When I read the headline, “Neel Kashkari outspent Jerry Brown in 2014,” I couldn’t believe my eyes.
They say, as goes California, so goes the nation.
In the jungle primary for governor in California, I think there’s a lesson for the country. When the California GOP establishment rallied donors to take out my friend – a much more popular conservative Assemblyman Tim Donnelly – they started a civil war between the conservative base and the liberal GOP elites.
This strategy was led by the typical Rovian consultants, like Rob Stutzman (of Arnold Schwarzenegger fame) and Kevin Spillanes (of no fame). These overpaid consultants lose time after time after time, but not before separating mega-donors like Charles Munger Jr. from obscene amounts of money. Karl Rove came to California to tell conservatives, “It’s better to lose with Kashkari than win with Donnelly.” He preaches an approach that, for the GOP to win over minorities, it has to lose with conservatives. The problem with this theory is the numbers tell a very different story.
Kashkari, who was supposed to attract minorities in droves, failed miserably. Kashkari actually did worse with Latinos than Meg Whitman, losing Hispanics to Democrat Jerry Brown by 73 percent to 27 percent. Meg Whitman got 31 percent of the highly coveted Hispanic vote in spite of a last minute, highly publicized “maid-gate” scandal.
Kashkari outspent Gov. Jerry Brown and spent the most money of any Republican on the 2014 statewide ticket, and he received the least number of votes. This weekend both teams sat down in Berkeley, California, for a post-mortem on the California gubernatorial race. Other than throwing jabs at my friend, Tim Donnelly, bragging about how they dodged a bullet, and critiquing Kashkari’s posture, the GOP establishment seems to have learned nothing. It seemed as if the GOP showed up at this event simply to arrange the terms of unconditional surrender to the Democrats, rather than gleaning any information that would be useful in defeating them.
It doesn’t matter what kind of posture you have, your haircut or what kind of toothpaste you use. It’s about what you believe. And the only way the GOP is ever going to win in California, or nationally, is if it connects its message with the plight of ordinary individuals.
I called Assemblyman Tim Donnelly – since he garnered close to 650,000 votes almost exclusively by word of mouth by raising an army of grassroots activists – and asked his opinion on which issues the GOP should focus.
“They should focus on issues that affect people where they live,” Donnelly offered. “Take education. Common Core is hurting our kids. The more parents learn about it, the more they oppose it.”
The only problem is that the GOP establishment (at both the Republican Governor’s Association and the Republican National Committee) is in favor of Common Core. They hold the same position as the Democrats, so why would anyone get excited about someone like Jeb Bush, who thinks Common Core is great?
“Let’s take another issue: Illegal immigration,” Donnelly continued. “The GOP elites want cheap labor, and by importing millions of workers illegally to compete with American workers in construction and manufacturing, they’ve driven down wages overall. And that’s only one reason why a huge majority of Americans oppose amnesty.”
I asked him for another.
“Obamacare,” he said. “The last election was a referendum on Obama’s signature program. The only problem is, he didn’t reform health insurance. He made it more expensive for most people with a job, forcing working Americans to pay extra to provide better health care than they can afford for themselves, for those who don’t work or aren’t here legally. It’s just immoral.”
Once again, GOP elitists and their favored presidential candidate, Jeb Bush, are pushing the same position as Democrats on the DREAM Act, amnesty and free health care for illegals at your expense. So why put yourself out to elect someone who is working against your interests?
The GOP remains tone deaf. It keeps doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If it wants to win back Hispanics, rather than back a guy like Bush whose pandering is so extreme it’s frankly offensive, it needs to back someone who is more like Reagan, who stood up for the little guy rather than the elitists.
Why not back someone like Ted Cruz? His father immigrated here from Cuba with nothing. His father escaped Castro’s oppression. Now his son is a U.S. senator who could be president. Instead of pushing an elitist like Jeb Bush, whose rhetoric on immigration and Common Core has alienated the conservative base, and whose last name – Bush – has alienated pretty much everyone else he needs to win to be competitive in 2016, why not back a true conservative who will win Hispanics by treating them like the Americans they are?
It’s interesting to note the Ted Cruz got almost the same percentage of the Latino vote in his district as Obama 35 percent, and yet the GOP establishment and its mega donors are ignoring that fact.
Cruz, Rubio and many of the primary candidates vying for the top of the ticket will call out Hillary Clinton for the socialist policies that she’s pushed. She was one of the very first national Democrats pushing in recent years for socialized medicine, something Reagan warned about in 1961. But it took a committed socialist like Obama to get it done. That’s one issue that could win this election for the GOP if it would rally behind the candidate who will fight for the interests of the ordinary, hard-working Americans who wind up paying for all of this.
The final lesson from California is to let the people pick the candidate, not the smear doctors. Instead of attacking each other (remember Reagan’s 11th commandment), let’s attack the problems confronting the 53 percent of the people who work. If they had a champion – a true champion for the hard-working American – the Democrats wouldn’t have a chance!
