Unlike the House, where the strength is in building coalitions, individual senators have a lot of power — the place runs almost entirely on unanimous consent. Personal relationships matter and senators don’t respect those they don’t respect or those who can’t keep their promises.

Especially in an increasingly partisan world, the ability to make friends across the aisle is key in the Senate. For example, Boxer was successful on transportation legislation because she was able to find common ground with Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., with whom she disagreed with on almost everything else.

“Relationships are very important in a Senate that runs on consensus,” said Jim Manley, former spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Sanchez, an Orange County congresswoman, is running against fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, the state Attorney General and frontrunner in both polling and fundraising, as well as two former state Republican party chairs, Duf Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro.

Harris, Sundheim and Del Beccaro all lack prior legislative experience. Sanchez says she’s the only candidate who is “ready to hit the ground running on Day 1.” While her time in the House would give her a structural advantage (if elected) over other freshman, the issues any of them would be able to fight for would be largely determined by their committee assignments.

Committee Assignments

The Senate as an institution puts a lot of value in seniority — it’s how committee assignments and office space are doled out. It used to be culturally important too, when new senators were expected to stay quiet and learn for a year, although that’s waning in modern times.

Committees are where senators do the vast majority of their work. Bills usually go through committee before heading to the floor. So senators need to either usher their bills through committee themselves or have someone who sits on the committee usher it through for them.

While candidates talk about what they’ll do when they get to Washington, it really comes down to what committees they are assigned to. In fact, instead of going to Washington to change the world and push a laundry list of party priorities — as candidates often talk about on the campaign trail — the first few years are spent getting on the good side of their committee chairs and ranking members, rising in seniority, gaining clout by cosponsoring bills and working with others, becoming an expert in a policy and then finally starting to move legislation through committee.

The leadership determines assignments. Senators will request what committees they want to be assigned to, but the caucus leadership will decide assignments based on expertise and need.

Manley said that Reid, who is retiring, used to spend a great deal of time post-election working with the new senators to fill spots based on where the vacancies were, making sure committees were adequately represented by the different regions of the country, and of course taking into consideration what the new members want — although there were no guarantees.

Senators usually serve on at least three committees, and prior experience is a factor. There’s a good chance that a state attorney general like Harris would be assigned to the Judiciary Committee. And there’s a good chance Sanchez would be assigned to Armed Services or Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committees, since she currently serves on similar committees in the House.

With Boxer leaving, there will be an opening on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which is a prime spot for a Californian as this committee has jurisdiction over roads and environmental policy. So a Californian could make the case for this assignment based on regional representation. And a nod from Boxer could help too.

Boxer will also leave an opening on the Foreign Relations Committee, where senators can boost their foreign policy credentials — a nice launch pad for a presidential run, if any of them feel so inclined (as the saying goes: every senator sees a future president when they look in the mirror).

Former or current members of Foreign Relations are: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

History

In the old days, the motto was freshman should be seen and not heard. In fact, the maiden speech was a big deal — freshman wouldn’t speak on the floor for a year.

The tradition has eroded over the years. In 2015, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., waited just a few months into his term to deliver his maiden speech. And Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., made news by actually waiting a year — the only freshman in a class of 13 to do so.

How will experience help?

Besides Sanchez, none of the top candidates have legislative experience. But, according to Manley, Harris’ time as AG gives her other experience, like running a large department and being decisive.

Structurally, Sanchez’s 19 years in the House gives her an advantage over other freshman, since multiple senators are sworn in on the same day. Ties in seniority need to be broken somehow.

Priority is given to former senators, then former members of the House, then former presidents, vice presidents, cabinet members and governors. If none of those apply, then it falls on population of the state. And if that doesn’t work, it goes by alphabetical order.

Sanchez has served with many current senators over the years, since many were elected out of the House. She’s also served on conference committees (when the two chambers come together to work out the differences between the House version of a bill and the Senate version). She’s also served on the Joint Economic Committee, which has members of both chambers on it.

