and they don’t come off the inflexible Pro-Life stance…….that 7% lost this time could turn into a 15%
massive crash in 2014 mid-terms.
It all goes back to what we told Bush “the Elder” when he thought (like Mitt Romney) that he knew how to win…..we said: “Don’t forget – it’s all about the Vision Thing!” The mean spirited, hard line, swearing and jumping up and down belong with Jerry Springer and his folks – don’t vote much!
I’m not sure exactly what Munson has against Munger. What I have against Munger is his funding of Prop 32 and fighting against 30 – making him overly conservative economically in my book. But most of the things Matt talks about Munger would agree with as I recall – more openness to Latinos, gays, less fighting women’s rights, etc.
Munger miscalculated his money on R v R races instead of protecting candidates such as Mary Bono Mack, William Batey and Brian Billbray which fit his political outlook. Wasted so much money on CD8, AD76 which could of been used for the same mutual purposes.
Vern – you want my .02?
Sure buddy!
It seems to me, Republicans are still using tactics 20+ years ago trying to play politics including the racist, sexist and economic caste ones. They fail to realize that with the invention of the internet, people have more global knowledge and not just rumors (propaganda) around the water cooler/sewing circle within their own town. People can see how other people are living in other parts of the country/world without being there. I think people are more attuned to others because of what the internet brings (which, one of the biggest thing is people can search for what they want to know vesus know what people tell you or want you to know). I think the popularity of reality TV shows is a sign of that. The Republicans need to get with the program, it’s changed. You can’t fool the majority that way anymore. Unfortunately, they fall in the range of not knowing it has changed or can’t get a clue even if it hit them on the head to make the smart changes.
I love Cynthia’s essay with its principled stand against corruption and corporate welfare, for personal responsibility and accountability, things that a good Democrat should certainly agree with. Then, out of the blue, she refers to Obama as “the worst President in our history.”
What?
Really?
How?
I understand disagreeing with some or all of his policies, but is he really worse than Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, McKinley, Coolidge, others we don’t even remember?
Maybe she’s being rhetorical, and really just means in the last 50 years.
But still, why would a conservative like her consider Obama “worse” than Carter?
And how could ANYBODY consider him worse than George W Bush?
Probably best if she doesn’t answer, this thread’ll get hijacked.
I was at Knotts yesterday and stopped in at the Indepentace Hall and looked over all the items for sale.
One of the items for sale was presidental post cards. I bet you will not belive who’s card is “sold out”.
W’s,
if you don’t belive me, go there yourself and check it out.
Darts.
Ha ha, maybe.
we need a photo of anoster for darts
then their is always nobama toilet paper
Sold out … or no longer in production?
Had the same reaction, both positive and negative. Shutting up now.
“Deal with the changing demographics”
That is code for “Stop with the overt racism”
the problem with the republican party is that ronald reagan, who we all give lip service to, would not even be electable today. we have lost sight of who we are and what we believe in as a party. we need latinos, who should be a natural constituency. we need women, again a natural constituency. we need to get off the bullshit social issues: our kids do not care who is and is not gay, who smokes pot and who does not, they care about getting a job and living a stable life. we need to get back to building a party and an economy that promotes optimism and hard work. the republican party is fucked up and if we continue to go to the same yahoos that got us here, we will become even more irrelevent (if that is possible).
as for obama and the democrats, as long as they continue to demonize the upper middle class ($250,000 to $1,000,000) they will not get the compromise that they need. taxes need to be raised but you do it by appealing to logic and business sense, not by defining a group as evil and attacking them. with a super majority in the legislature and the passage of prop 30, the argument is that california has acknowledged that they want more taxes. i think that that misstates the outcome of the vote and it will be interesting to see what sacramento does over the next two years.
i do however agree with de toqueville (sp?) who observed way back in the late 1700’s that when the majority of voters are people who take from the government (entitlements and other supports) as opposed to those who give to the government (pay taxes) democracy is in trouble. that is how i read the vote and that is why i am worried
Who has been “taking from the government,” willie? That’s the right problem; what he (and Madison in Federalist #10 before him) didn’t conceive of is that it would be the rich who would control the government with (in effect) bribes rather than the poor with votes. The former is what had been going on.
