But it also was curious that veteran GOP operative, political analyst and former legislative aid Tony Quinn penned a scathing story of conservative stalwart Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove. McClintock, a 22-year California state legislator, was elected to Congress in 2008.

“It is time for California Republicans to confront the real enemies who are dragging them from defeat to defeat, and this means dealing with the Tea Party extremists in their own ranks,” Quinn wrote in Fox and Hounds.

“No Tea Party congressman is more deserving of defeat than Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) whose 30-year career has been devoted to destroying the sunny, positive conservatism that Ronald Reagan gave us and replacing it with a sour, negative, anti-everything fringy right-wing populism.”

Quinn obviously doesn't like McClintock. He doesn't like many conservatives or Republicans, and has a particular dislike for the Tea Party.

Tony v. Tom

Ever since his days as policy director for the Assembly Republican Caucus in the mid-1980's, Quinn has been taking aim at McClintock, who was the Assembly Republican whip at the time.

Quinn also attacks McClintock personally. “McClintock does vote 'yes' on one thing, his own pension,” Quinn said. “The Sacramento Bee recently reported that McClintock is collecting his legislative pension while a member of Congress.”

“Unlike ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, Tom isn’t independently wealthy,” my colleague John Seiler pointed out in a recent story. “So he has to take a government paycheck to support his family. His paycheck is one of the few cases of my tax money being well spent.”

If Quinn believes that McClintock can be attacked for feeding at the public trough because he receives a legislative pension, he should look at opensecrets.org. McClintock ranks 419th out of the 435 House members in personal wealth.

Quinn's rich history of skewering McClintock

Quinn has never been shy about his vehement dislike of McClintock. “Tom McClintock may be the single biggest loser in California political history,” Quinn wrote on Fox and Hounds in 2010. McClintock narrowly lost two races for state controller and one for lieutenant governor. He also finished third in the recall election in 2003, behind winner Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

In a recent story on Fox and Hounds, Quinn even accused McClintock of wanting to weaken the country's national security.

Quinn wrote a story on Fox and Hounds in July complaining about newly elected Republican Sen. Andy Vidak's win in the Central Valley, in “Democrats Foolishly Blow an Easy Win.”

I remember when McClintock ran for Congress in 2008, Quinn was the first to happily predict a McClintock defeat in the primary. But Quinn was wrong. McClintock won by 14 points, despite being significantly outspent.

“McClintock helped pilot the Ted Cruz kamikaze dive bomber this week by supporting both the government shutdown and default on the debt,” Quinn said.  “A Sacramento area cancer survivor who could not get treatment due to the shutdown delivered 140,000 signatures to McClintock’s office urging he vote for the compromise to reopen the government.  What did McClintock do, he voted 'no' as he always does,” Quinn quipped.

That's correct — McClintock voted “no.” But his vote reflects all the many problems Obamacare is bringing. Here are the DrudgeReport's headlines for today:

OBAMASCARE: WOMAN FALLS ILL IN ROSE GARDEN!
CONSUMER REPORTS: 'Stay away'...
FOURNIER: Worse Than We Know...
Busy signal for 'hotline' number provided...
Man Spends 4.5 Hours on Phone But Still Can't Sign Up...
Hannity Gets Through, Operator Says No One Likes It...
WH busted pushing false account of success...
NBA Stars Promote in CA...
CRUZ: 'Nigerian Email Scammers' Running Website...
Zero Enrollments in New York?
Democrats warm to 'delay'...

If McClintock ever manages to surprise supporters on a vote, there likely is a constitutional reason for it. McClintock’s strong civil liberties streak usually attracts a considerable number of Democrats and Independents during election time.

During the government shutdown, on the House floor, McClintock helped push through a measure that would have re-opened the parks, and was joined by 23 House Democrats. I've also written about McClintock's battle to prevent tourist amenities from being removed by environmentalists at Yosemite National Park, which would result in a permanent reduction in tourism in the entire region.

Comparing California Reps

Compared to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, McClintock receives most of his political contributions from individuals, according to the Open Secrets Center for Responsive Politics. Open Secrets reports in the most recent campaign contribution report, 92 percent of McClintock's contributions are from individual contributors. Political Action Committees contribute 7 percent, and large contributors make up 45 percent of his contributors.

Pelosi receives only 39 percent of her contributions from individuals, 39 percent from political action committees, and 26 percent from large contributors. And her large contributors contribute significantly more than McClintock's.