But her experience and existing relationships alone may not get her more respect on the other side of the Capitol. Sanchez would have to prove herself just like the others.

“You either demonstrate you have the chops or not,” said Manley.

Read more: “Sanchez: Don’t Touch the Filibuster“

At stake was nearly $890 million in funds to be allocated through the end of next year, according to the Associated Press. Although much of that sum was expected to flow into the coffers of the eventual Republican candidate for president, a potent irony pervaded the proceedings, relating to Jeb Bush. “The Kochs began their donor gatherings in 2003, a reaction to what they saw as out-of-control government growth when his brother George W. Bush was president,” as AP noted.

The confab took place at a scenic and secluded oceanfront hotel in Dana Point. A certain amount of privacy has long been standard operating procedure, with the Kochs themselves playing more of a behind-the-scenes role. “The Koch operation is not expected to formally back any candidate in the GOP primary,” as Kenneth Vogel observed at Politico. “But the Koch brothers and many of their donors can still play kingmaker roles. In addition to the massive checks many are expected to write to the super PACs aligned with specific candidates, they also serve as bellwethers for other donors.”

Jockeying candidates

Even before the event, scuttlebutt surrounded the field of Republican candidates. Not all were present. Rand Paul, who “underwhelmed donors” at a prior event, declined this time around, as Eliana Johnson reported for National Review. One Koch official told Johnson “that Chris Christie wasn’t invited because the powers that be in Koch world think he has a crummy fiscal record in New Jersey.”

Nor did Donald Trump receive an invitation. (Trump would later mock the meeting on Twitter as an assemblage of would-be “puppets” lacking his own money muscle.)

That left the Koch brothers to sit down with Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker.

Although the attendees each had their chance to speak, few were out to make headlines. Marco Rubio, known for his hawkish approach to foreign policy, did use California’s sometimes idyllic isolation from the east coast political establishment to sharpen his rhetoric on Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran will be not just a nuclear weapon power, but will have the capability to deliver that weapon to the continental United States in less than a decade,” he said, according to Time. “I don’t think any of us wants to live in a country where a radical Shiite cleric in Tehran can have a nuclear weapon and an ICBM that can hit where we are sitting right now.”

Policy over politics

But the weekend was not restricted to presidential politics. “Koch network leaders briefed some 450 donors, who pledge six-figure sums to become members of the Freedom Partners organization, on their policy and philanthropic goals for the 2016 cycle,” CNN reported.

The itinerary reflected an agenda more variegated than the Koch organization is often given credit for. “While the network has become arguably the most powerful force in Republican politics today, Charles Koch, in his welcoming speech, called out both parties for big spending, reckless foreign policy and corporate welfare,” Politico noted.

Sessions were varied. One, drawing hundreds, “focused on legislation that would limit mandatory minimum sentencing, as well as other forms of criminal justice reform,” according to CNN. “At an evening reception, the featured speaker was Dr. Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund.”

In fact, some present at the meeting suggested that too much attention had been paid to the relatively glitzy and competitive race for the GOP nomination. Longtime donor Art Pope told Politico that the spotlight belonged a bit deeper in the weeds. “The main point of this weekend’s seminar is not the elected officials or the candidates. In fact, it’s not about candidates at all. It is more about policies and issues,” he said.

The high-profile foray into the heart of the politically deep blue Bay Area signaled both challenges and opportunities for Paul and the national GOP.

On a daylong trip through the city, Bloomberg Politics reported, Paul lunched with startup chieftains and dined with donors:

“Both events included ‘some known people’ from the tech industry, Paul’s spokesman Sergio Gor said, declining to name them.

“Paul spoke at StartupHouse, an office that rents individual desk space primarily to tech entrepreneurs and where Paul’s campaign plans to rent space. The office, on a busy commercial street within walking distance of social-network giant Twitter Inc., is in a building that once served as the headquarters of Good Vibrations, a chain of sex-toy shops.”

