Miami Blues: Palin And National Republicans Look Like The Sad California Republican Party

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's truncated, confused press conference at yesterday's Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami.

Don't look now, but the national Republican Party is on the verge of becoming the California Republican Party. And that ain't a good thing -- unless you're a Democrat.

Looking at the debacle of the just concluded Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami, the national Republican Party looks more and more like the California Republican Party, which has moved so far to the right that it can't win a major statewide election unless it's running an Austrian-born action movie star and would have no relevance whatsoever absent California's strange two-thirds legislative vote requirement on budgetary matters, which it shares with only two other states.

And now, that party is mostly minus Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who can barely stand to talk with his fellow California party leaders at this point. One of whom, state Republican chairman Ron Nehring, a protege of notorious anti-government lobbyist and Jack Abramoff associate Grover Norquist -- and whose whole career, naturally if not ironically, is built around Washington -- seeks to become the next Republican national chairman.

Sarah Palin denies her earlier statement to right-wing fundamentalist leader James Dobson that "God will do the right thing on November 4th."

Sarah Palin, not to put too fine a point on it, made a fool of herself yesterday in Miami. She stole the show yesterday at the Republican Governors Association's woe-is-us-Republicans session in Miami. Everyone, including an amazing 220 members of the press, was waiting on her every word. Yet... she essentially recycled her old stump speech. And her ballyhooed press conference? She took only four questions, delivering very vague answers, before getting the hook from Texas Governor Rick Perry.

As the national GOP moves to emulate the CRP, the right-wing California paradigm seems on the verge of passing from the scene of relevant politics. Thanks to Barack Obama's crushing 61% to 37% defeat of John McCain in the Golden State, much bigger than any landslide ever won by the sainted Ronald Reagan, who was actually far more pragmatic and worldly than his current would-be acolytes. And to the redistricting reform initiative championed by Schwarzenegger, which is designed to come up with at least a few more moderate members of the caucus through an end to legislative gerrymandering of legislative districts.

Sarah Palin talks, unintentionally amusingly, with "French President Nicolas Sarkozy," actually a very over-the-top radio comedian from Montreal.

The current version of the California Republicans is insular, derived from the extremist Young Americans for Freedom, and much enamored of the nasty hyperpartisan Sarah Palin, who herself is now trying to be bipartisan -- not that anyone will buy that reinvention routine.

Palin dominated the Republican governors meeting, which can only count as an early Christmas for President-elect Obama. I'll say it right now. If Palin runs against Obama, it will be a major wipe-out in favor of the Democrats. Which is not what the right-wing base of the Republican Party imagines. Their imagination, frankly, runs to the extremely delusional, as last week's confab of far right leaders at Brent Bozell's home in Virginia came to the bizarre conclusion that the problem with the McCain campaign was that it was too liberal.

Sarah Palin, in her devastating interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric, discusses American relations with Russia. The word she is groping towards is "caricature."

That points to their extreme level of crisis for Republicans in the wake of Obama's decisive election, which their captive echo chamber media in the talk radio and blogosphere realms all absolutely insisted would never happen. Those folks foolishly imagined that a tenuous relationship between Obama and long ago Weather Undergrounder-turned-respected Chicago professor Bill Ayers would mean more to voters than McCain's long record of supporting President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Wrong. Wrong. Very, very, wrong.

The California-style illusion of the far right faction now dominating the Republican Party continued today with former California Attorney General Dan Lungren, now Sacramento area Congressman Dan Lungren, making his campaign for the House minority leadership official today. He is challenging Ohio Congressman John Boehner. I ran into Boehner on the campaign trail. While he is assailed by right-wingers as insufficiently conservative, I can assure you that by any objective measure, he is quite conservative.

Lungren, even in his currently gerrymandered district, had some trouble getting re-elected, defeating Dr. Bill Durston, a Vietnam War vet, by a 50-44 margin.

Lungren is an amiable fellow, son of Richard Nixon's personal physician, who ran for governor of California in 1998 and was blown away by Gray Davis. The election was one of the biggest landslides in California history, with Davis crushing Lungren, 58-38.

I knew Lungren had a big problem when I recorded him saying: "Californians are even more conservative than they know."

If the national GOP moves further in the direction of the California GOP, here is what is likely to happen.

Permanent marginalization. The national GOP has already seen its red state coalition shattered, with Obama taking away nine red states from the Republican ticket while losing no blue states.

This has left the Republicans -- who carried no age group under the age of 65 -- pushed back into redoubts of the Deep South and the rural Plains states.

I've seen this movie before, here in California.

Through their narrow majority on the California Republican Party executive board -- at the motion of a far right ideologue and blogger named Jon Fleischman, the Southern California party vice chairman -- the party leadership voted to block any move to open the California Republican presidential primary to independent voters. This was a move to help Mitt Romney, the heavy favorite of the Orange County conservative money crowd who provide the financial underpinnings of Fleischman's Flash Report, and to block more moderate Republicans such as McCain and Rudy Giuliani.

But the move, ultimately, was a failure, as McCain swept virtually all of California's delegates despite the exclusion of independent voters. (Many of whom found another form of disenfranchisement in the Democratic primary, where many independent votes have still not been counted.)

