Passing The Law of Unintended Consequences

While I am still bitterly muttering under my breath over California's non-participation in the GOP wave, at least one tiny little silver lining has appeared. Although voters passed Prop. 23, which affirmed the state's cap&trade law, they also approved Prop. 26, which requires a supermajority to pass fees and regulatory charges. Horrified global warming fans are starting to realize that the supermajority will make it highly unlikely that many of the fees and charges built into cap&trade will ever pass.

Has the popping of Champagne corks been premature?

We're referring to the defeat of Proposition 23, which has been hailed as the game-winning home run for California's climate change law.

But celebrations have turned to fears about the impact of what some have called its "evil twin" - Prop. 26, which passed Tuesday. That's the initiative relabeling environmental mitigation and other fees as taxes, requiring the virtually impossible to get two-thirds vote, thus starving state and local treasuries even further.

"In effect they will stop (AB32, the climate change law) with this," said Scott Hauge, president of Small Business California, who supports the law, "along with many of us in the business community." Hauge was referring to San Ramon's Chevron Corp. (which was "neutral" on Prop. 23) and the California Chamber of Commerce, both of which poured millions of dollars into Prop. 26.

According to a UCLA School of Law study last week, the initiative "could have substantial and wide-ranging impacts on implementation of the state's health, safety and environmental laws," including AB32. Noting that the state imposes regulatory fees for such programs, the study said Prop. 26 will "make it harder to fund these programs in the future."

First of all, when are we ever going to admit that ballot propositions like these are far from ideal? Voters hardly have the time and inclination to figure out how a particular proposition might play out, let alone how it might affect other propositions.

Still, if there is one area of law that deserves to be thrown into chaos, it's this one. Californians are famously pro-environment (who isn't? I like birds and blue skies, too), but state progressives use that tendency to craft all sorts of growth-smothering, business-destroying environmental regulations that are more about power and control than they are about saving the planet.

Californian pols are also adept to appealing to state voters' vanity. Despite years of depression level economics, everyone from the Governator on down likes to talk about how California is "on the vanguard" and "leading the way" for the rest of the country. Then they strike heroic socialist realist poses for the cameras while looking purposefully into the distance (I call this the Year Zero Face). The state's cap&trade law promises blue skies, which everyone hears about, but relies on faulty science and an enormous tax burden to accomplish its goals. Somehow this is never quite included in the discussion.

Still, while I like the idea of the state's environmental regs being thrown into at least temporary chaos, I do need to castigate the state GOP, which really slept on this and other propositions, all to its extreme disadvantage. For example, there was Prop. 25, which eliminated the supermajority requirement for passing taxes. I am a pretty plugged in guy, but until I read the voter guide a couple days before the election, I hadn't heard a word about this. By contrast, you couldn't listen to the radio for 20 minutes without hearing a "Pass 26" ad. Losing the tax supermajority was a disaster for the state, the taxpayers, and to the GOP. There was no organized opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of voters hadn't heard of Prop. 25 until they entered the voting booth.

Meanwhile, no Republican stood up to support passing Prop. 23. Our Republican governor led the opposition! Our Republican candidate for governor refused to say anything. And our Republican Senate candidate, when asked directly her position on Prop. 23, said she hadn't studied the issue. What do you need to study? By contrast, Barbara Boxer had a ready answer.

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.

That's how it's done state GOP.

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.

Lawyers, Guns, & Money: H-P's Bribery Scandal

Gotta love the "H-P Way." The company has just disclosed that the SEC is investigating it for paying bribes in Russia and other exotic locales. But, the H-P executives carrying the suitcases full of cash no doubt filled out all of their expense reports properly!

Hewlett-Packard Co. disclosed Thursday that a probe by the U.S. Department

of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission of possible bribes the

company paid in Russia is now wider than previously reported.

The disclosure, in an SEC filing, pertains to a long-running German investigation of

allegations that H-P, through a German subsidiary, paid bribes in Russia to secure a

contract valued at €35 million, or about $44.5 million, with the office of the

prosecutor general of the Russian Federation.

The contract spanned 2001 to 2006 and was for the delivery and installation of an

information technology network.

U.S. authorities have joined in that probe, as The Wall Street Journal first reported

in August.

Thursday's filing says U.S. authorities recently requested information about "certain

governmental and quasi-governmental transactions in Russia and in the

Commonwealth of Independent States subregion dating back to 2000." The wording

of the filing suggests a broader probe than previously revealed.

An H-P spokeswoman said investigators were focused "primarily" on the contract

with the Russian prosecutor's office but that they have "now expanded their

investigations beyond that particular transaction."

She said H-P "has been fully cooperating with the investigating authorities."

H-P strikes me as being very similar to those politicians who proclaim they are going to "drain the swamp" and run "the most ethical administration ever" - and then preside over worse corruption than before. Their focus is always on whether the right form has been filled out, and whether this guy or that guy has been chatting up this or that blonde. They never seem to focus on whether or not bribing foreign officials is the right thing to do. I won't even mention what I think about my crappy H-P printer.

The bribery allegations date from 2001 - 2006, btw, in case any of you are out there thinking Carly Fiorina was the best possible candidate for Senate. You may also recall that it came up in one of the GOP debates that Fiorina's H-P had used a subsidiary to sell printer ink in Iran. Think we'll be hearing more about this?

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.

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.