Oracle: California's Governor's and Senate Races

The election is one week away, but the conventional wisdom in California's two headline races is beginning to harden, if not curdle. Meg Whitman is going down in the governor's race, while Carly Fiorina is still in position to grab Barbara Boxer's Senate seat away.

The Republican woman who has the best chance to win in California on Nov. 2 is not billionaire Meg Whitman, who has spent more than $140 million of her own money to make sure every living thing knows who she is. It's Carly Fiorina, another former Silicon Valley CEO with thinner pockets but a looser campaign style who has drawn incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer into a dead heat.

The two Republican candidates have not campaigned together, but when they have appeared at the same event, it has been Fiorina who gets the attention, pounding a shot of Tequila and letting loose a rolled-r trill at the Hispanic 100 Lifetime Achievement Award dinner in Newport Beach (Orange County) this month.

Even as Fiorina piggybacks on Whitman's high-tech ground operation to mobilize voters, her campaign is betting that she won't be sucked down with Whitman should the former eBay CEO lose the race for governor to Democrat Jerry Brown.

Well, if I had to choose one, I would definitely take Fiorina beating Boxer over Whitman beating Brown. Sure, Jerry Brown is a doctrinaire liberal who has managed to hide his most liberal tendencies through a combination of strategic inaction and MSM cover, but Brown is also an impressive person: smart, thoughtful, and idealistic. Even the Free Will mother, a real Goldwater Girl and Reaganite, likes Jerry (she likes him personally, I hasten to add. She would never vote for him). There's an outside chance that Jerry very well could reform and shrink California government because he's too honest to keep papering over the state's unsustainable budgets. It could happen, but he's going to lack any real Republican foil with whom to strike any kind of grand bargains. Instead, Brown will be working to reform state government with the very interest groups, especially unions, environmentalists, and open borders types, who have done so much damage already.

Barbara Boxer, on the other hand? No redeeming qualities. Not only is she obnoxiously partisan. Not only has she embraced the farthest left-wing causes imaginable up to the unthinkable: assisting the treasonous Code Pink in their efforts to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Not only is she not nearly as smart as she thinks she is. She has done real harm to the state with her endless championing of hard-line environmental laws, often based on faulty politicized science. Defeating Boxer would not just be a necessary tonic for civil discourse. It can also provide the gentrified environmental movement with a rare, and much needed, defeat.

BTW, the pre-mortem on the governor's race is solidifying around something like this: sure Jerry Brown is a tired re-tread who will have trouble surviving the next 4 years, but it was fatal for Meg Whitman that the person presently in the governor's chair is a Republican widely seen as a failure. That only tells half the story and should be a real wake-up call to would-be moderate Republicans. The Governator - it can be hard to remember this - was the beneficiary of a recall campaign that was a real grassroots awakening in reaction to a liberal elite in Sacramento that was seen as too spend-happy and tied to the unions. While things weren't quite like the Tea Party, it was very similar both in enthusiasm and motivation. There was genuine excitement in state politics for a couple years, but ultimately Schwarzenegger lost his nerve. It was one of the great missed opportunities in living memory, and it hopelessly muddled if not ruined the GOP's reputation in CA, no matter how many times conservatives roll their eyes and make little rabbit ear motions with their fingers when they call Schwarzenegger a "Republican."

Government wants to grow and accumulate power to itself. When Republicans manages to win majorities on a promise to shrink government, the window is often pitifully small. And when they choose to moderate in pursuit of ephemeral compromise with foes who would never offer the same in return, they lose. November 3 Republicans would do well to remember that.

Waiting for the Wave: GOP Candidates Falling in CA

Groan. There's at least one poll out there that shows Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina running behind their Democratic opponents. I know, I know. They're within the margin of error, and there's plenty of time, and maybe there was a crazy sample size, but still...this doesn't inspire confidence. First Meg Whitman:

In the race for the open Governor's seat, Democrat Jerry Brown clings today to a narrow 47% to 43% advantage. Brown is up a nominal point since the previous poll; Republican Meg Whitman is flat. There is little internal movement among many demographic subgroups, with Hispanics being an exception, where Brown had led by 11 points, now leads by 24. Whitman has offsetting strength among the larger population of white voters, dulling the overall impact of Brown's Hispanic gains.

And then Carly Fiorina:

In the race for US Senator, incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer clings today to a narrow 46% to 43% advantage. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released 12 days ago, Boxer is down 3 points; Republican Carly Fiorina is flat. Seniors are moving toward Boxer; voters under age 50 are giving Fiorina another look.

There are millions of people in California who have a major mental hurdle to overcome in order to vote for a Republican. This has nothing to do with "wedge issues" or the "spendthrift GOP Congress." The GOP always seems to be on the outs here, and when we do manage to elect a governor ... we end up with someone who responds to a fiscal crisis by trying to raise taxes and increase debt, while ignoring the state's exploding entitlement spending. California is practically the poster child for misguided progressive overreach, yet that just doesn't seem to matter. If that sounds bitter, well, it's meant to be.