Careful calibration

The setting dramatized the challenges facing Republican candidates hoping to make inroads in what’s often culturally alien territory. On the one hand, the pleasure- and party-centric residents of high-end San Francisco have instinctively distrusted politicians with a conservative cast. On the other, Paul — whose college hijinks were briefly the object of outrage among traditionalist Republicans — has had to ensure that his campaign does not skew so libertarian that conservative donors and grassroots voters balk.

During his remarks at StartupHouse, Paul returned to the theme of striking a balance in this regard by keeping different baskets of issues relatively separate. “While Paul’s views on shrinking government align with the tech community,” Bloomberg Politics noted, “he said his conservative views on social issues, including same-sex marriage, won’t come into play.

Democratic pushback

While some Republicans have expressed displeasure with Paul’s reform agenda, which ranges from rolling back the NSA to restoring the vote for felons, elected Democrats have so far refused to come to Paul’s defense — especially in California.

As USA Today reported, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., captured the sense of opposition on a call hosted by the Democratic National Committee. “Rand Paul likes to say he’s a ‘different’ kind of Republican,” Swalwell said, “but his policies don’t sound very different than the rest of the Republicans running for president.”

Calling him “wildly out of touch,” Swalwell implied that Paul could not lure young voters on election day by demonstrating his enthusiasm for social media apps like Snapchat.

During his remarks, Paul did in fact lay down that specific marker. “We use Snapchat more than anybody else out there,” he said. But that fact seemed to resonate strongly with his audience. “The crowd loves it,” BuzzFeed observed. “It’s a Snapchat kind of crowd.”

A new kind of attention

Well aware of the uphill climb that his or any Republican campaign must make in California, Paul’s team has begun to emphasize how the candidate’s approach to Golden State differs in refreshing ways from business as usual:

“As Vincent Harris, a Paul staffer who sat near the back tweeting from the senator’s Twitter account, told BuzzFeed News, Paul’s campaign is the only one with a tech advisory board, a CTO, a digital strategist, and offices in both San Francisco and Austin, Texas. Another attendee, Matt Shupe, a thirtysomething political consultant, points out that it’s rare for a politician on either side of the aisle to treat California as anything other than an ATM, hosting free, open events such as this one.”

State politics has become so dominated by Democrats in recent years that national campaigns have little reason to make direct appeals to voters. While Democrats have taken California’s electoral votes for granted, Republicans have tended to write off the state; every dollar spent there is a dollar the GOP cannot invest in battleground states like Virginia, potential swing states like Wisconsin, or perennial reach states that are also delegate-rich, like Pennsylvania.

Doubling down on a strategy that saw Paul make waves with a well-received speech at the University of California, Berkeley in March, the presidential hopeful just took a big step toward using the Golden State as a touchstone of his reformist approach. In a one-two punch, Paul used last weekend’s California GOP Convention to road test tones and themes of his presumptive campaign for president, then confirmed his plans for a new office in the overwhelmingly Democratic city of San Francisco.

Seizing an opportunity

Paul’s address to the state party convention took advantage of a political opening that is wider in California than many other states. The Republican agenda in Midwest or Mid-Atlantic states such as Wisconsin or New Jersey has been dominated by classic 20th century industrial issues like jobs and energy. Meanwhile, the personalities of popular but divisive governors such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and New Jersey’s Chris Christie have left little limelight to spare for other leadership figures on national tour.

The same is true of Texas, the other focal point of national Republican momentum. There, Gov. Rick Perry has consistently touted his state’s record on jobs and energy. Plus his own likely presidential ambitions have made the state inhospitable for competing contenders such as Paul.

What’s more, Perry’s own political strategy has availed itself of California in its own way — as a constant point of negative comparison. By pitting Texas against California, Perry has impressed many Republicans with the idea that the GOP can prove its mettle as a party capable of guiding large, diverse states toward broad-based prosperity.

For Paul, a quiet urgency has permeated his recurring, high-profile trips to California. In accordance with one of the simplest rules of presidential politics, Paul had to find and build a base of support — not just ideological, but cultural and financial. Despite his success in weaving his insurgent brand of libertarian conservatism into the fabric of the Kentucky political establishment, Paul had to set out across the country in search of a constituency large and powerful enough to leverage a presidential campaign.