In the 2013-14 campaign cycle, Pelosi has already received $174,097 from large contributors, in mostly $10,400 chunks. McClintock has received $126,569, in the form of $4,500 and $5,200 contributions.

By John Hrabe

Jim Brulte was elected chairman of the California Republican Party in a landslide vote on Sunday. But despite winning support from 90 percent of convention delegates, the former state senator kept campaigning until the end.

“Leaders lead by example,” Brulte, who served as Republican leader in both houses of the California Legislature, told reporters shortly after the party closed its 2013 spring convention. “That’s why I campaigned right up until the votes started to be cast.”

Brulte’s chief adviser, Michael Schroeder, himself a former state party chair, told CalWatchdog.com that Brulte spent the weekend “campaigning around the clock.” At a Sacramento Hyatt that was blanketed with hundreds of “Brulte for Chairman” signs and stickers, he spoke to 10 Republican groups on Friday, followed by 11 more speeches on Saturday, before hosting a 15th-floor hospitality suite late Saturday night.

Leadership, candidates, fundraising all faulted

If he’s to orchestrate a Republican renaissance, Brulte needs his take-nothing-for-granted leadership style to rub off on legislative leaders.

“There were three Assembly seats that were lost because we got lazy,” the state’s new Republican chairman said. “Leaders lead by example, and we have to be in the precincts working, standing shoulder to shoulder with our volunteers.”

Brulte did not specify which districts he believed Republicans should have won in November. However, state Republicans have been heavily criticized for being caught off-guard with lackluster campaigning and poor fundraising in several Assembly seats during the 2012 cycle.

Perhaps the most egregious case: the 36th Assembly District in the High Desert. Republican candidate Ron Smith reportedly stopped campaigning after the primary and ultimately lost by 145 votes.

“Smith’s loss is typical of the self-inflicted wounds that have destroyed the Republican Party in California, leaving it with fewer legislators than any time in the state’s history,” wrote Tony Quinn, a political commentator and former Republican legislative staffer, in a scathing election post-mortem on Fox and Hounds. “Once he was the only Republican in the runoff, he coasted, assured of election in this ‘safe’ Republican district.”

Smith was too busy hiring staff and hanging pictures, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“I had most of my staff getting ready to be hired, my picture was up on the wall, I had my office that was assigned to me, and I already had two pieces of legislation that were going to be introduced Monday,” a perplexed Smith said in December.

In Orange County, a lack of mother’s milk of politics

If Smith’s loss epitomized lazy legislative campaigning, GOP incumbent Chris Norby’s surprising defeat in the 65th Assembly District in Orange County symbolized the party’s fundraising problems in the lower house. In a span of 18 days, late in the campaign, six Democratic county central committees contributed $292,200 to the Assembly campaign of Sharon Quirk-Silva.

Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, told CalWatchdog.com that legislative Republicans struggled in 2012 due to a lack of funding.

“The caucus’ problem with the last cycle was the lack of money,” Hoffenblum said. “The one who influences the targeting is the one who raises the money.”

Hoffenblum believes that Brulte’s coronation as chairman will change the party’s fundraising and targeting.

Brulte was less critical of Republicans’ poor showing in state Senate and congressional races.

“We lost some congressional and Senate seats and frankly I’m not sure in a plus-23 election we could have won those,” he said, referring to President Obama’s 60 percent to 37 percent pasting of GOP nominee Mitt Romney in California.

More than 1,300 people attended the state party’s convention. In October, delegates will reconvene in Anaheim.

By John Seiler

Last week I riffed on a column by Tony Quinn on Republicans, immigration and California, “Are Republicans Finally Learning to Count?” In turn, Quinn has responded to me:

“He argues that even if they do so Latinos will not vote for them, and to support immigration ‘amnesty’ will rile up the Republican base.

“He may be right; I have great doubts that the Republican Party can survive at all; we may be one election way from the total disappearance of the Republican Party and American politics becoming a contest between the Obama Democrats and the Clinton Democrats.”

Then Quinn has some great lines line:

To see this future, Mr. Seiler needs only look at his own county, Orange County, once the heartland of the Reagan Revolution, where Republicans are just fading away.  And if he wants to find the Republican base, he need only visit the nearest cemetery; that’s where his Republican base is; all that is left of the once mighty Reagan Revolution is elderly white voters nostalgic for a picket fence world of the 1950s that is never coming back.

Right. The people all the streets were named after mostly now are six-feet under. Or they already moved to other states. The 1990s saw a great exodus of hundreds of thousands of Republicans.