Boxed In: the Free Trade Argument Against Barbara Boxer

The Investors' Business Daily offers the quick free trade argument against Barbara Boxer who has been making a great deal of hay over GOP rival Carly Fiorina's having "outsourced California jobs" by laying off 30,000 people at H-P. According to IBD, Fiorina is a piker compared to Boxer:

Sen. Barbara Boxer thinks she's struck election gold in California by charging her rival, ex-CEO Carly Fiorina, with outsourcing. The real story is how Boxer has chased millions of jobs out of state with her politics.

Last Wednesday's radio debate between California's two senatorial candidates repeatedly circled the issue of jobs in a state with 12.4% unemployment, second highest in the nation.

Incumbent Boxer's trump card was that her opponent, while chief of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2006, outsourced jobs. "She laid off 30,000 workers, shipped jobs overseas and says she's proud of her record — well, that's her record," said Boxer.

Problem is, Boxer is a far bigger outsourcer. The unemployment rate in her state is 25% higher than the national average of 9.4%, and the number of jobless Californians is 66% higher than when she took office 17 years ago. Her 90% liberal voting record based on National Journal data has much to do with it.

As IBD points out, Boxer has consistently supported job killing legislation, whether the stimulus, the increase in the corporate tax rate, and especially all of the "green" legislation/regulations that have choked off California's manufacturing base, from cars to silicone chips to surfboards. All true, but God forbid we would ever hear this from the state MSM, let alone Fiorina herself. For whatever reason, voters and reporters can understand the ill effect of laying off thousands of workers, but can't begin to comprehend the political climate that created the incentives for those losses in the first place.

Negative Trend: Non-endorsement In CA's Senate Race

Everybody - even Rush - has been marveling at the San Francisco Chronicle's non-endorsement in the CA Senate race, with the usually reliably liberal Chron setting out a good brief on why Barbara Boxer should not return to the Senate for a fourth term

Boxer, first elected in 1992, would not rate on anyone's list of most influential senators. Her most famous moments on Capitol Hill have not been ones of legislative accomplishment, but of delivering partisan shots. Although she is chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, it is telling that leadership on the most pressing issue before it - climate change - was shifted to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., because the bill had become so polarized under her wing.

For some Californians, Boxer's reliably liberal voting record may be reason enough to give her another six years in office. But we believe Californians deserve more than a usually correct vote on issues they care about. They deserve a senator who is accessible, effective and willing and able to reach across party lines to achieve progress on the great issues of our times. Boxer falls short on those counts.

Hey, you'll get no argument from me there, although I'm surprised the Chron is being so catty about Boxer's tendency to grandstand more than legislate. For all her other faults, she is a master of the PC media assault, one which she has used to gain favorable "Year of the Woman"-style press coverage throughout her career.

Despite this, the Chron, like many hip Californians, can't quite bring itself to endorse a (shudder) Republican, even one who as obviously moderate as Carly Fiorina.

Unfortunately for Californians who are eager for change, Fiorina has firmly staked out positions that are outside of the state's mainstream values and even its economic interest. The list only begins with her openness to offshore oil drilling, her opposition to the Roe vs. Wade abortion rights ruling and her unwillingness to support even the most commonsense gun-control measures to keep assault weapons off the street or to deny guns to suspected terrorists on the federal "no fly list."

One might argue, as Fiorina does, that the latter are settled issues and thus should not be determinant in an election that should be laser-focused on jobs. But efforts to expand health care and take action against climate change - issues with both moral and economic consequences for future generations - are very much in play, especially if Republicans gain control of the Senate. Fiorina has said she would vote to repeal the landmark health care bill, and her support for a state initiative that would halt definitive action on climate change until unemployment reaches 5.5 percent shows a disdain for science and a disregard for this state's potential to take the lead in an emerging green economy. She is similarly unrealistic in her insistence that immigration reform must wait until the U.S.-Mexico border is absolutely secure.

Oh, come off it. While Boxer is one of the most left-wing members of the Senate, the views the Chron tries to ascribe to Fiorina are within the mainstream of the GOP. I would even question that, as she has no known political affiliations that pre-date 2008 when she was working for the campaign of moderate firebrand John McCain. Elsewhere in its endorsement, the Chron laments that La Box has not been willing to "work across the aisle," yet Fiorina is just the sort of moderate Republican whom one would expect to be part of the aisle-work caucus. Proof positive that it is virtually impossible for a Republican to obtain an MSM endorsement in California.

What Liberal Media: the SF Chronicle Publishes Objective Hagiography For "Fighter" Barbara Boxer

The San Francisco Chronicle has published a re-written press release straight from Barbara Boxer's campaign files. She is (wait for it) a "fighter" who only wants to stand up to "special interests." Wow! Where'd they come up with that fresh angle?

