Its Own Penchant For Appealing To Racists Killed Off The California Republican Party. The Same Thing Will Happen In Texas

Still Not Working For Them

“The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time,” wrote former Assembly Republican leader Kristin Olsen this week. “The Grand Old Party is dead-- partly because it has failed to separate itself from today’s toxic, national brand of Republican politics.” She tried to blame Trump, rather than the hateful zombies at the base of the party, lured by the messaging of people like herself as much as by Trump. The party was headed to the garbage heap of history when Trump was still calling himself a Democrat. Fortunately for Democrats, many Republicans have an even worse way of looking at the party’s demise-- one that will only make the hole they’re in deeper and less escapable. Former state party chair Shawn Steele, a member of the RNC, argues that it wasn’t Trump who lost Orange County for the party. He laid the blame on millions of dollars in “dark money” raised by Democrats, who he said were aided by better organization and help from the tech industry in Silicon Valley. And-- without any substantiation-- Steele also claimed Democratic voter registration drives produced “borderline fraudulent turnout rates” in some key districts. As long as the GOP steeps itself in that kind of delusion, it will never get back on its feet.

No California seats flipped from blue to red, or even came close to that, despite some corruption issues hanging over a few of the less savory members of Team Blue. These are the California seats that did flip this cycle-- every one of them from red to blue:

• CA-10 (Central Valley)- Josh Harder will be replacing Jeff Denham
• CA-25 (Santa Clarita/Antelope Valley)- Katie Hill will be replacing Steve Knight
• CA-45 (central Orange County)- Katie Porter will be replacing Mimi Walters
• CA-48 (coastal Orange County)- Harley Rouda will be replacing Dana Rohrabacher
• CA-49 (Orange County/San Diego)- Mike Levin will be replacing Darrell Issa.

As it stands right now, Gil Cisneros is likely to win in CA-39, C.J. Cox may replace David Valadao in CA-21 and there is even a remote chance that Ammar Campa-Najjar will wind up beating Druncan Hunter in CA-50. The Orange County before and after map is startling-- especially to Republicans. As I’ve said many times, what Bavaria was for the Nazi Party, Orange County was for the Republican Party. And, they’ve been losing ground there year by year, one district at a time until… now there are none! [NOTE: Last yesterday, Gil Cisneros finally did beat Republican Young Kim, meaning there are now no Republicans representing Orange County in Congress-- just six Democrats. This is a political earthquake.]

Statewide, Republican registration numbers have dropped so precipitously, that they now rank lower than decline-to-state voters. Last year, the California GOP delegation in the House was the biggest. That’s over… probably for the foreseeable future. Even if Valadao survives, he has only taken 51% of the vote and he can expect a stronger and more focused campaign against him in 2020. Hunter-- disgraced and likely to be headed to prison-- will probably resign before the term ends. A special election might go poorly for Republicans who sold voters on Hunter’s supposed “innocence.”

Over the weekend, reporting for Politico, Carla Marinucci wrote that Republicans are lashing out at the state party in the wake of the disaster. “Near political annihilation… has left even longtime conservative stronghold Orange County bereft of a single Republican in the House of Representatives; a growing chorus of GOP loyalists here say there’s only one hope for reviving the flatlining party: Blow it up and start again from scratch.” Easier said than done.

“I believe that the party has to die before it can be rebuilt. And by die-- I mean, completely decimated. And I think Tuesday night was a big step," says veteran California GOP political consultant Mike Madrid. “There is no message. There is no messenger. There is no money. And there is no infrastructure.”

Republicans like Madrid also mourned another low point this week: the defeat of Southern California Assemblyman Dante Acosta, marking the demise of the last GOP Latino legislator-- in a state where Latinos comprise the fastest-growing electorate.

“The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time. The Grand Old Party is dead,” wrote former state GOP Assembly leader Kristin Olsen, who startled fellow Republicans with a brutally frank op-ed this week saying Republicans must acknowledge their “serious problem” in California, particularly the effects of toxicity of President Trump.

GOP strategist John Weaver, who has worked California races and also has represented the presidential campaign of Ohio governor John Kasich, seconded Olsen’s view, tweeting that the effects of the Trump presidency have doomed any chance of resurrection. “In one fell swoop Trump & Republicans who willingly handcuffed themselves to him have turned Orange County into a GOP wasteland," he tweeted this week. “You want to see the future? Look no further than the demographic death spiral in the place once considered a cornerstone of the party.”

Madrid argues that many California Republican leaders remain in complete denial of the fact that their continued support of Trump presidency has sealed the fate of the GOP-- and last week’s midterm elections revealed the true extent of the GOP’s rot in California, where the state party has now shrunken to third party status.

