Congressman Jason Chaffetz is considered a smart, if brash, Republican member of Congress who was elected a few years ago by opposing an entrenched establishment conservative who had lost touch with party faithful in the Beehive State.  A former place-kicker for the BYU Cougars, Chaffetz has excelled as Congressman and has built strong credibility with other Republican members of Congress, and has had a knack for being at the center of issues, such as the Benghasi tragedy, Obamacare, and the fiscal cliff and sequester debates.

And now Chaffetz has really done it:  he has used the “impeachment” word.  In doing so, Chaffetz elevates the concerns millions of Americans have about the appearance of extensive corruption in the Obama Administration.  The word deserves to be used, whether the Congress does so or not.  Recent disclosures by no less than the Washington Post that in 2010 the Obama Administration engaged in covert spying on Fox News report James Rosen, by tapping his email traffic, monitoring his movements at the State Department, and collecting the reporter’s telephone records, are among the most chilling of the recent series of disclosures, blunders, and outright lies that have been exposed regarding Obama’s Benghasi, Associated Press, and IRS political targeting scandals.  Imagine if George W. Bush had engaged in such activities!  Impeachment articles would have already been introduced in Congress.

Whether or not impeachment proceeds, it is about time that a member of Congress stand-up and use the word, even if it serves only as an expression of the deep distrust Americans are beginning to have about the serious flaws of this Administration.  Good for you, Jason!

When the editors launched California Political Review online in the Fall of 2011, about 18 months ago, though we were starting from scratch, we had high hopes.  Those high hopes will come into reality in the next couple of days as the milestone one millionth new “window,” referred to as a Page View, on one of our stories is opened on the personal computer or hand-held device of one of our readers.  Few blogs can claim they have enjoyed one million unique views, let alone in a short time-line and on a blog dedicated to fairly high-brow California political commentary.  But there is more good news as well: CPR’s daily email newsletter subscription list now tops 5,000 subscribers; we have received and posted over 10,000 written comments to articles from readers, and we have a solid 19,000 plus Facebook fans!  And according to current “Alexa” ratings for the last three-month period, California Political Review is the most visited of the top four conservative-oriented California-centric blogs in the state.

We thank our readers for trusting our site for interesting news and commentary and we pledge to work hard to continue to serve you!

Californians are so reflexively supportive of school funding, having enacted initiative after initiative for school construction funding, a state lottery to supplement education funds, and a constitutional guarantee that education is the biggest line item in the state budgt, that the liberal establishment has for years also had the local Parents and Teachers Associations (“PTAs”) hood-winked into thinking they need to engage in widespread private fundraising to provide additional supplemental funds for local schools to “buy erasers and chalk.”

One example is the PTA in Point Dune Elementary in Malibu, which was able to hold golf tournaments, fundraising dinners and book fairs to raise $2,100 per child during the 2009-2010 school year to help pay for music and art programs, as well as a dedicated marine science lab. Malibu sits in the Santa Monica-Malibu School District, which combines the two coastal cities into one governing board. Santa Monica, always dominated by liberal politics, is a city of 90,000 compared to Malibu’s 13,000. But Santa Monica has a lower median income per family, and the PTAs in Santa Monica do not take as active an interest in fundraising projects for their own schools as do Malibu residents.

Predictably, the governing board of the school district, controlled by liberal members from dominant Santa Monica, have developed a plan to “equalize” what they consider to be the “disparity” in the private PTA support within the school district. Their plan is to take control of and centralize all PTA supplemental fundraising projects in the district into one private charity controlled by the school board, and then redistribute the private contributions “equitably” between schools both in Malibu and Santa Monica.

In other words, donors in Malibu who want to provide supplemental funds to assist their own children in schools in their own community, will have most of their donations diverted to schools that their children do not attend. The plan of course will probably result in a drop-off of PTA participation by Malibu residents in future, and children will suffer as a result. It can be labeled classic “money redistribution” and has been called “ludicrous” by one Malibu High School parent.