Boxer, 69, has built a political persona as a crusader, a self-described fighter for liberal causes, beginning with her first election to the Marin County Board of Supervisors in 1976. She has taken lonely and unpopular stands, from voting against the invasion of Iraq to forcing former Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., to resign amid charges of sexual harassment.

She was one of only 14 senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

"You have to, at the end of the day, consider all the facts in front of you and vote your conscience on some of these questions, even if you're one of just a handful of people," Boxer said in an interview. "You remember those moments."

"I'm a fighter for the people I represent," Boxer said. "I have a very strong sense of when they're being hurt, and I'm not afraid to go up against the people that are trying to hurt my people. That's why I've got a lot of special interests that want me gone. Polluters want me gone. The far right, they want me gone."

That Progressive = Fighter trope is as much a part of the standard media template as the Conservative = Racist. What we never learn: what has all this "fighting" gotten us? Mostly, she's led the fight to use the power of government to take wealth, or at least impede its creation. Rah. Rah.

If anyone at the Chron or any other major California media outlet cares, Jim Geraghty has been detailing Boxer's many faults in a series of blog posts. Just today, Geraghty audited Boxer's very expensive habit of taking taxpayer junkets to only the most desirable/expensive destinations

Since 2000, Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, has taken 18 trips sponsored by outside organizations, at a value of $97,975.

Naturally, if you want to learn about the Islamic world, you go to . . . Paris, France. With your spouse. For a week. At a cost of $12,272, as Boxer did in 2008.

If you want to become more familiar with the impact of U.S. policy on Latin America, clearly, you go to . . . the Punta de Mita beach resort in Mexico. With your spouse. Three times, in 2006, 2005, and 2002, at a cost of roughly $6,000 per trip.

If you want to learn more about U.S.-Russia-European relations, you go to . . . Dublin, Ireland, for five days, at a cost of more than $6,000, as she did in 2005. (I salute her taste.) Or perhaps you go to London, at a cost of $8,260, as she did in 2002.

The Aspen Institute was most often underwriting the cost of Boxer’s trips; in addition to the destinations above, the group covered the costs of Boxer’s trips to the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico, the outdoor-sports resort town of Banff, Alberta, and Barcelona, Spain.

I won’t begrudge a lawmaker for attending an AIPAC conference, but I’ll bet an invitation to one inHawaii must be more tempting than the usual annual meeting in Washington. Boxer found the time for that one in 2000.

Boxer is an old hand at this, as she was caught up in the House Bank scandal 20 years ago (not that interfered with her career in the slightest). She also knows that no one in the mainstream press would investigate this. Because she's a fighter. That's what all that fightings for, in a way. To protect her from the sort of unflattering investigations that would have sunk a conservative decades ago.

The Answer: the Boxer-Fiorina Debate

Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina held the first of several debates they will be having in the coming weeks. No knock-out blows, but this exchange doesn't exactly inspire confidence:

Fiorina initially avoided answering a reporter's question about her position on Proposition 23, "a measure that would roll back climate change legislation in California until the state's unemployment rate stays at or below 5.5 percent for a year." When pressed, Fiorina said that she has not yet taken a position on it. Boxer responded, "Well if you can't take a stand on Prop. 23, I don't know what you will take a stand on." She added that overturning California's clean energy policies would take away jobs away from the United States.

Honestly, how can you know not know the answer to that? Every scrap of "green" legislation passed in the last 4 years was little more than a subterfuge for seizing control of energy use based on climate change hysteria. California's climate change laws are not just job killers, they aren't even needed. Of course, they should be rolled back, and if you can't say that in a debate when asked, I'm not sure you're ever going to be able to.

Agreed that Boxer is obnoxious, mean, and not as smart as she thinks she is. But, you know what? When someone asked her about Prop.23, she had an answer: she's against it. She also said passing it will result in the loss of US jobs. Plus, the oil companies are in favor of it. So, there you go.

Stupid? Sure. Misinformed propagandizing? Absolutely. But, Boxer is a pro speaking to an audience, that wants to know where she stands and why. That will take you a lot farther than stuttering answers about the complexity of an issue.

Bring The Pain: Tom Coburn Holds A Town Hall Meeting

Senator/Doctor Tom Coburn held a town hall in Tulsa, OK last Friday and...well, he spoke his mind (h/t Professor Bainbridge):

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn called out Democrats, Republicans, Newt Gingrich, the military-industrial complex, teachers unions and Medicare - to name a few - at a town hall meeting Friday.

Coburn rightly notes that the electorate has the aspect of a sleeper woken by a cold dash of water in the face who doesn't recognize the world in which he has awoken:

"The real problem is that America is asleep," Coburn said, speaking mostly in response to questions from an audience of about 65 people at the Wagoner Civic Center. "America is not involved. I think this election they'll be more involved than they ever have been, and the reason is they're scared."

Coburn recognizes that the electorate is now paying very close attention to the conservative candidates who are promising to bring a new approach to DC, and a failure to follow through will be fatal to the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

"If the conservatives in Congress gain control and don't live up to expectations," he said, "the Republican Party will be dead."