Which left Schwarzenegger -- the constant target of attacks from the Fleischman/Spence/Mike Schroeder faction of far right Republicans -- and McCain and their joint operatives in the catbird's seat, again. This isn't surprising since my New West Notes readers know that even core Republican voters agree more with the Arnold view of politics than with the YAF view of politics. Not that it helped at all in the wake of the Obama wave.

Fleischman and far right California Republican Assembly leader Mike Spence's declarations last year in the NWN Forum section that the very existence of the minimum wage equates to socialism were an early presaging of the extremist, talk radio-style declarations that emanated from the Republican campaign this fall. As were the absurd assertions that then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is a Communist fellow traveler. All fringe stuff.

Vlad and Boris present "Song For Sarah (For Mrs. Palin)." (h/t William Gibson)

Ironically, Hugh Hewitt, the Southern California radio host, blogger and Mitt Romney's hagiographic biographer who no less played a key role in the right-wing blogosphere's failed campaign of character assassination against McCain as well as Obama, claimed that Sean Hannity's endorsement of Romney was far more important than Arnold Schwarzenegger's, in California as well as nationally. Jon Fleischman, the Southern California Republican party vice chairman who runs the far right Flash Report web site (key for state Republican conservatives though not a mass communicator), gratuitously penned this piece of advice for McCain, that he send Schwarzenegger to the East and avoid him in California. Fleischman, incidentally, backed by California state party chairman Ron Nehring, authored the resolution to block independents from voting in the California Republican primary.

Talk show host/blogger Hewitt claimed, absurdly, with regard to McCain and Romney: "If you had to chose, either guy would rather have Sean Hannity and his national reach" than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Fleischman -- whose web site is the go-to spot for the California far right -- falsely claimed that Schwarzenegger is very unpopular with California Republicans and, unsolicited, advised McCain on his blog to have Schwarzenegger campaign for him in the East.

Meanwhile, in the real world, many undoubtedly don't know who Sean Hannity is. And in the real world, Hannity fawns on camera over Schwarzenegger.

You see where this is going. Further and further away from reality. Deeper into the alternate universe echo chamber of America's far right.

But to check in on reality, you can check things out during the day on my site, New West Notes.

Comments

[denholt]

Sarah Palin's responses on radio talk show far from becoming:

http://www.adn.com/opinion/comment/story/295464.html

This will be useful in the event she ever again dares to seek national office.

[RedDonnaAnn]

She embodies her own quote: 'No specifics'

The woman is the dictionary definition of vague. What a complete horse's ass. God she set us women back 100 years. She is exactly why men did not want to allow us to vote. I'm so sorry men, we're not all like that. I promise.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Well, certainly enough women have been elected to high office, in both parties, for that to be clear.

Palin was stunt casting.

[RedDonnaAnn]

She must be high: Governors balance the budget???? California has a 15 BILLION dollar budget deficit. She is beyond 'out of the loop'

From the 2008 National Survey of States:

The downturn from 2001 to 2003 was dramatic, with total balances falling by nearly $30 billion over a two-year period. From fiscal 2001 to fiscal 2002, total balances fell by $25.8 billion, and went from 9.1 percent of expenditures to 3.7 percent of expenditures. By fiscal 2003, total balances had fallen to 3.2 percent of expenditures.

To ameliorate the effects of the downturn and balance budgets, states relied on rainy day funds and spending cuts. Many states were also forced to enact tax increases to prevent massive shutdowns and lags in state services.

[billstewart]

California needs a functioning competent Republican Party to balance the fiscally clueless Democrats; it's too bad we don't have one - too many of them are right-wing thugs like Lundgren. We could also use a bunch of Greens and Libertarians and others in the legislature, but none of the small parties are really organized enough to get more than an occasional district. Maybe we need to get the Democrats to do some major infighting and spit into two parties so we'll have some competition here.

Arnold may be Conan the Republican, but as far as I can tell as an outsider he hasn't led the state's Republicans to improve their act. And until the Bush Administration's legacy is expunged, it's not safe to elect any more Republicans to national office, which means that it's not a good idea to get many new Republicans in state offices either; term limits mean they'll go running for Congress in a couple of years.

Back during the high-tech boom of the late 90s, which was centered here in California, the Legislature saw a huge rush of wealth coming in, spent it all badly, and when the boom ended instead of growing even boomier, they not only had a crisis that "nobody could have anticipated", they'd locked in lots of spending, doing things like building more prisons needing more guards, and more fancy city halls that the cities can't afford so they come begging to the state to bail them out.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Schwarzenegger is viewed as a dangerous liberal by the far right faction dominating the California Republican Party.

I may have answered all that.

[bogues]

Sarah Palin road her good looks and feminine charm all the way to the Governor's mansion in Alaska. When she came on to the national stage, she found out that the larger electorate is not so easy to fool.

[ShanniC]

This nation needs a two party, nay, a THIRD party system. However, the GOP has become isolationist in its policies. Why should anyone vote for GOP candidates and issues if the GOP is stuck on social problems? Americans didn't abandon the GOP, the GOP abandoned us!