Californians are indeed generous with schools and have vigorously responded to school needs at the ballot box, such as the Proposition 30 tax increase, and through private philanthropy. But the liberal education establishment that controls things has their own dark agenda at work throughout the system, gobbling up tax money intended for the classroom and diverting it to high salaries and benefits, and now “communizing” even private sector donations.

California needs to update its State Terrorism Threat Assessment System and the time to do so is now.

There are a host of homeland security and counter-terrorism agencies at work in California, as might be expected in the nation’s most heavily populated state.  In a state whose domestic product is bigger than the entire nation of Russia, and because of our strategic placement on the Pacific Rim and with an international border to our south with our neighbor, Mexico, troubled by narcotics related terror acts, assessing terrorist threats and having the capability to prevent terrorist acts and respond quickly when they occur are absolutely essential to protect our citizens.  If we can spend billions on a bullet train from Bakersfield to Modesto, we ought to be able to have a crack counter-terrorism strategy and capability in this state.

But we do not.  California’s most recent formal threat assessment was published over three years ago.  The Federal government and Homeland Security in California relies on the California Highway Patrol and local police departments, and the California Department of Emergency Services, along with fire departments and other public safety agencies to assume the first response role in the event of a terrorist attack here.  Is the California Highway Patrol ready?

The Brown Administration started furloughing 1,600 CHP officers last July as part of an agreement to reduce costs to help meet the state budget deficit.  Ironically, the CHP officers association was the first state labor agency to come forward and voluntarily agree to accept what amounted to a 5% pay cut, in contrast to the balance of 214,000 state workers that held on for the election-night result of the Governor’s Proposition 30 tax increase.  There is no doubt that California overpays its state workers and provides pension benefits far beyond the state’s capability to pay them.  But cutting back on public safety workers like the CHP and fire departments at a time when domestic terrorism such as hit Boston yesterday is not forward thinking.  California indeed needs to balance its budget; but it should not do so at the expense of life-saving agencies and first responders.

California needs a new counter-terrorism plan.  What it needs right now is a thorough up-date to its three year old counter-terrorism plan.  And it needs to prioritize spending in a manner that puts top priority on first responders.

North Korea and its sociopath twenty-something Communist Dictator, Kim Jung Un, the son of former Dictator Kim Jung Il, and the grandson of former Dictator Kim Il Sung, warns it is in a “state of war.”  The rogue country, officially considered the equivalent of a “terrorist” state by the U.S government, now possesses nuclear warheads, has tested a nuclear device, and has also successfully tested inter-continental ballistic missiles that could be capable of reaching American targets and interests in the Pacific Ocean, let alone its other neighbors and its South Korean opponents.

But while the U.S. military and our 28,000 or so troops in South Korea, and our allies are considering both their intelligence reports and what truth there is in the threatening rhetoric of North Korea, and have flown B-2 stealth bombers and steamed U.S. nuclear aircraft carriers to the region in a show of force, and as tensions rise, many of us might remember the repeated failures of the role played by Jimmy Carter on the Korean Peninsula, which have surely contributed mightily to the world’s tensions today, and the lessons to be learned from confronting a warmongering dictator in Korea with cotton candy.

Jimmy Carter, the failed American Democratic President, who in just four short years between 1976 and 1980 gave away the Panama Canal, presided over an inflation crisis, an energy crisis, an unemployment crisis, and the taking of American hostages in Iran and a botched rescue mission, who forced U.S. athletes to boycott the Olympics, who “de-recognized” the Republic of China on Taiwan as the legal democratic government of China and rendered that friendly nation and ally to lower than diplomatic status, and who was thrown out of office after one term by voters in favor of Ronald Reagan, was also wrong about something else: his campaign promise to withdraw all U.S. troops from South Korea.

The Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, by Fred Hoffman, published in 2002 a newsletter detailing Jimmy Carter’s misguided determination to withdraw all U.S. military forces in South Korea.  Carter’s personal decision to extract the United States from protecting people in South Korea from North Korean tyranny reveals his very poor judgment in matters dealing with real human rights.  According to the Bulletin, (which I am drawing on in this piece) while campaigning for President as early as January 1975, Carter declared that if elected he would order the withdrawal of all U.S. ground forces from the Korean peninsula.  Less than a week after he was elected, in January 1977, Carter indeed issued orders to begin the withdrawal.  For the next two-and-a-half years, Carter fought the protests of Congress, America’s allies in Asia, and military intelligence, and actually withdrew 3,600 U.S. ground forces that had been protecting South Koreans.  Carter took these actions despite the fact that within just a few years, the North’s fellow Communists in nearby North Vietnam had broken the Paris Peace accords and invaded and conquered the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).

Carter took his position on unilateral withdrawal disregarding the fact that military tensions remained high between North Korea and the United States. In 1968, North Korea seized a U.S. naval ship, the Pueblo.  In 1974, tunnels were discovered that were dug under the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, dug by the North Korean communist government.  Clearly, Carter’s position had little justification from a military standpoint, or from the standpoint of standing up to international Communist aggression.  Unilateral withdrawal gained no corresponding peace gesture from North Korea.  Carter’s  position was to be a nonsensical pacifist; and by withdrawing U.S. forces, Carter was not only abandoning the aspirations for freedom of the Korean people and jeopardizing the stability of Japan, he was also doing North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung’s dirty work for him.  If Carter had his way, South Korea would most surely have been invaded by now without a fight from the United States, and millions more would be living under Kim Jung Un’s nightmarish Communist dictatorship.

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, yet another North Korean crisis developed over that country’s use and enrichment of uranium.  “Hot” diplomacy ensued and Clinton’s choice of a “special Ambassador” to reason with the North Korean Communist Dictator was…..Jimmy Carter, who came out of retirement to negotiate an agreement with the North Koreans that was supposed to limit their uranium use and enrichment to peaceful purposes.  Carter had his way that time, and his effort clearly proved to be yet another foreign policy disaster for our nation.  Because of Carter’s poor perceptions in diplomacy, and given North Korea’s test of a massive underground nuclear explosion on February 12, a wholly contrary result to Carter’s mission, his “special Ambassador” status can be seen as a complete failure.  Rather than stopping nuclear proliferation, Carter played the role of a patsy to a Communist Dictatorship, one that has now joined the “nuclear weapons club” of nations and today gravely threatens the free world.

What American policy needed when Carter was president was more troops, not less in Korea; and a stronger military hand.  Reagan proved that point in his policies, which helped topple communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  But Carter’s policies to the contrary lost four years in Korea.  And what America needed when it negotiated North Korean’s nuclear fission policy was a tough realist as the top negotiator actually dedicated to stopping nuclear proliferation, not a Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s utter failure on Korea is sadly a failure now affecting new generations of Americans, and Asians, born into freedom many years after he was thrown out of office, but who now must bear the brunt of his poor decisions.  It is a terrible legacy for a President.  Obama has much to learn from Carter’s failures on the Korean Peninsula, and may God help us in the days ahead.

Sunday’s election of former State Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte to lead the party, along with a new slate of statewide GOP officers, by the 1,000 delegates meeting in Sacramento, opens a new chapter in California politics. Having thoroughly checked-out the recent convention ourselves this weekend, we think the process of rebuilding the party into a viable political force for lower taxes and less government spending and regulation has begun, and in earnest.

After combined catastrophic losses in both the 2010 and 2012 elections, and now $800,000 in debt, one might think that the state Republican party shouldn’t have much of a future.  But by the day before he was elected, Brulte was on his way to raising close to $300,000 to close that budget gap, and we suspect his ample skill sets at political strategy and fundraising will balance the Party’s books by summer and set it on its way to actually making urgently needed gains in the Legislature and among California’s Congressional seats next year.  Demonstrating the importance of the Golden State’s GOP, and the need to field strong candidates, Brulte’s friend, the esteemed political consultant Karl Rove, addressed the delegates on Saturday during lunch and to cheers he told them to “get off the mat,” meaning, Republicans can win elections in California but they need to raise themselves up, dust themselves off, re-evaluate, and get right back into the fray with our liberal Democratic rivals.