He doesn't like the idea of a Newt Gingrich candidacy for president:

Coburn made it clear that he won't be on Newt Gingrich's 2012 presidential bandwagon.

Gingrich "is a super-smart man, but he doesn't know anything about commitment to marriage," he said of the thrice-married former House speaker. "He's the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States. His life indicates he does not have a commitment to the character traits necessary to be a great president."

Amen. Gingrich is a man of the Nineties, whose moment was 15 years ago and who frittered away that last "Republican Revolution." His Speakership began with calls to close the Department of Education, and ended with the status quo ante. Not sure he's the guy we need now that we are going to try to repeal Obamacare.

Coburn also took a shot at the military-industrial complex, something we've been hearing with increased volume from the Right:

Coburn also expanded on his recent criticism of arms spending, echoing President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 warning against the "military-industrial complex."

"I'm not capable of telling you, because I don't have the training, whether we have the forces we need," he said. "I can tell you that if you add our forces and compare them to the next 19 nations, ... we're stronger."

He continued: "The problem is, we have allowed the military-industrial complex to make things unaffordable. There's no choke chain. We need a choke chain. When the cost of an F-35 triples during development, something's wrong."

Harsh words, but it needs to be said. It's not anti-military or isolationist to demand that the military spending be more efficient. There were one too many Republican congressmen during the Bush years who did a lot of flag waving with one hand and wallet filling with the other. War pimps on the Right are just as bad as poverty pimps on the Left.

Coburn also brought some anti-left red meat:

As he has in the past, Coburn blasted health-care reform and traced the rise of medical costs to the introduction of Medicare in the 1960s. He said schools "are no longer about kids, they are about teachers' unions," and he claimed that academic achievement has gone down since the creation of the U.S. Department of Education, although some statistics argue otherwise.

Coburn also repeated what has become a popular line among conservatives - that "no one has ever been hired by a poor person" - to support tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

That's real principled Straight Talk, not media approved Straight Talk that serves to tweak and self-promote. Typically for our times, Coburn spoke these words before an audience of 65 rather than a bus full of chuckling journalists.

Coburn, along with Jim DeMint, David Vitter, John Kyl, and too few others, have been lonely voices the last 10 years. Hopefully, Coburn will have some company in the Senate after November because his perspective is one the country needs to hear.

California Polls

There's been some early polling in CA's major state races. With one exception, all are dead heats. Since this has been a left-liberal state since the mid-Nineties (and the state's large independent vote has a default setting which could be described as "public school liberalism"), that is quite a change. Must be some sort of devious Republican plot.

First off there's the governor's race between Jerry Brown (D) and Meg Whitman (R ca. 2008). Brown has a miniscule one point lead, combined with moderately high unfavorables. Personally, I've been saying Brown thinks he's going to lose because he's already prepping his "I was outspent/it was all advertising/voters are idiots" concession speech. Looks like the CA MSM has reached the same conclusion: Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown In Virtual Tie

California's race for governor is a dead heat, as Republican Meg Whitman's massive advertising blitz coupled with Democrat Jerry Brown's lo-fi campaign have raised doubts about Brown and cut his lead among Latino voters and other key Democratic constituencies, a Field Poll released today shows.

Brown leads Whitman 44 to 43 percent in the poll, with 13 percent undecided, according to Field's survey of 1,005 likely voters. The poll, conducted June 22 to July 5, has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.

But billionaire Whitman's relentless advertising campaign has helped sour voters' views of Brown, with 40 percent holding an unfavorable opinion of him - up from 25 percent in March 2009. Still, 42 percent view him favorably.

Voters feel similarly mixed about Whitman, with 40 percent viewing her favorably. But 42 percent view her unfavorably, up from 27 percent in March 2010, largely because of her bruising GOP primary against Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and attacks on her from union-backed independent expenditure groups.

Advertising? That's your analysis? The real problem for Brown is that CA has been living through a crisis of Big Government for the last 2 years brought on by an unholy combination of gold-plated pensions, out of control budgeting, a hostile business climate, uncontrolled illegal immigration, and sub-prime lending. None of these were "Republican" phenomenon. They are exactly the sort of results you get when you elect Democrats into the vast majority of state offices. More of the same isn't going to cut it this year.

But, sure, it's the advertising.

The race for Barbara Boxer's Senate seat is also all tied up, with The Box weighed down by an emphatic 52% disapproval rating. It could be that this is because she is one of the worst Democrats in the state, a shrill loudmouth who thinks she's smart because she's a liberal. That's not the spin coming out of the state run media, however:

One of Boxer's more vexing problems, analysts say, is that opposition to her is not just about her. She has become an avatar for broader voter frustrations about the struggling economy, President Obama and the growth of the federal government.

"It's a reflection of the effectiveness of a Republican strategy to characterize Sen. Boxer as everything that's wrong with the government," said Larry Berman, a professor of political science at UC Davis. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., another longtime Democrat facing a tough re-election challenge, faces a similar predicament, Berman said.