“Now, it’s just open warfare. The barbarians have broken through the gates. The army is in full retreat," said Madrid, who adds there’s no hope left for a party that for years has been on a path toward destruction. “Burn it to the ground. I want to reconstitute."

… [A] leading pro-Trump Republican voice-- former gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Travis Allen, a far-right conservative who fully supports the president’s wall and immigration policies-- has kicked off his campaign to head the state GOP, announcing that it’s time to “take back California.”

But a growing number of Republicans in the party’s #NeverTrump wing-- which includes prominent strategists like Rob Stutzman and Luis Alvarado-- insist that a new beginning will rely heavily on a full-throated repudiation of Trump’s caustic divisiveness. They believe the rebuilding process could require years, if not generations, to rid the state GOP of the taint of a president who is blamed for ramping up anti-immigrant sentiment in a state that is home to more immigrants than any other in the country.

This isn’t the first time the dilapidated Republican Party in California has faced a dire outlook-- or debated the notion that it must be completely overhauled. In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was lambasted by Republicans when he delivered an address to their state convention warning that the GOP was “dying at the box office" because they lacked inclusive messaging and policies, particularly to minorities who now dominate the state’s demographics.

And in assuming the leadership of the party in 2013, former state Sen. Jim Brulte predicted it would take at least six years to rebuild the structure and fundraising strength of the Republican Party in California. He warned then that Republicans would need to “either stop the bleeding and/or start turning it around” in 2014-- or the party will be in the pits “for the rest of the decade.”

None of that altered the party’s downward trajectory, however, or caused a wholesale rethinking among some leading candidates and party leaders. Madrid cites the recent gubernatorial contest in which Republican nominee John Cox, who described himself repeatedly as a “Jack Kemp” Republican, pushed for Trump policies that are abhorrent to many Californians.

“It is completely unfathomable...for a Republican nominee to run on building a wall," said Madrid, a nationally recognized expert on Latino voting trends who noted that the party has spent 20 years trying to extricate itself from the damage done by Prop. 187, the anti-illegal immigration ballot measure that eviscerated Latino support in the state. “And everyone acts like it’s normal...Cox was running on that, in California. Are you out of your mind?”

Madrid, who most recently advised the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, said the party needs to stop looking for silver bullets-- like a gas tax repeal-- and confront the disintegration of some of the state GOP’s once most reliable electorates, especially college-educated voters and women.

“We hemorrhaged college-educated Republican voters on Tuesday night. The ‘diploma divide’ is a very real thing,” he said. “The smaller it gets, the more monolithic is gets. The whiter it gets. The more populist-nationalist it gets. What you’re seeing in the Republican Party is that it’s the party of white identity politics.”

Democratic political strategist Darry Sragow says if the party continues on its current path, its complete disintegration is entirely predictable.

“They’re down to 24 percent registration. And the reason is that they have a huge deficit with Latinos, with African Americans... and with Asian Americans. And they now have a deficit with whites," he said. “You’re talking about a party where 77 percent of Republican likely voters in California are white. And the population that’s white here is 39 percent.”

His advice: “They have to take down the ‘whites only’ sign from the clubhouse door," Sragow says. “And if they’re willing to allow people who aren’t white into the club, they may be able to recover."

“I think that the GOP is capable of turning itself around, because it’s a well-established brand," he said. “The problem is, the people who manage the party are going to have to be willing to do that. And by definition, they are the opposite of that. They have no interest in that.”

Death Spiral

2017, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 8): Republican Words As Windows To Their Souls. Round 2

-by Noah

As I said in the intro of Round 1 on this topic a few days ago, the old saying goes that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Ah, but that presumes that republicans aren’t soulless creatures. Their words and actions indicate otherwise. I mean; can you imagine that any soul or that any soul would want to live in such a spiritually toxic body as that of Paul Ryan or Donald Trump?

For this round, I thought it would be good to deal with the topic of health care, since it was such a driving force behind the psychotic and sociopathic actions of republicans in 2017.

The following quotes are actual words from the mouths of these horrors.

1. Kellyanne Conway, White House Spokescretin:

Those on Medicaid who will lose health insurance can always get jobs.

And what jobs are those Kellyanne? What jobs with benefits? What jobs for people who are so disabled that that is why they are on Medicaid in the first place? This is classic Republican “Let them eat cake” stuff. Or, to put it another way, they’re saying “Let them eat shit.”

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans are on Medicaid. Do the math. Are there really enough jobs to cover that 1 in 5 of 325,000,000 citizens? How many of those jobs Kellyanne and her despicable ilk yap about will provide enough salary to deal with an onslaught of six-figure cancer treatment bills? Oh, and since Medicaid covers two-thirds of our people in nursing homes, please tell me, Kellyanne, what jobs will they be getting? Medicaid also covers 1 out of 3 American children. What jobs do you have planned for them, Kellyanne, even after your psychotic party has done away with child labor laws?