Only time will tell if the state GOP’s new, more professional leadership will make a difference for Republicans in this state.  But as it was summed up by so many this weekend, we have nowhere to go but up!

Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey, flickr

Jim Brulte is quietly but earnestly meeting with Republican, business community and conservative leaders across the state of California to discuss the sorry status of our Grand Old Party here.  And the consensus is things couldn’t be worse for Republicans in the Golden State.

In the 2010 election, Democrats swept through and held every single statewide office for the first time in decades.  To make matters worse, after two more years of mismanaged attempts to “re-build” the party, Democrats in 2012 made further advances by achieving veto-proof “supermajorities” in both the state Assembly and the state Senate, giving them the power to raise taxes without need for one Republican vote.  We lost four incumbent Congressional seats statewide to the Democrats in 2012.  Long-labored, and frankly internally divisive efforts to elect a Republican Mayor in San Diego fizzled-out in the final days of the November election.  Suddenly, politics has spun on its axis in Sacramento and Governor Jerry Brown’s veto threat has become the only thing standing between a person’s property and the tax man.  And adding insult to injury, the Secretary of State has recently reported that Republican Party registration statewide has sunk to just 29%, a most pitiful reality.  The Republican Party has become almost irrelevant here in just two election cycles.

The decline of the Republican Party in California did not come unpredicted.  I recall sitting-in on a meeting of consultants exactly two years ago in Jim Brulte’s Sacramento office where he matter-of-factly predicted it would all happen, unless Republicans could “wake up,” better organize themselves, and rise to the practical political challenges the party faces in California.  That didn’t happen and things got worse, not better, just as Brulte had predicted.

This next March, the delegates to the state Republican Party will choose a new Chairman at their convention, and if he runs, I am going to vote for Jim Brulte, because I feel the party risks becoming permanently irrelevant as a political force in our state unless we can engage serious, well-experienced leadership to help reverse its precipitous decline and instead build enthusiasm and support for our conservative cause among California’s increasingly diverse electorate.  We need to win some important elections, badly.  And I think Jim Brulte can help us do that.

Brulte, hailing from the Inland Empire, served as an aide to Senator Sam Hayakawa as a young man, became part of Ronald Reagan’s advance team, and served in both the Assembly and the State Senate as Republican Leader of both Houses.  He is considered a “Capitol insider” by the media, and that he is, working in his business California Strategies on behalf of businesses and organizations that have major investments in and a stake in California.  Brulte is a conservative, and also a realist.  He understands the underpinnings of the Tea Party, and he also understands that now, Republicans cannot have any influence on the process at all going forward unless we start winning elections.

There was a time, when Ronald Reagan was governor, that the chairman of the California Republican Party hailed from our state’s important business boardrooms or agriculture industry, or had served as a medical or legal professional with real-life experience, and those chairmen could get their telephone calls answered when, as volunteers, they managed our Party to some significant statewide successes.  In the last few election cycles, our Party has sadly lost that very important type of “gravitas” in its leadership, a gravitas which leads to success.

Respected conservatives and state GOP leaders have already started to close ranks behind Brulte.  State Party Vice-Chairman Steve Baric, a Rancho Santa Margarita Councilman, has endorsed Brulte’s chairman campaign.  That is a big statement, given Baric’s close links to Republican volunteer groups and the fact that he himself could have made a run for the position with good support from party activists.  So too has Jon Fleischman, a former California GOP Executive Director, conservative leader, and the publisher of the influential FlashReport blog.  Many Republican members of the state legislature have also stepped forward to urge Brulte to make the run, including early supporter, Orange County Assemblyman Don Wagner.