Sorry, La Box is the face of progressive government in all its nannying "call me ma'am" glory. That's not a Republican talking point. It's a fact of life.

In the attorney's general race, Republican Steve Cooley enjoys a slight lead over SF's very own DA Kamala Harris. Of course, 70% of the poll's respondents said they'd never heard of Cooley or Harris, which is par for course for down ticket races. If Cooley has half a brain, he will make sure voters know what a terrible district attorney Harris has been. I mean, take your pick. There's her refusal to seek the death penalty for a cop killer. There's the on-going problem in the drug lab. There's her office's apparent failure to turn over evidence of impeachment evidence to defense attorneys. There's their pitifully small conviction rate. And there's the program that managed to protect illegal alien juveniles from ICE, at least one of whom went on to murder a local butcher and his sons. The one thing Harris has going for her is that she presents well; she's cool, professional and always looks good in her suit. Still, I can't shake the nagging feeling that Cooley's one of those guys who likes to pompously reject "negative campaigning."

The only race that is a rout so far is the one for Lieutenant Governor, where SF mayor Gavin Newsom has a 9 point lead over moderate Republican - and incumbent LG - Abel Maldonado.

The Field Poll shows Newsom leading incumbent Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado - who took office as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointee in April - by nine percentage points, with 23 percent of likely voters undecided.

"It's still early. Relatively few people are aware of any of the candidates except Newsom," said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. "His lead is based on name recognition - it's not really a level playing field yet, but it will be before we get to the election."

While Newsom is much better known than Maldonado, a former state senator, the poll shows that he also has far higher negatives: 67 percent of voters know of the San Francisco mayor, but 41 percent of those polled hold a negative image of him and just 26 percent have a favorable opinion. Those negatives skyrocket among Republicans: 66 percent of GOP voters polled have an unfavorable opinion, while 42 percent of Democrats view him positively.

Newsom's challenge, DiCamillo said, will be to reinforce his positive image but also attempt to define Maldonado before the Republican can define himself.

I'm honestly torn about this one. On the one hand, Newsom is a SF Democrat. On the other, Maldonado is practically the poster boy for the sort of moderate Republican squishes who have enabled so much of the destructive policies wrought by the state's progressive politicians. He provided the crucial third GOP vote for the "Debt & Taxes" budget deal that was rejected in last year's Special Election. He was also behind the open primaries initiative from last month. The man simply can't be trusted to stand firm for anything beyond his own re-election. At least I know where Newsom's coming from.

Clearly, the closeness of most of these races testifies to the major opportunity Republicans have in a state that really hasn't voted in large numbers of Republicans in a long time. As with Scott Brown's election, the job of the GOP candidates is to convince the many millions of people who have been lazily voting for Democrats for the past decade that, no, Republicans are not evil and that voting for one won't cause you to burst into flame. We're probably lucky that this year the GOP did not nominate any "social conservative with mistress" types. But Whitman and (especially) Fiorina have the chance to do some real good this year. Hopefully, they won't blow it.

Smiles, everybody! Smiles!

Morning After: Reflections on the Primary

Actually, it's a little after lunchtime. Too late for a real "morning after."

Now that Meg Whitman has won the GOP nomination, a surprising number of commentators have declared the election to be hers to lose. That may be, but she will still have to wade through millions of dollars worth of union funded ads declaring her to be a heartless CEO who starves babies and fire-fighters for fun. She will also have to deal with a state-wide MSM that will happily parrot the liberal talking point of the day. Jerry Brown is Big Government's last line of defense, and they will drag him across the finish line, if need be.

Yeah, it's disappointing that Chuck DeVore didn't win the Senate nomination, coming in third with about 18% of the vote. That's about how much Tom McClintock got when he ran in the 2003 recall election. I think we can safely say that the population of the truly "doctrinaire" California conservatives is not too big.

I've been critical of Carly Fiorina these past few months, but credit where credit's due. She ran a good campaign and beat one of those watery California moderates, which is a good thing. She'll need to run a gaffe-proof campaign to beat The Boxer, though.

Ugh. John Eastman lost. Too bad.

The DA from San Francisco (Kamala Harris) and the DA from Los Angeles (Steve Cooley) will face off for the attorney general job. Harris is good looking and exudes a sense of competence and command. But, her tenure as SF's DA has been a disaster complete with crime lab scandals, mass dismissals of criminal complaints, the shielding of murderous illegal aliens, and the inevitable refusal to seek the death penalty against a cop killer. Hopefully, whoever is running Cooley's campaign can read the newspapers, but I can't shake the feeling that he's one of those guys who doesn't like "negative campaigning."

Apparently, MSNBC and some other MSM outlets got overly excited about GOP Secretary of State candidate Orly Taitz who is (a) Birther (b) a vexatious litigant and (c) a cougar with a crazy eye. Grow up, and how about profiling Damon Dunn, the guy who won going away? He's as impressive as Taitz is deranged. But, we all know the MSM hates covering guys like Dunn.