That was where California came in. Unlike the libertarian-leaning Mountain West and Southwest, California includes large, wealthy and cosmopolitan areas where political influence is increasingly up for grabs. Although Paul used his convention appearance to publicly endorse gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, Paul has clearly defined himself as a reform Republican with a pedigree and an agenda that differ from Kashkari’s.

Unlike Paul, Kashkari’s East Coast ties and Wall Street affinities have long run deep. Also unlike Paul, Kashkari has had little reason to emphasize the foreign policy and national security issues that catapulted Paul to national prominence.

At the same time, however, both Kashkari and Paul represent factions of the GOP that have quickly come to covet Silicon Valley support. Especially in recent years, the area’s tech titans have become increasingly disillusioned with Democratic leadership, whether at the state or national level. That has widely been seen as an opportunity for Republicans.

Importantly, influential Silicon Valley denizens have begun to split markedly on their own interests in political reform. While some seek to support corporate-friendly, status-quo Republicans, others prefer more free-market libertarian conservatives. Kashkari has set out to cultivate support in the former group, while Paul has focused on the latter.

Deep in blue territory

A key part of that strategy has required Paul to establish a physical presence within easy reach of Silicon Valley power brokers and potential donors. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle conducted immediately after his keynote address, Paul described his acquisition of a San Francisco office as “in the process.”

He also took the opportunity to play up his friendship with web entrepeneur Peter Thiel, teasing a possible announcement concerning Thiel’s political support. “There’s a lot of smart people in Silicon Valley,” he said, “and we want to use their brains to figure out how to win.”

In another conversation with Breitbart News, Paul confirmed that a formal announcement about his presidential candidacy would likely come as early as Spring 2015.

While national media seized upon the reluctance of Fresno mayor and state controller candidate Ashley Swearengin to endorse Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, more profound was the strong showing of liberty-minded groups and ideas.

At a Saturday luncheon, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spoke about political subjects not commonly associated with the Republican Party. While Paul certainly got in the expected digs at the Democratic establishment, it was his emphasis on civil liberties that drew the most applause.

Calling for the restoration of voting rights to convicted felons and reforming federal drug policy, Paul argued the party will not sway younger voters talking about taxes and regulations.

“Kids don’t have any money, they’ve got student debt, they’re worried about getting a job and they have a cell phone,” he said. “They don’t care about taxes and regulation.”

Recalling a standing ovation he received while speaking at the notoriously left-wing University of California, Berkeley in March, he argued civil liberties issues have far more resonance across the aisle. “When I went to Berkeley, I had a pretty simple message: What you say or do on your cell phone is none of the government’s damn business,” he said.

‘Legalize freedom’

The vice chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus of California, Robert Vaughn, concurred with Paul’s assessment that a more liberty-oriented message from the party was key to attracting new members.

“Let’s legalize freedom,” said Mr. Vaughn. “If the Republican Party is going to grow, it has to deemphasize the social issues and stick to a more common-sense message of limited government.”

While Vaughn noted that there is at times a tension between liberty-minded party members and the party establishment, the party nonetheless has been more accepting of those committed to focusing on liberty.

“The party has been on the decline in recent years,” he said. “If the party is going to grow, it cannot use traditional social issues to broaden the tent.”

The Liberty Caucus has endorsed numerous candidates, including one of its members, Arturo Alas. A real-estate broker, Alas is running in the 32nd Congressional District against incumbent Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-El Monte.

Alas had one of the largest contingents of supporters at the convention, perhaps second only to grassroots proponents of a potential presidential candidacy of Dr. Ben Carson.

Alas’ youthful campaign volunteers repeatedly emphasized his top campaign priority: liberty. “We have here a libertarian candidate who will defend individual liberty,” said one supporter.

