THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS

Today will not be short shrift Wednesday. These election returns deserve serious analysis.

Sorry to disappoint the imbeciles that want me to cover some guy who has a name that rhymes with Sandar Gloat. I prefer news.

I will not be covering the NBA finals because I conceded the season a couple weeks ago. I threw in the towel. The Los Angeles Lakers are the evil empire of basketball, and whatever deal they made with the devil, payback will not occur in my lifetime. I detest everything about the Lakers, and am too disgusted to say any more on the subject.

The NHL finals are going well because I also prefer Chicago to Philly, especially since Philly knocked off my NY Rangers on the final day of the regular season.

Back to politics.

Every race that I care about that has been decided comes with pluses and minuses.

One thing I want to emphasize to Republicans and other right of center voters everywhere is to…and let me say this loudly…FALL INTO LINE.

If your candidate lost (and many of mine did, as usual), shut up, deal with it, and back the Republican nominee.

Any conservatives that threaten to go third party should be b*tchslapped and locked in a room until they watch video returns of the NY 23rd special election that we LOST.

Ok, enough capital letters. I don’t give a d@mn about ideological purity. I am interested in winning and governing.

While the entire country may shift to the right in 2010, California may very well shift to the left.

Despite the fact that Democrats control both houses of the legislature, they will blame the current economic mess in California on right-wing policies. They will say that we had a Republican governor, and that is that.

This is ludicrous. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a very liberal Republican leader. Meg Whitman is a very moderate and possibly liberal Republican. Jerry Brown will try to tie them to the vast right wing conspiracy, but there has not been a real conservative nominee for governor in years.

Steve Poizner was slightly more conservative, but still fairly moderate. Meg Whitman won handily. Meg is bright, capable, competent, likable, and tenacious. I hope the Poizner people immediately rally around her.

The California Senate race was a big win for Carly Fiorina. I backed Chuck Devore, but he and Tom Campbell both lost significantly to her.

I am very concerned about this race in terms of the general eletion. Obviously I am going to back Carly in the general election, but Barbara Boxer will have plenty of money and presidential support. Barbara Boxer is like a vampire. Until the stake is driven through her heart, she is very much alive. Every 6 years she is beatable, and every 6 year we screw it up. If we can’t beat her in this climate, we have only ourselves…and Carly…to blame.

The 30th congressional primary where I backed Ari David saw David Benning nip Charles Wilkerson 33 to 32%. Benning is a very credible candidate, and a decent and thoughtful guy. The 36th congressional primary where Mattie Fein and Pete Kesteron slugged it out saw Mattie triumph 50 to 43%. They both fought the good fight, and Mattie is a very strong general election candidate. Harman should be worried.

Defeating Henry Waxman will be an uphill battle, but Jane Harman is more vulnerable than people think. She did dispatch leftist Marci Winograd, but the protest vote of over 41% was still large.

To me the big story in California was the passing of proposition 14, which created an open primary.

I voted yes, and am thrilled it passed. I believe in the Republican Party (both parties were against it), but think for myself. I am tired of extremist candidates. I want candidates who will focus on cutting taxes and killing terrorists, not red meat social issues that will be ruled unconstitutional anyway. California is broken. We need to fix our budget before anything else.

Republicans will point out that open primaries are why Republicans are getting slaughtered in certain races such as the LA Mayoral race, where it is usually two liberals and no conservative on the ballot.

Too bad. If we can’t get one conservative in the runoff, we deserve to lose. Richard Riordan was a moderate Republican, and he won.

Republicans in California need to decide if they want to be an ideologically pure perpetual minority (as we are in the legislature) or a governing majority. Moderate Republicans like Pete Wilson win elections. Conservatives such as Dan Lungren and Bill Simon went down in flames.

For those who want real conservative leadership, move to Idaho. The votes in California are not there. I would love conservative leadership, but if Californians want to destroy the state with budget busting liberalism, I don’t have the votes to stop them.

The open primary will force candidates toward the middle. If a real conservative wins, great. At least we will not have to deal with hard leftists anymore. The best part of this proposition is it totally forces third parties to shut up and become mainstream. I am tired of candidates with 3% of the vote sucking up political oxygen. These people are not viable for a (many, actually) reason, usually a very valid one.

The best news for Republicans came in Arkansas. Blanche Lincoln is a weakened candidate with depleted coffers. Bill Halter could have said that he had nothing to do with the liberalism of the past couple years. It is for this very reason that I would have rather seen Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania face off against wounded Arlen Specter than fresh face Joe Sestak.

The worst news may have been in Nevada (although less disastrous than earlier results in Kentucky). I do not know anything about Sharron Angle or Sue Lowden except that Angle was the outsider and Lowden was the establishment.

Outsiders have proven that they can win primaries, but their success in general elections over the years has been awful. I am terrified that the conservative movement, in its obsession to ideologically purify the party, is resorting to cannibalism.

Of course I want Angle to take down Harry Reid. Yet Harry, like Boxer, will have tons of money. Lowden would have been more difficult to demonize.

I have been at tea parties. The people are good people. I have even headlined some myself. Yet I believe in working within the system, not tearing it down.

To Angle’s credit, she ran and won as a Republican, not a third party fringe candidate. If she wins in November, the tea partiers are fabulous. If she loses, they are a cancer. The only metric I use to judge their worth is election results. Either win or get lost.

Republicans will win seats in 2010, but situations like Kentucky make our job much tougher.

I understand that the trendy thing to say is that we need new ideas, bold fresh leadership, and innovative approaches, but those are buzzwords. We need experienced insiders who know what the heck they are doing and how the system works.

Boxer and Reid may have been thrown some lifelines. They are very beatable, but Republicans have potential to screw up those races. Time will tell.

I will have more to say about other races in the coming days, but right now there is so much to digest. I could give the election short shrift like I usually do, but 2010 is critical. Congressional districts will be redrawn. It is time for me and everyone else to buckle down and get serious.

I will say more when I know more.

5 months to go.

eric

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 10:32 am and is filed under POLITICS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.