Last week a group of prominent Republican “moderates” and big donors dissatisfied with state GOP election prospects and the conservatives they blame for them announced the formation of California Republicans Aligned for Tomorrow. They seem to want to anoint GOP candidates who are nice looking and well spoken but who lack political convictions of any kind. They believe that the only way for the state GOP to escape its funk is to emulate the Democratic Party.
These are the same people who favored Jerry Ford over Ronald Reagan, considered Proposition 13 dangerous and thought Gov. Schwarzenegger did the politick thing when he staffed the governor’s office with Gray Davis’s advisors. And they are wrong again.
Some would brand these “moderates” as political traitors or worse. We just see them as “country club” Republicans estranged for so long from the grassroots that they have forgotten – if they ever understood in the first place – why hard working Californians vote Republican.
Bankrolling CRAFT are Paul Folino, a Schwarzenegger donor and executive chairman of Emulex Corp. of Costa Mesa, and Larry Dodge, another Schwarzenegger ally and chairman of American Sterling in Orange County. Spokesmen for the group are governor-come-lobbyist Pete Wilson and former state Republican Party Chairman Def Sundheim.
“We’re looking for people who are bright and attractive and articulate… we’re not looking for people who fit an ideological template,” Wilson told the Los Angeles Times. It was Wilson, of course, who opposed Proposition 13 and trudged through the snows of New Hampshire trying to keep Ronald Reagan from becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Sure, Reagan was bright, attractive and articulate, but he was also overtly ideological, and that was the deal killer for Wilson and his milk-toast fellow travelers.
Later, Gov. Wilson condemned as “(expletive deleted) irrelevant” the conservatives who objected to his tax increases. Wilson and his fellow CRAFT members still consider conservatives irrelevant. So they are looking to recruit as candidates the political equivalent of Stepford Wives who will powder their noses, slick back their hair, tread lightly on taxation issues, sign on to the latest environmental fads and causes, make common cause with Democrats and embrace Sen. Obama’s disdain for “small town” and rural Californians.
Our most serious objection to CRAFT is its erroneous take on the history of California politics. Conservatives are not to blame for the GOP’s current state of disrepair. They have been out of power in California for years. On the contrary, the slide started under the leadership of Wilson, who deserted Republican principles on taxation and regulation. GOP fortunes cratered entirely with the election of Schwarzenegger, a Republican-in-name-only who has one-upped Gray Davis’s deficit spending and environmental zealotry.
CRAFT’s prescription for what ails the California GOP is a double dose of what made it sick in the first place. We don’t think California Republicans will swallow it.