Indeed, it appeared that a focus on individual liberty outweighed more traditional, conservative groups at the Republican convention.

Tea Party

The large Tea Party contingent was focused more on budget issues. Members of the Tea Party California Caucus argued the movement stood for “Maximum Liberty, Minimal Government.”

Robert Jeffers, communications coordinator for the Tea Party California Caucus, said concerns with reining in the state and federal governments were of far greater significance to members than traditional social issues.

“California used to be a great state,” he said. “In order to return to greatness, the state needs to cut taxes, repeal bad regulations and focus on strengthening local businesses.”

While Jeffers said the state Republican Party has “diluted” its message, he did not suggest the party focus on social issues. “If the party wants to succeed, it needs to focus on the principles of individual liberty, limited government,” he said.

Whatever the fortunes of the Republican Party at the polls on Nov. 4, it was clear from its Fall Convention that its most vigorous members are pinning the party’s future on advancing freedom.

1) Don’t trust a state that gathers secrets on everyone.

2) Really don’t trust a state that has remote killing powers and gathers secrets on everyone.

3) And really, really don’t trust a state that thinks killing people without due process is OK if the national security machine says so.

Some of the movie-biz trade coverage seems faintly surprised that “Captain America” was still a gigantic worldwide blockbuster after its first 10 days:

“Captain America which stays at the Top of the box office world and continues to rack up dollars; it’s total cume domestically will be about $158M after its second weekend. The Winter Soldier, which had A CinemaScores across the board, dropped less than the first Captain America did in 2011, which was 61%. And, because of its equally strong presence in international markets (about $60M more from this past weekend), Captain America: The Winter Soldier now stands tall with a $476.1M worldwide cume with one more territory to open – Japan. It’s 163% ahead of the first Cap which made, all in, $370.5M worldwide.”

That’s from Deadline Hollywood. Its author shouldn’t have been surprised. In the movie, the U.S. is depicted as being borderline-fascistic because of Total Information Awareness-style info-gathering and a much-more sophisticated version of the present U.S. programs which kill perceived enemies with pilotless drones.

Worldwide popularity reflects anti-Americanism

That depiction tracks semi-precisely with the low opinion of America held by much of the world over the past decade, at least after the Obama honeymoon ended overseas. (Will it ever end here?)

The Bush 43-Obama zeitgeist is in trouble if pop culture sides with “Captain America” the movie and the superhero. Pop culture is very much like the domestic version of “soft power” — as the Obama team showed when it actually got tons of traction for its insane argument that Romney’s 2012 comment about “binders full of women” was somehow a sexist “Mein Kampf.”

Don’t trust the government is a powerful argument to many of the people who pay close attention to how the world works. If it becomes a message that pop culture explains and amplifies to those who pay less attention, hallelujah.

And it seems unlikely that “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is an outlier in the ever-growing Marvel cinematic empire. “The Avengers” certainly brought up the don’t-trust-the-government theme.

More more more!

Can governments kill their citizens without a trial?

A final note: When Sen. Rand Paul demanded a year ago that Attorney General Eric Holder say American citizens couldn’t be killed unilaterally by government drones, it was widely derided as a stunt. A few more movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and that question will become a staple of press conferences involving presidential candidates for the rest of time.

Good.

We hear plenty about Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) who waver on social conservatism or some other hot-button issue. We should hear much more about the other Republicans In Name Only — including just about the entire California congressional delegation — who never look at military spending with the same suspicion as most other types of spending.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' new autobiography is getting attention for other reasons. But I was struck by Gates' contempt for this sort of RINO thinking:

“Congress is best viewed from a distance — the farther the better — because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.

“I was more or less continuously outraged by the parochial self-interest of all but a very few members of Congress. Any defense facility or contract in their district or state, no matter how superfluous or wasteful, was sacrosanct. I was constantly amazed and infuriated at the hypocrisy of those who most stridently attacked the Defense Department as inefficient and wasteful but fought tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense activities in their home state or district.”