California is currently essentially a “one-party” state.  Democracy itself is threatened by that.  And now, Democrats in Sacramento are actively taking aim at dismantling as best they can the People’s right to vote on initiatives, by loading the process up with more regulations, limiting its availability and making qualification of initiatives more expensive, rather than, for example, opening up the ballot qualification process to new technologies.  If something is not done to bring balance back into the political equation by improving the prospects of the Republican Party, we may even lose our initiative rights altogether in this state, which would clear the way for unbridled dominance of liberal Democrats for decades.  No one person will be the savior for Republicanism in California.  But if Jim Brulte, with all his capabilities and experience, indeed runs for chairman and wins, we will surely be able to put up the better and good fight in the marketplace of ideas that Californians deserve.

Candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles faced-off last night in a one-hour televised debate that sadly, in the midst of a blooming double-dip recession, was focused on highly general environmental policy rather than job growth and policies to improve economic conditions.  As a means to elicit useful contrasting information from the candidates, it was simply “a dud”, as most of the questions generated by the League of Conservation Voters, tasked with the responsibility for generating the questions, were soft-balls such as “how do you get to work,” rather than the types of questions Los Angeles voters really care about from their elected officials, such as “what will you do to avoid a city bankruptcy.”

Four candidates for Mayor were featured in the debate although a total of twenty candidates are on the ballot.  Those featured included four of the five top money raising candidates, namely, current L.A. Controller Wendy Greuel, Councilwoman Jan Perry, Councilman Eric Garcetti, and former U.S. Attorney and radio talk show host Kevin James.  Austin Beutner, who is actually in the number three slot in total contributions raised before the debate, was either excluded or chose not to debate.

The debate aired on KABC and was ably moderated by Marc Brown.  The debate was so mechanical that it ended with two minutes to spare, and Brown jumped in and asked the most interesting of the soft-ball questions of the debate, asking each candidate to reveal their “favorite place” in Los Angeles.  I thought that was an excellent question and it drew smiles from the candidates and some great responses, revealing personal connections to the city.

Among the top performers in the debate were Kevin James and Jan Perry.  At one point in the debate a questioner asked one of the few really useful questions, asking what the positions of the candidates for Mayor would be on a sales tax increase measure that may be placed on the same ballot.  Garcetti got the first response and he completely dodged the question, babbling on about improved economic conditions in his own council district.  Greuel responded in the same manner, using her time to talk in highly general terms about economic conditions but completely dodging the question.  Then it was Kevin James’ turn, and he squarely stated “I am the third person to be asked but I will be the first person to actually answer the question” and he stated he opposed a sales tax increase because it would be bad for creating jobs and would hurt economic conditions. He stated he had signed the ballot argument against such a measure.  The question then went to Jan Perry, who represents south central Los Angeles on the Council, and she stated she also opposed a sales tax increase.  In later questioning Greuel went off theme to state she also opposes a sales tax increase in Los Angeles, but Garcetti made no such clarification later in the debate.

Of the candidates, Garcetti was quite polished and rehearsed but lacked charisma.  He seemed almost like a robot in discussing his accomplishments and intentions for Los Angeles.  Greuel was also somewhat mechanical in her responses but showed some charm and underscored that she is a life-long Angelino and mentioned her service in the Clinton Administration.  However, she greatly over-reached when she directly took on James by claiming he had a “radical right wing” radio talk show.  James pushed back on that statement simply by saying she mischaracterised his show.  Kevin James was the candidate with the ideas.  He started the debate with serious passion but seemed to become more comfortable as it progressed, smiling more and perhaps relaxing a little more as the debate developed.  He repeatedly laid the blame for L.A.’s problems on its current leaders, including all three of his elected opponents on stage, and casted himself as an outsider who can better fix L.A.’s problems.  He castigated the incumbents for contributing to the L.A. film industry’s troubles through over-regulation and poor policies.  He would not “bite” on simplistic questions about “plastic vs. paper bags” articulated to obtain predictable responses from all the other candidates.  He reminded the audience that he had headed an important charity fighting AIDS.  He did a great job.