The turn-out in SF was a measly 23%, which works out to about 100,000 people. 83,000 of them approved Prop. G, which makes it official City policy that the high speed rail terminus will be located at the Transbay Terminal in downtown SF. Ten years from now, when you have to spend months on end sitting in traffic (after sitting in Bay Bridge construction traffic for most of the 2000's) while the high speed rail lines are laid, just remember that it's because of a relative handful of voters voting in a low-turnout election, approving something that City politicos didn't want to have to go on the record as supporting. Direct democracy simply doesn't result in good public policy.

I've seen some hopeful commentary to the effect that Blanche Lincoln's primary victory shows that the anti-incumbent wave has crested. You wish. The real anti-incumbent wave is coming from the Right and the Center. Lincoln was being hit from her Left by a public union sector that has lost all credibility with the voters. They were hardly representative of the sort of voters who are "anti-incumbent."

I've seen a lot of talk about how the many GOP women who won last night are a sign that this is some sort of Year of the Woman. I'd say it's a reflection of something that has been an open secret on the Right: the most conservative people tend to be the women. Who are the male equivalents to Sarah Palin, Phyllis Shlafely or Ann Coulter, for example? More important, the male Republicans who have been in office the last 15 years, and who have been the face of the party, have made a real hash of things. Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking of:

Trent Lott

Tom DeLay

Jack Abramoff

Dennis Hastert

Bill Frist

Ed Gillespie

Henry Paulson

Alberto Gonzalez

Paul O'Neil

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Mark Foley

Mark Sanford

Everyone else in South Carolina, except Jim DeMint

Bernard Kerick

Mitt Romney (for Romneycare)

Scott McClellan

Richard Armitage

Colin Powell

Tom Cambell

Chris Cox

Bob Livingstone

Duke Cunningham

___________________ (write in your favorite here)

Like the management at GM, the men in the GOP Establishment started from a position of strength and frittered it away in a cloud of Big Government and "moderation." The women who won last night are not some sort of gender vanguard. They are merely the public face of the GOP's strongest supporters, who are now taking back the party.

Free Will Endorsements: Chuck DeVore for Senate

Actually, the race for the Republican nomination to take on Barbara Boxer (or Mickey Kaus!) has already ended, but for the shouting. Tom Campbell has apparently run out of money and has pulled his advertising, while Chuck DeVore has started mailing it in. So, regardless of what Free Will says, it looks like Carly Fiorina will be the Republican nominee for Senate.

Still, we are nothing if not stubborn around here, and endorsements shouldn't be about "electability" or whatever. It should be about who is best suited to carry the conservative Republican banner against one of the most obnoxiously liberal Senators (or coolest bloggers!) in the state. And, I think that person is Chuck DeVore.

DeVore has lived life as a real Californian. He has not spent his life as a political activist. He has not been a meritocrat talking grandly at Davos. The Boxer might understand life in the Bay Area. Fiorina might understand Silicon Valley. But, DeVore knows about life in the "other" California: the Central Valley, Bakersfield, Long Beach, all the areas that are the economic - as opposed to the intellectual - lifeblood of this state. Listen to DeVore talk about California energy policy sometime, and you begin to realize, not just how much potential there still exists in this state, but also how much of it is being squandered or allowed to fester.

DeVore's life experience is that of someone far removed from the gentry liberalism of La Box. The most obvious is his active status with the Army Reserve. Lesser souls have subjected his service to a parsing worthy of a Sarah Palin pregnancy, but the fact is that DeVore has made real sacrifices that his rivals can't begin to match. Interestingly, he was on active duty during the LA riots, which ought to have given him an insight into the human condition (not to mention the destructive wrought by progressive urban politics) that, again, The Boxer can only have heard of second hand.

Most important, DeVore is not a squish. We would not have to worry about how he would vote, or whether he would be sufficiently dedicated to the limited government philosophy from which so many of his colleagues have strayed (and for which Carly Fiorina has no demonstrable affinity). The media short-hand for DeVore is that he is a "doctrinaire conservative." Damn right he is. There a problem with that? After all, California hasn't been a conservative state in at least 20 years. The problems the state has had over the last two decades have been the result of out-of-control liberalism, aided and abetted by the occasional "moderate" Republican looking for some good press. A dose of doctrinaire conservatism would be a change of pace that the state should embrace, and so should the Republican Party. (anyway, why is it OK for Barbara Boxer to be a doctrinaire liberal...)

DeVore is likely going to down to noble defeat on June 8, but that doesn't mean conservatives have to play along. Tom Campbell is going down in defeat, which is very good news. Hopefully, he will be the last of California's media-approved harmless moderates. With Campbell gone, we don't have to worry about splitting the vote with Fiorina. And, she needs to know how many conservatives are out there in the state who don't quite buy the idea that she is "one of them" when she has absolutely no political record that pre-dates 2008. A vote for DeVore is a vote for the best Republican in the race. You ought to choose accordingly.