Gates is going after both parties here — Dems who rip military spending except when it helps their districts, and GOPers who want efficient government except when it means closing facilities in their districts.

But Gates' criticism of non-Paulian GOP lawmakers should sting more. They want their stands on raising the debt ceiling to be seen as a noble reflection of their purity. But pure they ain't.

Senate Democrats and President Obama have dug in: No negotiations until after a clean government funding bill and debt ceiling increase have been passed. Republicans, trying to ease the pain of a shutdown and win an uphill political battle, have tried passing piecemeal bills to fund popular or more critical parts of government, like cancer research and national parks. Democrats balked at most of the bills, though the Senate approved a bill to pay the troops, and President Obama signed it into law.

As the stalemate continues, political prognosticators have taken to analyzing which side is “winning” the shutdown. Republicans and Democrats are both spinning the issue as much as they can, trying to end the impasse, but still win the political battle without seeming overtly political. Making the impasse more complex, winning the political battle — without seeming overly political — is critical to ending the shutdown, since neither side has the impetus to fold unless they face significant electoral repercussions. It’s created a vicious cycle.

Heat

It’s possible that Republicans will take the heat for tying Obamacare reforms to funding the government, since the opposition party was typically blamed in past shutdowns. Others, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., think Democrats will look bad for refusing to negotiate.

Some have said that it brings both parties down, which is largely true. And many point out a fundamental truth in politics: Sometimes people just forget. The conventional wisdom, it seems, is that the current government will either stay in place after the 2014 election — with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans holding the House — or one of the chambers will turn on other events that occur closer to election day.

But a collection of polls released by Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling Sunday added a twist to the analysis: Democrats, according to the MoveOn.org funded polls, were in striking distance of taking back the House.

In order for Democrats to take back the house, they would need 17 GOP-held seats to flip Democratic. The PPP data was from surveys taken in 24 districts where Republican incumbents are considered vulnerable. In 17 of the 24, the Republican was losing to a “generic Democrat.”

California

So where does California come into all of this?

Three of those vulnerable congressional seats are in the Golden State. Reps. Jeff Denhan, Gary Miller and David Valadao are all at least somewhat exposed. The data even showed Miller losing to a generic Democrat and Valadao and Denham with less than desired numbers. And although the House has 435 seats, those three are among the most critical. How they perform, and how the national and state Republican parties help them, will be critical to maintaining the House.

Now, there are some flaws with the poll, which likely overstates the chances that Democrats have of actually winning back the House (though they very well may gain a few seats). Nate Cohn, of the liberal The New Republic magazine, offers a reality check for hopeful Democrats:

“Altogether, Democrats aren’t yet poised to mount serious challenges to a clear majority of the Republicans running on competitive turf, let alone actually win. So you should probably take this morning’s PPP poll with an additional grain of salt: it’s about how House Republicans would fare against a “generic” Democrat, not the mediocre one they’ll face in 2014. Perhaps the shutdown will trigger a wave of GOP retirements and Democratic recruits. But without both, Democrats will probably crest short of 218.”

Regardless, House watchers will likely keep a close eye on Miller, Denham and Valadao. Turns out, California elections might have national implications once again.

He attacked potential opponents, meaning especially Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, with being out of touch with voters. “”I think we have some folks who think we have to be college professors,” he said. “For our ideas to win we have to govern. And if we don’t win we don’t govern.”

Except that his potential opponents — Paul, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindahl, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, etc. — all are as much “winners” as he his.  They won their last elections.

We don’t know yet what the key issues will be in 2016. Look back to 2005 and remember what the issues were then, compared to the actual issues of the 2008 election: the Hurricane Katrina relief disaster, the economic collapse of Sept. 2008, the slide downward of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

But Christie already is on the wrong side of what almost certainly will be a key issue in 2016: What I call the Stasi SuperSnooper State. The revelations of NSA violations of our Fourth Amendment rights against “unreasonable searches and seizures” just keep coming. Even as Christie was speaking, the Washington Post revealed new information from whistleblower Edward Snowden on how the NSA’s own internal audits revealed pervasive abuse of personal privacy “thousands of times.”