I don’t think that the rich are, by and large, demons; I do think that they are in a situation where it seems both easy and natural to act in ways that, with better perspective, they would recognize to be demonic. (Okay, demiurgic.) We need to set up the rules so that they don’t act as badly as they can, just as the rules for corporations can’t be allowed to make them into feral vampire jackals.
willie the calif legis is the worst …some clown is already talking about tripleing the car tax
Ms. Ward is being blatantly disingenuous with this statement: “The President has no legal authority to overturn Roe v Wade on abortion nor Griswold v Conn on birth control. Why are we allowing the left to convince women this is our purpose? Let the church be the church and provide safe haven for every terrified pregnant teenager and we do away with the need for Roe v Wade.”
Come on, ma’am. The peesident has vast power over funding/defunding of particular programs (like Planned Parenthood which Romney state clearly he wants to defund) and, more importantly, the president apoints federal judges, including, most significantly, on the Supreme Court. It should be obvious to anyone that another appointment like Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts (Kennedy is a wimpy paternalist, so he’s just as awful–read his crap masquerading as jurisprudence in Carhart) would be disastrous to freedom of choice.
And what’s this crap about the church being a safe haven for pregnant teens–does she mean some sort of enforced birthatorium, suitable for a Dickens novel? And, of course, after the forced/encouraged/guilted birth, what then? Social services? Well, that means funding for the enforced birth–and screw that, right?
Rapscallian,
Those laws have been appealed all the way to the Supremes, nobody is going to overturn them. Should a conservative President have the opportunity to appoint conservative judges, he might get, what, one or two appointed within their administration, at best? Not enough to overturn laws that have been in place for many years. Then you jump to defunding Planned Parenthood, as though that is the equivalent of outlawing abortion, and that is a false argument. Refusing to fund a surgical procedure that many citizens find morally repugnant is not the same as making it illegal, let’s find some balance. People call themselves victims when they have merely been denied the right to take from my pocket to pay for something they want.
As far as teen pregnancy, I know so many terrified young women who seek abortions out of fear, they are afraid of telling their parents, afraid they cannot care for the child or even care for themselves during pregnancy and they do not know where to turn. I am absolutely convinced that if we (by that I mean the private sector, not government funding) if we, the church, put our money and time and energy where our mouths are and make sure that every scared teen knows they have a choice, that they have options and people who care about them, I think we could dramatically drop the abortion rates. We will never eliminate them, but we can make it a lot less appealing as a solution.
Not everyone who shows up at Planned Parenthood wants an abortion, but these girls (I should say women, but so many are so young) are not given a lot of choice. If you show up at PP pregnant, they will do the paperwork to get your government funded abortion, without your parents ever having to know. You are not given info on gestational development, the baby is NEVER referred to as a baby, it is a fetus, it is dehumanized, and they make is easy and acceptable to “get rid of it”. To terminate the pregnancy. But if you want options, good luck getting that info. Nobody at Planned Parenthood is going to direct a terrified young woman on how to get funding for prenatal care or shelter services, etc. because Planned Parenthood is not a charity, it is a business, it is big business, and they make cubic bucks terminating those pregnancies. Ask a doctor, it is quick easy money if you can set aside your soul to do it. The whole thing takes minutes and as long as your staff did the paperwork properly you get guaranteed payment. No fuss, no bother. Quick bucks. Under pressure from a professional staff that offers one solution, many young women find themselves in stirrups, and I am convinced we could lower those numbers with more privately funded faith based outreach programs and shelters for young women who want options. Not asking you for a nickel, not saying I would force young women to give birth, just saying we need to stop making abortion the easiest way out, and in many cases it is presented as the ONLY way out. Your accusation of enforced birthatoriums is ridiculous, I have heard other liberals insist that is what Republicans want, I have never heard a single Republican ever suggest that, but I sure hear liberals claim we are pushing that mandatory programming. That Republicans have failed so completely that we have left the public with the belief that we want to force women into “birthatoriums” is one of our primary failures as a party. I am not sure where you or some of my liberal friends get that info, but it did not come from the GOP.
Now on the flip side, I do support funding for birth control, when it is part of a comprehensive health care program. So if a college student has no insurance and uses the student health services for strep throat, etc, then yes their birth control should be included. I would far prefer to give pills to a young lady and avoid the whole issue of funding shelters rather than abortions, let’s help them avoid that crisis to begin with.
