by Jack Lee
The nationwide trend was to dump incumbents which was in effect a referendum on democrat policies in general and President Obama in particular. . . except in California where we tend to do things a little differently.
Given a 9% approval rating and the fact they brought down one of the world’s greatest economies why would CA voters reelect the democrats? If there was ever a case to be made to dump incumbents you would think it would be right here. Amazingly voters did just the opposite of smart, they rewarded the same old gang by reelecting most of them and to compound it they passed a proposition that requires only a simple majority vote to pass the state’s budget. This was the last hole card for the republicans and without it they have just been made irrelevant. California has one party in charge of everything and they can do pretty much whatever they wish, with one exception. The voters also passed the proposition that requires a 2/3rds vote to raise taxes and thus the voters have giveth and taketh.
Many republicans are wringing their hands and scratching their heads wondering where do we go from here, because both Whitman and Fiorina were rejected by about the same huge margins, far greater margins than the polls indicated. And this would be referendum against past republican transgressions that caused nearly all of the swing voters, those disaffected independents, to go to Brown and Boxer. This was 20% of the total CA vote and republicans blew it by fielding at least one of the two candidates that many within the party and the independent sector could not support.
Going into the battle to dump Boxer the republicans had the advantage of the anti-incumbency backlash and the same could be said for Jerry Brown who served two previous terms as governor. Both Boxer and Brown (Gov. Moonbeam) are tired old political hacks that have failed repeated to deliver while in the same office they were just reelected too. The only way this can happen is if the Republican Party, its leaders and followers failed bring forth good candidates that could win the independent vote. When traditional supporters of conservatives like the L.A. Times said they couldn’t endorse Whitman because she was a RINO you know republicans blew it.
Beyond our borders where republicans fielded solid conservatives with a history voters could trust they won and that is the lesson for the CRP. If there is an upside in this election it’s that democrats have nowhere to hide nor anyone else to blame. They clearly run this state from top to bottom, and if our schools run short of cash or police and fire get laid off, it’s all on them. The dems are responsible for the budget because republicans have nothing left to leverage Based on their past performance it would seem that California is heading for an even great economic disaster beyond the disaster that dems have already created. Given this, wouldn’t you rather have Gov. Moonbeam at the helm when this ship sinks?