[dadw5boys]

WHAT AN IDOIT !!!!!

Please stop embrassing your sex and just fade back to Alaska.

God spoke you lost Nov. 4 .

Greedy prayers do not reach him.

[bubbuh]

Is this science fiction?

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

What are you referring to? The reality of politics?

[Indie2008]

I hate to break the news to the pundits and political columnists, who are so immersed in following the day to day political drama that they usually have no more foresight into who the main players will be in 2012 than the average (pardon the expression) Joe. It was slightly over a year ago that seasoned network pundits were predicting a Juliani vs.Clinton match in 2008. Then, for about 5 minutes, all the rage was the anticipated roll out of Fred Thompson.as the sure to be nominee of the GOP. The media is now desperate to stretch out the dwindling 15-minutes of fame alloted to Sarah Palin to 4-years. This is a woman whom virtually no one outside of Alaska had ever heard of 3 months ago. She does not deserve the atention that continues to be focused on her for any reason other than morbid fascination with her effusive display of ignorance. When was the last time the VP nominee on a losing ticket came back to win their party's Presidential nomination? She was able to carve out a following among the the fanatical right wing voters and for that reason, the Party is reluctant to totally repudiate her, but there's no way she is going to be handed the GOP nomination in 2012. Even Hillary Clinton, with her formidable name, skills, experience, and political machine behind her, couldn't ride the destiny train all the way to victory.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Actually, I picked Obama last year, so your point doesn't apply here.

Who knows if Palin will be the nominee? It's way too soon to tell.

But she is the leading figure for the party's conservative base.

And that is a huge problem for a party trying to regroup after two devastating elections in a row.

[Taan]

"Que sera, Sarah". She has had her 15+ minutes and will cease to be relevant next time around. Tempus fugit. t You can only swim upstream once to spawn. Lacking any degree of gravitas, she doesn't have enough time to "catch up" intellectually. She had her Jerry Lewis moment and the plug has been pulled so the puppet can deflate and be put away with last year's party favors.

[dessertsfirst]

Sarah may be intelligent, but she's not smart enough to realize that she needs to learn anything but how to speak to a topic; she doesn't think she needs to know anything about foreign affairs, or have an indepth knowledge about anything of substance. She only thinks she needs to know how to talk about them so she can attempt to BS her way through. So there's no worry that she will even attempt to "catch up" intellectually.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

I like that title ...

[rmm4402]

As a Republican I wonder..... why does Mr. Bradley even care?????

He seems to infer that we are comitting political suicide - why not let us ???? Political parties have come and gone.....so what's the problem??? Most of your respondents seem ready to dance our grave - why not join them???

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You're free to do whatever you want.

And I am free to write about gigantic public spetacles.

Like this one.

[rbenjamin]

The GOP elephant is 154 years old, stone deaf, ill-tempered and incontinent. The kids don't like him any more and the neighbors are beginning to complain of the noise and stench. I know it's hard, but for the love of God, take ol' Stampy to a nice quite place in our National Back yard (it's behind the Smithsonian) and put him out of his misery. It's the kindest thing for everyone.

[dessertsfirst]

Very well said!

[jdwoman]

One party rule will happen if other parties don't become relevant. It is time for the Republicans to start living in the real world instead of fantasyland and the the world of Fox spin and conservative talk. Just looking at demographics, many GOP faitful will be dying off soon and if they are not replaced with younger supporters, this will be the kiss of death.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

That's right.

[keeplookin]

seems kinda like McC is this election's Walter Mondale, and the R's are the D's from several elections ago.

Truly, you Terrans are vastly entertaining: your elections and politics consistently score highest on our broadcast channels. Keep it up!

[dougdl]

Be very afraid of one party rule. The democratic legislature has ruined California. Businesses are fleeing to Nevada or Arizona. Public education is a joke. In LA County we will now be paying a 10 percent sales tax, but I doubt it will put a dent in the deficit.

[BottomLine2008]

Oh, right. One party rule has shown what a terrible thing it is. When your clown show party ran America.

You ran California into the ground, too.

Even Schwarzenegger can't stand dealing with your silly party, and he's one of you.

lol

[cuthbertallgood]

Don't worry, there will be two Parties all right, the Democrats and the Greens. So that is not an issue. CA's problems are almost all rooted in Republican policy from Prop 13 to Arnie's Enron Games. You do remember that Arnie promised he could balance the budget without raising taxes, and implied that Davis had not done so due to corruption. How balanced is that buget o' yours these days? And did you not just complain of a higher tax burden? Gee, seems Arnie did not deliver on his bravado at all. He is incapable of doing what he promised he'd do, what he called others 'girly men' for not doing.
But as I said, Democrats and Greens will be the new two Parties. The GOP is a dated and embarassing thing. Look at the age of your shallow talent pool. Dying off. Like Vaudeville, the GOP is part of a bygone era. They are the dial phone, the Whigs, Betamax. They are in fact, Gilligan.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You're leaving out the role of the far right-wing in blocking any realistic budget solutions in California.

Probably because you are a member of the far right faction.