Vote Right: Carly Fiorina & The California Republican Senate Primary

The hotly contested Republican Senate primary is winding down, and it looks like Carly Fiorina will prevail against moderate Tom Campbell and true blue conservative Chuck DeVore. But, for some reason, the California MSM has been going out of its way to broadcast to Republicans that nominating Carly will cause us to miss out on the one guy who can beat The Boxer: Latest Senate Poll Leaves GOP Questioning If Their Favorite Candidate Can Win In November

A new poll that has shaken up the GOP race for U.S. Senate is triggering some soul-searching in the California Republican Party. The question: Should Republicans in the June 8 primary vote their hearts or their minds?

Or put another way: Should they elect the candidate they feel most passionate about — or the person who can kick the Democrat they can't stand out of office come November?

The poll by the Los Angeles Times and University of Southern California clearly shows that U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer is unpopular with voters, but in a theoretical matchup, only one of the three GOP primary candidates can beat her: former Silicon Valley congressman Tom Campbell.

But the poll also indicates that Campbell might not have the chance to face Boxer: Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has a huge lead in the three-way primary contest to decide which Republican will run against Boxer in the fall.

Uhhh, is that the same Tom Campbell who already won a previous Republican Senate nomination (in 2000) and lost by 20 percentage points? The same Tom Campbell whom we were told back then was "the only person who could beat Diane Feinstein?" Is this the same Tom Campbell who has been credibly linked to Islamist radicals? The same Tom Campbell who supported the tax-and-debt budget "deal" that was rejected by the voters in the May 2009 Special Election? The same Tom Campbell who helped draft the 2005 California budget? The one that has since blown up? 'Cuz if you mean that Tom Campbell, I don't think there's any way any real Republican could vote for him.

You have to love this analysis that Fiorina has rendered herself unelectable by running to the right. Have the journalists offering this free advice to the GOP ever heard of the conventional strategy of running to the Right in the primary and tacking to the Center in the general? It's happened before, you know. If Fiorina has rendered herself "unelectably conservative," can someone tell me what her conservative positions are? She has absolutely no political record that pre-dates 2008. And, no, being a CEO and laying off thousands of people is not "conservative."

Fiorina, and the journalists covering her, might believe she is "conservative" only because they have met so few of them. But, the fact is that Fiorina is about as conservative as, say, John McCain or David Brooks. I'm sure The Boxer will do her best to paint Fiorina as a wild-eyed right winger, but she is going to have to dig deep to find any red meat.

I'm not enthusiastic about the impending Fiorina victory, but feel comfortable rejecting any advice from the MSM about who would have the "best" chance of winning in November. Guys like Campbell are liberal's favorite Republicans because (1) they lose and (2) if they somehow win, they can usually be intimidated into supporting liberal initiatives for fear of losing their "moderate" label. Republicans have no reason to following this sort of "expert" advice.

Devore-ing

Just as an addendum to the previous post, I was listening to the radio this morning and heard Chuck DeVore discussing Assembly Democrat's plan to "save" welfare by borrowing billions of dollars against the recycling Fund and raising taxes on state oil producers. As usual, DeVore was very impressive, pointing out that California is the third largest oil producing state in the country (did you know that?), and that state oil producers already pay an enormous amount of tax on their activities. They even pay property tax on the oil that is still in the ground! DeVore can talk energy policy almost as well as Sarah Palin, and hearing him left me chomping at the bit to see him square off against The Boxer.

But, here's the thing, neither DeVore, nor the interviewer (local red-meat KSFO host Brian Sussman) mentioned DeVore's Senate campaign! Instead, Sussman signed off with an anodyne "good luck in your future endeavors." Sussman is as partisan as it gets. He's been sticking his nose into every California state primary race, even in the ones like for Secretary of State where only one person is running for the GOP nomination. Surely, he would have said something about DeVore's campaign, unless DeVore asked him not to.

DeVore's campaign web site is still active. He's still soliciting donations with an "All Hands On Deck"/"Three Weeks To Go" appeal, but it looks like he's already preparing for a loss. Certainly, Carly Fiorina's Palin-derived surge has to be a blow. I made fun of Red State for demanding that DeVore drop out if he hadn't caught up to Fiorina by now. It could be he's looking to do just that.

Hors DeCombat

Now that Richard Blumenthal has helped make attacking your political opponent's military service acceptable, Chuck DeVore - who has used his active duty army reserve status as a talking point - suddenly finds his service subject to a parsing worthy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Carly Fiornina Campaign leads the charge: Carly Fiorina Publicly Attacks A Military Reservist

In California people get to put a descriptor on their ballot line item describing who they are. Carly put “business executive”, even though she hasn’t been one since 2005. She really does not want Chuck DeVore to have “military reservist” on his line.