Jan Perry did a very good job too.  I was surprised by her response that she opposed the sales tax increase and her further statement that she also had signed the ballot argument against it.  She spoke with passion about improving conditions in south Los Angeles, and she also focused, as did James, on the specific need for improving investment and creating jobs, especially on her accomplishments in developing new investment downtown (she has been a big backer of the L.A. Live area, which has been such a success) and the University Village plan to dramatically improve businesses and services around the University of Southern California.

The KABC debate questions were exclusively drawn up by the League of Conservation Voters and the League of Woman Voters.  That was a mistake.  The debate should have included representatives from the Los Angeles business and employment communities among the questioners, the film industry, trade unions, and more, and because of the absence of such representatives, the debate contained a lot of fluff on issues of secondary importance and not enough substance.  Hopefully future debate formats will include more meaningful issues and force the candidates to address them, like jobs, taxes, spending and the economy, waste and fraud,

Los Angeles Mayor candidate Kevin James

and reducing gang violence and crime.

Just moments after understanding that Democrats would gain a supermajority status in the State Senate, State Senate President Darrell Steinberg told the press his two new priorities would be to address the “tax” system and “reform” the initiative system.  In other words, raise taxes and limit the People’s Constitutional right to vote to enact their own laws.  Pundit George Skelton, on cue, has picked up on the Democrats initiative “reform” theme, though he doesn’t identify what reforms he thinks should be made other than to improve public disclosure of contributions to initiative committees, which just about everybody agrees with.  But he insists the initiative system needs reform, nevertheless, whatever that means.

Skelton, who can be fair, ought not to get caught up in what Steinberg’s interpretation of what “reform” will be, if he believes in People power and the fundamental rights Californians’ possess in their Constitution, to be able to vote on the laws that affect them and promote important policy changes, such as Proposition 13, even when the Legislature and Governor fail to act in the Peoples’ interests.

The California initiative system does not need reform, and tinkering with it now will be clearly seen as a further power grab by Democrats.  Democrats control both Houses of the California Legislature by supermajorities, they control even single statewide office in the state, they control the Board of Equalization, and though the Californa Supreme Court was appointed mostly by Republican Governors, it is a liberal court.  Liberals dictate policy now in Sacramento, period; Republicans have no more power than poll watchers in the Capitol.

But the one thing standing between the Dictatorship of the Democrats and total power is our initiative system, which allows the People themselves to bypass all the machinations of Sacramento and directly enact their own laws.

The initiative system has a long and important history in California deserving of a more lengthy dissertation than provided here.  But assuming you, the reader, already understands this important history, then you will also understand the challenge the initiative and referendum power presents to the liberals in control of California and why they would want to limit the initiative power and “box it in” so that it does not undercut and compete with their own lawmaking powers.  The Democrats hate the initiative system because they can’t control it.

The liberals have tried to control it.  A plethora of laws abound, all promoted by liberal Democrats, affecting initiative campaigns, including time, place, and manner requirements, political disclosure rules, regulations on size of petitions, what petitions they can look like and how they are circulated, refusals to allow on-line petition gathering, truly onerous requirements on paid petition gatherers that reduce and discourage their ability to circulate petitions, and new rules that consolidate all statewide initiatives onto just one ballot once every two years, thus limiting the opportunity of the People to even exercise the initiative power

Skelton writes that “money” in the last election somehow unfairly affected the initiative process and should serve as a basis for some unidentified “reform” (other than disclosure, which everyone agrees with).  But when one analyzes the role of “money” in the election, compared to the election results rendered by the People, it becomes very clear that the role of “money” in the 2012 General election hardly uniformly correlated with the election results.

For example, Skelton complains that Molly Munger, the biggest single donor in the election, “poured $44 million into her Proposition 38″ tax increase measure and mentions in passing it lost, gaining only 28% of the vote.  Why is that a bad thing necessitating reforms?  Molly Munger spent $44 million of her own money, fully disclosed, to try to convince California voters to take her side on an initiative campaign, and the People resolved the issue against her.  Doesn’t that support the idea that the People cannot be “bought” by initiative advertising?  Doesn’t the result in Proposition 38 stand for the proposition that the initiative system, rather than needing reform, actually works, and stands as an example that the People are smart enough to decide for themselves?

