Sunday, March 10, 2013

Calif. GOP $500,000 in debt but new GOP Chair donates $1300 to Democrat LA Mayor candidate

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3/9/13, "California’s New GOP Chair Donates $1300 to Democratic LA Mayoral Candidate," Legal Insurrection, Leslie Eastman

"As a Democrat, I am often grateful to the support shown to me by Republican friends. However, California’s new Republican Party chairman may have taken support for a Democrat one step too far for the comfort of his party’s membership and the GOP contender in a local race.
A campaign committee controlled by the newly elected chairman of the state Republican Party donated $1,300 to Democrat Wendy Greuel’s Los Angeles mayoral bid.
Jim Brulte, who was elected chairman Sunday at the party convention in Sacramento, said he made the donation before he realized Kevin James was a viable Republican candidate.
“That was before I thought Kevin James had a great shot,” he said of the September donation. “At the end of the day, look at what the Democrats have done to that city. And I think Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry, who are good people, would be more of the same. Sometimes you have to find the least objectionable alternative.”
Brulte also insists he will “not wade into incendiary matters like immigration, climate change or same-sex marriage“. With leadership like Brulte’s, I project that there will be a dramatic change in the number of registered Republicans in the state, which now hovers around 29 percent. And it won’t be an upward trajectory.

Dr. Gary Gonsalves is a physician-turned-activist in 2009 and is involved with one of the large Southern California citizen groups, Stop Taxing Us. He says Brulte’s donation is one of the many reasons Californians need to become involved outside the traditional political party structure.
I’m not sure what is more objectionable; the idea that this “leader” was unaware of good candidate, that he donated to a democrat, or that he is stuck in this idea of labelling people as viable versus non-viable candidates. If we don’t all start looking outside the box and start supporting non-traditional candidates, our republic is doomed.
Tuesday’s election in Los Angeles resulted in Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel pushing ahead of six other candidates, including the Republican hopeful and entertainment lawyer Kevin James. Greuel, 51, would be the first female mayor of the city if elected; Garcetti, 42, is a fourth-generation Angeleno whose father, Gil, served as Los Angeles County district attorney from 1992 to 2000. The runoff election is in May.

No matter the final result, it’s hard to imagine anyone would be less suited to the job than current office-holder, Antonio Villaraigosa. In fact, Los Angeles Magazine (no conservative publication) has deemed the Villaraigosa a “failure”.
The subhed: “So Much Promise, So Much Disappointment.” It’s a common enough sentiment around town, even among Democrats, but a pretty startling turn given the early pro-Antonio leaning of the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Kit Rachlis. When my profile of Villaraigosa ran in December 2006, the headline read Pop Star Mayor and the editors put him on the cover. Villaraigosa was only 18 months into the job then and still seemed to be maturing into the role. Now writer-at-large Ed Leibowitz pens an open letter to Antonio that draws a line from his betrayal of his wife to the betrayal felt by voters “who believed you could love this city more than you love yourself.”
To rework a quote from Nietzsche applicable to my state: Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in California, it is the rule."

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California GOP $500K in debt, can't afford offices, decides Karl Rove is the answer, Calif. clubhouse GOP chief 'first move' was to get Rove to speak at convention: 

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3/1/13, "California Republican Party Convention: GOP attempts to recover from disaster," Bay Area News Group, Steve Harmon, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

"Having sunk to its lowest depths in its 159-year history, the California Republican Party's first order of business at this weekend's convention will be to lick its wounds. The state party is still reeling from humiliating defeats in November that gave Democrats two-thirds majorities in the Assembly and state Senate. 

It's $500,000 in debt and doesn't even have offices for its staff, which has dwindled to a handful of employees who work from home. The GOP's only gubernatorial prospect for 2014 is a conservative assemblyman who was once a border vigilante. And Republican voter registration in the state is at an all-time low of 29.3 percent.

Into all that gloom rides Jim Brulte, a former Republican leader in the Assembly and state Senate, as the presumptive new party chairman....


"Nothing focuses a party like a shellacking, and we got shellacked," Brulte said in an interview with this newspaper as he prepared for the weekend festivities, which begin Friday with the arrival of 1,000 GOP delegates, family and friends at the Hyatt Regency and Sacramento Convention Center....

Brulte's first move was to secure Karl Rove, the Republican uber-strategist, as the lunchtime speaker at the convention Saturday, a not-so-subtle message to conservative activists that he's seeking a pragmatic way out of the GOP's political morass.

It was controversial pick. Rove didn't endear himself to conservatives when he recently formed a new political group that he said would drum extremist candidates out of GOP primaries -- including those from the tea party -- as a way to appeal to the center.

Rove was himself at the center of GOP failures in the fall: His American Crossroads super PAC spent $300 million on mostly losing candidates.

In a nod to party activists, GOP officials hastily added conservative blogger Ben Shapiro as the convention's keynote speaker Saturday night, while moving Rove to the Saturday afternoon slot. But the strain between the activists and pragmatists remains."....


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Ed. note: When Obama was re-elected, Democrats in the media thanked Storm Sandy for putting him over the top. They said nothing about the GOP being bad with Hispanics as the GOP rushed to say. The reason the GOP lost is because the GOP establishment wanted Obama to win:

2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes

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"Establishment GOP care more about controlling the party than winning elections:" AEI member

7/13/12, "George Shultz Endorses Carbon Tax – You Were Surprised?"
GlobalWarming.org, Marlo Lewis

"This pattern is becoming boringly familiar....

There has always been a wing of the GOP — the “establishment,” “Country Club,” or “Rockefeller” Republicanswho care more about controlling the party than about advancing liberty or even about winning elections. AEI’s Ken Green (a colleague of Hassett’s) hits the nail on the head. In a story on Shultz’s endorsement of carbon taxes, Green told Climatewire: (subscrip):

There seems to be an eruption of conservatives — very moderate-seeming conservatives, non-tea party, old country club-style conservatives — who are suddenly enamored of carbon tax,” said Kenneth Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

“I think this is mostly vanity and egotism on the part of these people who are coming forward, to try and reassert the Republican establishment over the tea party revolution, he added. 


I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more of these guys weigh in.”(begin parag. 11)...


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11/7/12, "Chris Matthews on Obama's Win: 'I’m So Glad We Had That Storm Last Week'," NewsBusters, Sheppard
 






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