Yet the issue Christie currently is best known for is defending the NSA, while attacking Paul for defending privacy. Christie, acting as if he were at the 2004 GOP convention, even brought up the specter of 9/11. Unless every American is spied on relentlessly, he held, we could be attacked again by terrorists. Put another way: Only by destroying our freedoms can we remain free.

Winning platform

But as Paul understands, the winning platform is to embrace restoring our Fourth Amendment protections. A “strange bedfellows” coalition has formed to do just that, including libertarian conservatives like Paul and left-wing progressives like the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who broke the original Snowden revelations and so much more. Dating back to the Bush regime, Greenwald has been America’s most stalwart journalistic defender of the Bill of Rights.

On the other side are the Establishments of both parties, who consider Snowden a traitor: On the Left, there’s President Obama, obviously, who wants to extradite Snowden and put him in a cage, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and many Democrats and “progressives.”

On the Right are Christie and the GOP leadership in Congress. Former Vice President Dick Cheney branded Snowden a “traitor.”

Yet Americans are on Snowden’s side, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll. And in particular, the young people the Republicans say they want to attract — and whom they obviously need to win future elections — think Snowden is “some kind of Jason Bourne,” as even the anti-Snowden Sen. John McCain conceded.

The 2016 Democratic nominee almost certainly will have to side with President Obama and against Snowden. Although Obama’s popularity has been dropping nationally, he remains wildly popular among most Democrats. Bucking him in 2016 on this issue would be difficult.

So Republicans have a ready-made issue for them: Backing the restoration of the Fourth Amendment and opposing the Obama police state.

Because Christie is a on Obama’s side, the governor will go noplace fast in the GOP primaries.

Meanwhile, at the state level, the GOP is in about as good shape as it has been in decades. It controls 30 of 50 governorships and the legislature in 26 of 50 states, with de facto control in a 27th state (Virginia); Democrats control 19 legislatures. This GOP surge isn’t just in traditional GOP and swing states. In Michigan — Michigan, the birthplace of the belligerent trade union movement — the state has of late adopted right-to-work laws.

As National Public Radio analyst Achy Obejas — a die-hard liberal — puts it, Republicans have “a surprisingly healthy farm team network.”

Surveying this landscape, what does a veteran Los Angeles Times political reporter conclude? The Republican Party is in danger of falling apart. Doyle McManus actually had an op-ed over the weekend headlined “Is the GOP self-destructing?”

Strife-ridden GOP’s popularity a verdict on Obama

McManus’ thesis is that the battle between what might be called the Ted Cruz/Rand Paul and the Mitch McConnell/Chris Christie wings of the Republican Party is so acute that it has the party, at least in Congress, in constant chaos — unable to agree on how much to challenge President Obama and how far to go on such issues as raising the debt ceiling, undermining Obamacare, etc.

But this strife, while paralyzing GOP efforts to operate coherently in Washington, is interesting for a far different point than the one put forth by McManus: It makes the party’s state-level strength and 2014 prospects are all the more remarkable.

The hard numbers show that after four and a half years of Barack Obama, the Republican Party is in generally strong shape at the state level and doing all right in Congress — despite a lack of coherence on really big issues, and despite a bigger fissure than ever between libertarians who don’t care about social issues and cultural conservatives who want a never-ending war over these issues. Sen. Paul has also illustrated the party’s militarism is by no means uniform in 2013.

So the Republicans have all these headaches — yet they are still doing well by every measure of elected officials outside of the presidency.

That certainly points to a deep dissatisfaction with the Obama status quo.

I am not a Republican. I’ve voted for the GOP nominee twice in the last 24 years, preferring protest votes. But I certainly buy the Republican critique that the media is in the tank for Obama. That’s why we see stories that suggest the GOP is falling apart because of its mass internal dissension when the far more accurate and interesting story is that the party is doing fine in the most crucial stat of all — elected offices held — despite its semi-civil war.