That said, I am not in charge of anything, these days I feel like I have control over NOTHING in my own world, much less the nation or the way the Republican party conducts itself, so my opinion is not worth the screen space Vern has so graciously offered me. Not sure why my positions on these issues are worth doing battle over, they are not likely to be implemented any time soon.
But I do value hearing input from others, and how to solve the crisis issues we are facing in both parties. Too many people are out of work, homes are still being lost, government programs are eating precious resources and diverting them to inefficient social programs run by the Dems (can you say FEMA) or pork laden economic development BS projects run by the consulting firms of the Republicans, with neither side offering much in the way of value for those tax dollars. Both sides need to look long and hard at spending, make sure every nickel taken by force from American workers is spent wisely and effectively.
How do we all work together to make this world a better place? How do we understand and value each other when it is so hard to even know each other anymore? Once upon a time people knew their neighbors and looked out for them, today we post nasty remarks to online comment sections and consider ourselves engaged in the community. I think we all want the same things in life, we just come by them differently. We all want meaningful work that gives us a sense of satisfaction and pays enough to care for our families. We want to know our spouses and kids are safe, that our homes will maintain their value and not be seized by the bank over a glitch in some bean-counter’s computer, we want to enjoy the company of our friends, and families. And I think both liberals and conservatives deep down WANT to help others who need help. One side thinks charity is best managed by the private sector, the other thinks government is the best solution for funding those programs, but nobody on either side wants to see someone go hungry. ( I hope.)
As long as both sides keep focusing on the ways we are different we will remain divided. Wouldn’t it be great to get people from a variety of backgrounds together and agree that here are the primary things that really matter and we can work together on and maybe get something done for a change?
*Two things are important to remember: (1) President Obama will choose
two or three Supreme Court Justices. (2) Our Gun Rights and having Choice for an Abortion for our youth will be sustained.
What we are most concerned about will be Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech. Everyone needs to belong to the Electronic Frontier
Foundation……. write: info@eff.org
Get on their mailing list and stay reading the good works they are doing.
What can go wrong with the wrong group of Legislators……is that our right to express ourselves with be first eroded ….then indiscriminately….taken away….by ad hoc edits or in the name of arbitrary so-called reforms.
Wut?
Two or Three justices? You need to explain that because the way I see it, only Ginsberg will be leaving in the next four years.
What do you know that I don’t?
If Democrats keep winning, Scalia will finally tire out like Marshall did. “The horror! The horror!”
United States Supreme Court Justices
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Hx/SupremeCourt.html
Kennedy, Ginsberg, Scalia and maybe Breyer….
so…there could be four!
Just a brief reply for the moment–it’s obvious that you would like abortion to be illegal–tell me if I’m wrong. And to be an apologetic for the many Republican politicians who say they would appoint justices to overturn Roe–and want to ban abortion–then you’re being disingenuous.
More later.
*Roe is the law…now and for many many decades to come….until science comes up with or allows a Todd Akin “Vulcan Mind Block Solution”.
On the abortion matter, again, why should a “terrified” tenager be talked into having a child that she will, in all probability, be unable to care for? it will then be another expensive social problem that the right wing will deny reponsibility for. I see no problem in having an abortion be the most direct end to the matter. I respect the fact that you see abortion as the murder of an actual eprson, but many of us do not equate a zygote/embtryo/fetus with full personhood–and we tire of the faith based approach to have it legislated accordingly. The attacks on PP here are also telling–it’s a big old money making business–really?
Good take on contraception, though–if all contraception were free and reasdily available, the savings on the economy and the environment would be immense.
Sorry Cynthia, Benghazi continues to be a non issue:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/petraeus-due-capitol-benghazi-questioning
“There was an interagency process to draft it, not a political process,” Schiff said after the hearing. “They came up with the best assessment without compromising classified information or source or methods. So changes were made to protect classified information.
“The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda,” Schiff said. “He completely debunked that idea.”
But of course, it won’t matter what he says. There is no cover up, there never was, but the right won’t let it go. Too bad you guys weren’t so tenacious about WMD’s.
Cynthia….you had me at………. “Instead of hard work and self-reliance, the GOP is embodied by special interests like OCBC, and OC Tax, trough feeders who decry welfare and union pensions while signing up for every “economic development” deal they can put their hands on”…………