Fiorina’s campaign, when contacted, said DeVore is not a military reservist. Have they even bothered checking up on DeVore? If they had, not only would they realize they were disparaging Chuck DeVore’s service to his country, but they would hopefully recognize just how petty it is to bicker over a title.

Jennifer Rubin at Contentions susses out the nuances on two issues: (1) did DeVore blur the distinction between being an active military reservist and being active military? and (2) did he exaggerate about coming under live fire in Lebanon during the 1980's?: Did Chuck DeVore Exaggerate His Military Service?

In a radio debate, he said he was the only candidate who’d served in the military: “I’m a lieutenant colonel of military intelligence within the U.S. Army,” he said. The Times acknowledges that his campaign literature refers to him as a “lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army retired reserves.” And DeVore argues that it is technically correct to say he is “in the Army” since the reserves are part of the Army. OK, Isort of buy that — but he certainly must have known that the listening audience would have thought he meant the regular Army.

...

He spoke during the debate of being “shot at in Lebanon” but did not make clear that the shooting occurred in the 1980s while DeVore was a college student studying Arabic and other subjects in the Middle East. Nor did he note that while the shooting was in his vicinity, there was no indication he was a target or was in actual danger.

Contentions has actually had some of the best coverage of the California Senate race, including some of the only discussion outside the campaign of Campbell's problematic associations with Islamist radicals, so I would take her questioning seriously. So does the DeVore camp, which quickly contacted her to set the record straight:

I actually have the micro-cassette recording of Lebanon. You can hear multiple bursts of automatic weapons fire with the Israeli officer finally saying “OK, we are done” and then ordering the press off the hill. Zelnick stayed to complete his report, BTW, much to the discomfort of his cameraman.

And here is what Devore has to say about his service on his campaign website:

In 1983, Chuck enlisted in the United States Army Reserve. He earned an ROTC scholarship that allowed him to attend Claremont McKenna College where he graduated with honors with a degree in Strategic Studies in 1985 and was commissioned an officer. He also studied overseas at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. After more than 24 years of active reserve service, Chuck retired from the Army National Guard. He is now a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army retired Reserve. A graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, his awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal with bronze oak leaf cluster, and others.

Regarding the issue of reservist vs. active duty and DeVore's supposed shading of the difference: all of the military reservists I've known take their duties very seriously and consider themselves to be "in the army" (or whatever branch they're in). They have to participate in regular training exercises that are just as demanding and dangerous as those in the "regular" army. They can be called up to active duty and shipped overseas, as has happened a lot in the last decade. They wear the same uniform, serve the same nation, and get shot at by the same bullets. DeVore's supposed "sin" is that he said said he served "within the US Army." Come on! That sounds like a short-hand way of respecting the distinction between reserves and regulars, while also demanding acknowledgement that his service did require a certain degree of sacrifice and valor. This may be hard for the Fiorina campaign, and others, to understand.

As for whether or not he came under live fire in Lebanon...I think everyone involved in the telling of the tale can agree that DeVore - who was NOT in the reserves, but was part of a press pool - was in the proximity of live ammunition fired by hostiles. No, DeVore was not a specific target; the Israelis he was with were the targets. But he could have been hurt/killed all the same. DeVore has told the story as a sort "I've heard the bullets fly" tale that Al Gore has retailed in the past. Certainly, the experience of being near combat operations was one that would have an effect on anybody, and would be something they would want to refer to as part of their life experience. Rubin draws an analogy between this and Hillary Clinton's Bosnian sniper story, which is completely (heh heh) off the mark.

(As a side-note, Devore has said elsewhere in his campaign literature that he was on active duty during the LA riots where he "came under fire." Not sure how useful it is for someone to claim combat experience as part of a race riot, but there you have it).

If DeVore were not rising in the polls, no one would care about this. Instead, we are being treated to the sort of CV parsing that seems to afflict disfavored candidates, and which other candidates seem to magically avoid. I haven't seen too much media or political curiosity about the manner in which Joe Sestack was relieved of command and demoted from a three-star to two-star admiral just one year before he began his congressional career, for example. And, this sort of thing has a long sordid history. Witness LBJ, who managed to finagle a cushy state-side assignment during WW2, and then turned a single Pacific fly-over into "combat experience" that he flagged nearly as much as his "Texas po-boy" roots; versus Joe McCarthy, who was endlessly derided as "Tailgunner Joe" despite his having flown numerous combat missions.

Worse, it is only the guys who actually serve who seem to receive this sort of treatment. Say what you will about people like Richard Blumenthal, Al Gore, John Kerry*, Dan Quayle, and George W Bush; at least they served in some capacity, while others stayed home. Their reward seems to be the second-guessing of their service by people who weren't there and who don't want to have to acknowledge the sacrifices that any sort of military service entails.

*let's leave Kerry's contemptible post-combat behavior to the side for the moment. He probably saw more active duty combat than almost anyone else among his colleagues in the Democratic caucus. Maybe he was a lousy commanding officer, but that was hardly a unique position.