Conway’s statement isn’t just classic republican “fuck all of you” talk. The kind of person who would make such a statement is either so far out of touch that they belong in a home for the insane, or, they are just so filled with contempt for humanity that it was their consciously planned and thought out message to mankind. It also reminds me of Trump’s blissfully moronic Economic Council Director, Gary Cohn stating that a family getting a $1000 tax break could use it to renovate their kitchen or buy a new car. Really, one can remodel a kitchen for only a $1000? And, does that $1000 car come with wheels that turn?

Come to think of it, Kellyanne is already in a home for the insane. It’s called the White House.

2. $enator Chuck Grassley of Iowa:

Here’s Chucky saying he’s going to vote against health care for his fellow Americans even though he sees reasons why that “might” be the wrong thing to do.

I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn’t be considered. But republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.

No, Mr. Grasshole. your responsibility is to do what is right for the people who voted for you even if they were stupid enough for you. And, since when has a politician held his or her campaign promises sacred? You are being so extremely disingenuous here that you should get some sort of award. I can think of several forms that award could take.

Obviously Grasshole doesn’t get any of this, and if he did he wouldn’t give a shit anyway. He’s got his health care and we pay for it. For him, as for most of his colleagues, it’s all about doing what is best for his corporate masters who keep him afloat with bribes in the form of “campaign contributions”. Keep in mind that when confronted with the stories about Roy Moore and underage girls, he laughed his head off, right on TV. They don’t come much lower than Chucky.



3. Señor Trumpanzee himself:

Let Obamacare implode.

Back in July, Trump had words, what he would call “the best words” after the $enate, controlled by his Republican Party, dramatically failed to repeal Obamacare, at least temporarily. It was a bitter disappointment for a party that aspires to be a party of mass murderers by taking way the insurance of tens of millions of Americans.

Republicans in Washington have voted over 60 times but they have failed. They’ve managed to hurt Obamacare, aka The Affordable Care Act, many times, often by denying it funding at the state level or removing funding for advertising the availability of the program. Only with their Christmas Tax Scam vote have they dealt it a serious blow. But the July failure was because there were 3 republican senators who were capable of mustering some level of temporary sanity and moral bearing. While the rest of the repug senators in the building fancied themselves as carrying on and building upon the works of people like Charlie Manson or the Zodiac Killer, Senators Collins, McCain, and Murkowski said no to the republican dream of “No Chemo For You.” That the final vote was a stunner is a measure of what republicans are.

Trump didn’t stop. Next he tantrum tweeted is demand:

Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead! Demand another vote before voting on any other bill!

And, tweeted some overt threats (his caps, not mine):

If a new Healthcare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!

Señor Trumpanzee’s threat against the insurance companies would sabotage not only Obamacare, but the entire healthcare industry. This is the action of a madman intent on creating as much mayhem and death as he possibly can.

It seems that no amount of American carnage will be enough to satisfy the dreams of the raging Trumpanzee. To top it off, a few days later, in New York, Trump spoke to a confab of New York police and made his implode statement to the cheers of the police. That was especially heinous when one considers that the police Trump was speaking to, like the republican senators who repeatedly vote against Obamacare, enjoy the benefits of government health care, not only for themselves but for their families, for life. So much for the concept of “protect and serve.”

4. Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho:

“No one dies because they don’t have access to healthcare.”

When Labrador said that, it got me to thinking about other things that Republicans believe:

• Contraception does not work. No one gets pregnant from not using contraception. Only an aspirin held firmly between the knees is necessary.
• No one dies from a gun fired by a mentally ill person
• Trump is not a neo-Nazi.
• Putin, now that’s a leader and the Russian are our friends!
• There’s no need for having a woman on the panel dealing with healthcare.
• Some rape is legitimate.
• Jesus is coming tomorrow, no, wait, next week, no wait, next month, no wait…
• Voter Fraud exists on a wide scale but Election Fraud does not exist at all.
• All Syrians are terrorists by their very nature.
• There’s such a thing as corn oil so how can a flood of oil in a cornfield be bad? Pipes never leak anyway.
• Trump is not mentally ill.
• Gay conversion therapy is swell.
• Domestic violence should be strictly between one man and one woman.
• Republicans need protection from the spells of witches.
• There’s no need for a presidential candidate to release their taxes to the public.
• Tax cuts beget the tickle down.
• Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan.
• The fact that reports of Gen. Flynn’s activities have been reported in the news is more important than those activities.

5. Mike Pence, Vice President and Chief Verbal Fellator To Señor Trumpanzee

Every day Obamacare survives is another day America suffers.

Yeah, right. Asshole. No further comment necessary.