Quinn continues:

“For 15 years the Labour Party in Britain suffered defeat upon defeat because its base of old industrial workers was dying out.  In 1997, Tony Blair invented ‘New Labour’ to broaden the party beyond its industrial base, and Labour won the next three elections.”

There were some other factors that might not apply here. New Labour junked the party’s worst socialist policies, especially the nationalization of industries, something never much of a factor in America. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, socialism was completely discredited (except in U.S. and European university humanities departments).

So Blair, like Bill Clinton, could “triangulate” — that is, make deals with big business and keep taxes relatively low. There was no-return to the pre-Thatcher 98 percent top income tax rate; much as Clinton raised the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, but not to the pre-Reagan 70 percent.

Another factor was that the British Conservative Party didn’t function well after they stupidly dumped Margaret Thatcher in 1990 in favor of the John Major, a “wet” Tory (British for RINO — Republican in Name Only).

Three parties

There’s a further lesson. Although the Tories took over the PM’s post under David Cameron in 2010, they won only 36 percent of the vote. Britain’s system encourages third parties; and Cameron had to form a coalition with Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democratic Party. By contrast, America’s electoral system for president marginalizes third parties because finishing third usually means zero votes in the Electoral College. Also, U.S. election laws make it difficult to register third parties in all 50 states.

In any case, except for slightly reducing taxes, Cameron has policies nearly identical to those of Blair and Gordon Brown, who succeeded Blair. Much as it was hard to discern any real differences between President Obama and Mitt Romney. If you doubt me, go back and watch their Third Debate (assuming you are a masochist).

Likewise in California, it’s hard to see a GOP candidate being offered up whose policies are much different from Jerry Brown’s, except favoring tax cuts. Meg Whitman was much like him. So was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The big issue nationally, in California and locally will be the implosion of the welfare state because it just can’t be sustained. At the national level, the federal government now has run up $222 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, military pensions, federal pensions, etc. That’s more than $700,000 per person; more than $2.4 million for a family of four. There’s no way that money will be paid. Tax increases would only make matters worse; and even at 100 percent of income, wouldn’t raise enough.

Meanwhile, China, India, Germany, Japan and other countries keep competing with us in the global marketplace. For us to keep up, taxes and regulations will have to be cut.

So government budgets will be cut massively at all levels over the next decade. It really doesn’t matter who does the cutting, whether Republicans or Democrats.

As the Beach Boys sang 50 years ago: “She’ll have fun, fun, fun, till her daddy takes the T-Bird away.”

By John Seiler

Tony Quinn just wrote happily of the demise of the Tea Party. Which never had much power in California anyway.

He said that, without them, Republicans might have grabbed control of the U.S. Senate in 2010 and 2012. He wrote:

“In the next four years Obama will probably have an opportunity to place a fifth liberal on the U.S. Supreme Court thus changing it for decades.  His nominee will need Senate confirmation and that he or she will get it. This is a direct consequence of the loss of five United States Senate seats that should be Republican today but are not because of Tea Party candidates.”

Except that the Establishment Republicans that always have controlled the party always rubber-stamp Democratic Supreme Court appointments. They did so with Justices Breyer and Ginsberg back in the 1990s under Clinton. They would do so today under Obama.

Quinn attacked the Tea Party for getting Richard Mourdock nominated for U.S. Senate in Indiana. Mourdock then made really dumb remarks about rape. What he doesn’t point out is that, in the GOP primary, Mourdock defeated one of the all-time GOP sellouts, Dick Lugar, who had been in office an incredible 36 years and was a pillar of the Elite Establishment.

For most Tea Partiers, anybody was better the Bushes, the McCains, the Romneys, the Lugars, the Doles and the other worthless Establishment hacks.

Moreover, without the Tea Party’s outrage and energy, in 2010 Republicans never would have taken back control of the House, nor kept it in 2012.

Sold down the river again

Quinn:

“In the House, Republican Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) began the just completed lame duck session on equal negotiating level with Obama, but after the Tea Party radicals undercut him, he ended up largely surrendering control of the House to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.  The New Year’s Day ‘fiscal cliff’ bill to save 99 percent of the Bush tax cuts (and avoid a tax increase on 100 percent of Americans) was shepherded through the House by Pelosi with Tea Party members opposing the deal worked out in the Senate, and therefore voting for a massive tax increase on every American.”

Not quite. What happened was that the Tea Party found out the hard way that the GOP sells out — and especially sells out the middle class.

