Post by 101ABN on Dec 6, 2010 7:15:54 GMT -8
The election in California didn’t turn out as poorly as you might think. An $18 car fee, the proceeds going to spruce up parks, was voted down. So was an attempt to repeal a string of tax breaks for business. Limits on user fees, often described as “hidden taxes,” were approved. And legalization of marijuana was soundly defeated.
These were sensible, conservative results that in most states would have been part of a sweeping Republican victory. But not in California. Republican candidates here lost every race for statewide office in the November 2 election. In a year when Republicans picked up 63 House seats nationally, they failed to capture a single Democratic seat in the Golden State. They lost a seat in the state assembly, where they were already badly outnumbered.
“A sort of reverse tsunami took effect,” says Republican consultant Ken Khachigian. California voters “know who we are, and they don’t like us,” Duf Sundheim told the Associated Press. Sundheim was Republican party chairman in California from 2003 to 2006.
“The Republican party brand is a major liability in California,” Sundheim wrote in a postelection white paper. Khachigian echoes this view: “The great deadly sin of this campaign was having an ‘R’ by your name on the ballot.”
www.weeklystandard.com/articles/gop-s-california-blues_520709.html