While Skelton complains about the facts of one controversial large contribution to a committee opposing Proposition 30 and supporting Proposition 32, he fails to mention that labor unions greatly outspent their opponents on those initiatives regardless of that one contribution, and spent a record $100 million to convince the People to their positions, dwarfing the campaigns opposite them.  A question for Skelton might be, should one of the new reforms be to limit unions from spending $100 million in union dues on politics in this manner?  This is an admittedly circular argument given the results on Proposition 32.  But the answer is, “of course not,” each side in an initiative campaign has the equal opportunity to raise its funds and communicate with the People, and it is the People that ultimately possess the right to resolve the issue in the ballot box.

In 1978, senior citizens were literally being taxed out of their homes in California, as rampant inflation in home values dramatically increased property taxes due on a home each year, sometimes raising them 100% in a year, since the tax system was pegged to the estimated value of the home, not the purchase price.  The politicians did nothing to reform the system, regardless of the hardships senors and people on fixed incomes reported to them, because it created a bonanza of increasing revenues which they spent, spent, spent.  On his third try, Howard Jarvis rose up from the People with an initiative that qualified without professional management or funding, to fix the tax system.  The liberal Democrats demonized Jarvis and Proposition 13, and ran a better funded campaign to defeat it, but 66% of the People enacted the law despite all the money from the unions and liberal Democrats, and it has saved taxpayers billions of dollars over the years, served as a check on Government power, and helped low-income families by reducing inflation and holding down rental costs.  When you hear calls for “reform” of the initiative system, remember, the politicians and pundits behind those calls hate Proposition 13, and their aim is not to further empower the People, but to make it more difficult for the People to enact the next Proposition 13.

To call the decline of the California Republican Party “precipitous” is an understatement.  The state GOP is basically dead now.  And here is why:

For the first time in 50 years, the Democrats have achieved a supramajority in the State Senate, and it looks like they will also claim that status in the State Assembly with the sad, unexpected loss of Assemblyman Chris Norby, a conservative hero, in an Orange County-based district that should have been held by the GOP.

The policy implications of the Democrats legislative victories Tuesday night are stunning but hardly unpredicted.  Sacramento insider and former State Senator Jim Brulte had been urgently warning candidates, consultants and GOP officials that this result would occur – he had been doing so for two years.  Brulte called on GOP leaders and consultants for months to do something about the looming disaster.  But the state Republican party was not listening.  Now, for the first time since Proposition 13 passed in 1978, the Democratic Party, with its control of the Governor’s position and every single statewide constitutional office, can raise taxes regardless of GOP opposition.   The legislative Republican party has been rendered meaningless.  And that is not an exaggeration – just ask one of the remaining GOP legislators.

Added to this terrible result of last Tuesday’s election are the unfortunate results of the battle over Propositions 30 and 32.  $100 million of union spending completely engulfed and overtook efforts to stop the Governor’s own tax increase measure “for the schools” and limit union power through compulsory political dues collections.  While the Governor had to put up a good fight to win his tax hike battle, that new tax burden coupled with local sales and parcel tax increases across the state, on top of Obama’s expected “fiscal cliff” Federal tax increases, will put a significant pinch on California taxpayers pocket books at just the wrong time, as California and the nation teeter on the possibility of a “double-dip” recession and increasing unemployment statistics.  Elections DO have consequences, and in this regard the old-saw hyperbole of the Democrats to “do it for the kids” as an excuse to grow government is going to lead to even more spending and higher taxes at just the wrong time for our economy, which Republicans will be completely powerless to blunt in the Legislature.

Earlier this month the Secretary of State’s office announced that Republican registration in the state had hit an all time low at just 29%.  Campaign finance reports indicated that the state GOP was broke for most of this year – an important campaign year that, as stated above, Jim Brulte had been warning about for years.  In August the state GOP even took steps itself to turn around its feeble leadership by stripping the state chairman, Tom Del Becarro, of some spending powers.  The state GOP never seemed to get its fundraising act together and focus independently of the state GOP legislative leaders and a handful of business community donors to have its own positive impact.  It essentially served as a shell in the 2012 election through which other people and interests did its work.  The state party’s failure to understand the depth of its own problems; all predicted, speak volumes for why wholesale changes are needed in the state GOP leadership now.

The state Republican party needs new leadership that understands the reality of California’s electorate.  Our electorate is obviously and increasingly diverse, while at the same time the policies and composition of the California GOP remain remote.  If the point of the California Republican Party is to win elections, it has to change.  More of the same means more defeat.

Fifteen or so years ago the California Republican Party realized it was suffering from a gender-gap.  Strong efforts were taken – and I will call them “affirmative action”- to encourage and support women in leadership positions in the party.  Today those efforts have proved successful.  Connie Conway has served well as the Republican Leader in the California Assembly.  GOP Women have increasingly populated elected offices in the State Senate, Assembly, and Congress, and the Party has embraced women candidates for statewide offices as well.

What the California Republican Party must do now to resurrect itself from the dead is realize that demographics have changed in this state and begin embracing Latino, Asian and other minorities in leadership positions in the party and as officeholders in the same manner that the party opened its leadership doors to women some years ago.  The Party needs an “affirmative action” program to reinvent itself, if it is ever going to start winning elections again.  Enlisting new potential leaders that reflect the diversity of this state will help the party get to a majority by attracting the additional votes needed to match the party’s advantage with white voters.  Californians who have not voted for the Republican party in the past need to be given good, rational reasons for why they should register GOP as well.  Outreach programs to important new voter groups to explain our fundamental conservative political philosophy as stated in the standard Republican platform, which transcends race and gender politics, but that does not get caught up in the extremes of contentious social issues, is an important first step.  The current California Republican Party leadership is “tone-deaf” to the reality of California’s diverse voting population.  It needs to try harder to understand the truth of the state voting population and then tailor its message in a manner to build a majority rather than rest on its own, tired, insular messages of an era gone by, that have lost so many recent elections and turned so many Californians away from registering in the GOP.

And “affirmative action” alone is not going to be enough to win elections in future.  The San Diego County Republican party saw all their year-long goals evaporate last Tuesday night when Carl DeMaio, its candidate for Mayor of San Diego, a gay hispanic originally from Iowa, lost to Democrat Bob Filner along with the added loses of Brian Bilbray’s Congressional seat and Steve Danon for supervisor.  One observer said the wipe-out for the Party in Republican-rich San Diego county had more to do with the rough “litmus test” treatment its consultants rendered to moderate former GOP Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher in the primary, causing him to leave the party, and a “cloak-and-dagger” campaign in the Fall that failed to appeal to the better side of voter attitudes.  Diversity alone isn’t the key to winning elections for the GOP in the future, a key is also to project a party that is capable of readily appealing to a majority of voters, which means accepting that fiscal issues and immigration reform are not the only issues on many voters’ minds.  Public safety and education are important issues on voters minds, especially those with school age children, and offering these voters little more than a commitment to “charter schools” while changing the subject to the problems of illegal immigration are not likely to win a majority, ever, for the California GOP, in most districts.

If the Republican Party does not change, it will not have a successful statewide candidate for a generation or more.  The most serious future opponent of Governor Brown’s re-election will likely not be a Republican, rather, it will more likely be a white candidate who declares “No Party Preference”, a self-funded former Republican, perhaps conservative on fiscal issues and liberal on social issues, perhaps a celebrity, who will count on Republican votes but will deny affiliation to the Party.  We have almost been there before…..

This is not time for inaction among Republicans who care about this state, its policies, and the future.  Nicodemus said to Jesus, “how can a man be reborn?”  Our question today is not whether the California Republican Party can be reborn; to counter one-party tyranny in California, it MUST be reborn.