The “fiscal cliff” deal really was a fiscal fraud from start to finish, slamming 77 percent of Americans with massive tax increases. Hey, weren’t there also to be $3 in spending cuts for very $1 in tax increases? Instead the spending “cuts” were as insignificant as a politician’s promises.

Quinn thinks the Tea Partiers were fools for opposing tax increases on the “wealthy.” Except that the tax increases specially will hit small businesses, which file as S corporations. And the increased death tax will hit family farms and businesses.

And, as mentioned, Tea Partiers have found out that “tax the rich” means “tax the middle class, too.” The only way to stop the tax increasers is to Stonewall against all tax increases. Otherwise, things get complicated fast and the GOP bosses start cashiering the middle class, like this time.

Well, the movement is dead now, betrayed by the Republicans they supported. The Tea Partiers won’t have time to campaign, anyway, because they’ll be working longer hours to pay the huge tax increases their Republican pals just foisted on them.

That’s if they even have jobs. If they’re out of work, they’ll spend all their time in unemployment lines.

Meanwhile, there’s a song about where both the majority Democrats and the minority Republicans are taking America ….

By Chris Reed

I have interviewed Tony Quinn for my old radio shows several times and acknowledge he knows way more about California politics than I do. But he is flatly, simply wrong when he writes the following about what brought people to the polls Nov. 6:

“The good news for Republicans is that they are no longer a dying party.  The bad news is that they are dead, and the final dagger into the corpse was the huge turnout of young voters on Tuesday – the exit polls show that 18 to 29 years olds made up 28 percent of the 2012 electorate.  This turnout was vastly different than the Field poll and other analysts anticipated, and it was driven by Proposition 30.”

The higher-than-expected youth vote was a national phenomenon not specific to California. Tony talks about turnout not being what Field anticipated. Nationally, Gallup didn’t have Barack Obama up one single day in the entire last month of its daily tracking poll. Why? It assumed, as did most of us, that the heavy youth turnout of 2008 couldn’t be repeated.

Instead, as The New York Times and others have reported repeatedly over the past year, the Obama camp’s use of behavorial scientists combined with an immense database on tens of millions of voters allowed the campaign to target email and social media pitches to individuals who needed encouragement to make it to the polls.

Sorry, Tony, but you’re just wrong.

More on microtargeting here.

Still more here.

“In politics, the era of big data has arrived.”

By JOHN HRABE

New evidence obtained by CalWatchDog.com raises new questions about whether Dr. Gabino Aguirre, a member of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, violated the commission’s code of conduct and possibly state law by failing to disclose his association with a redistricting special interest group. The Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), a politically active community-based organization, has submitted its own redistricting proposals to the commission and mobilized its staff members and volunteers to testify before the commission.

The Commission’s Code of Conduct, which is “considered binding on any person serving the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in any capacity,” sets forth restrictions on the behavior of commissioners. Among the code of conduct’s mandates, commissioners shall:

* “Speak the truth with no intent to deceive or mislead by technicalities or omissions”;

* “Disclose actual or perceived conflicts of interest to the Commission”;

* “Disclose information that belongs in the public domain freely and completely”

That second requirement, the disclosure of a perceived conflict of interest, appears to be a much higher standard of disclosure than the state regulations, which CalWatchDog.com initially cited in its first investigative report on July 15. State law requires all redistricting commissioners to complete a supplemental application, in which applicants must: “Describe the professional, social, political, volunteer, and community activities in which you have engaged that you believe are relevant to serving as a commissioner, as discussed in Regulation 60847.”

Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for the commission, failed to respond to two emails and a phone call requesting clarification about the policy.

CAUSE’s Maps

At a May 26th meeting in Northridge, Maricela Morales, CAUSE’s co-executive director, made a 25-minute presentation to the redistricting commission in which she presented the organization’s proposed maps for Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties. Yet, at no point during the presentation did she or Commissioner Aguirre disclose any prior relationship.

Just five days prior to CAUSE’s presentation to the commission, Morales and Aguirre testified on the same panel at the 2011 California State Conference of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Aguirre appears to have been aware of the commission’s high standard of disclosure. According to the Ventura County Star, he promised conference attendees, “We have an open and transparent process where everything we say and everything we do is in front of the public.”

Last week, CalWatchDog.com first reported on Aguirre’s long history of involvement with the special interest group, a fact that was never fully disclosed on Aguirre’s application to serve on the commission. The Spring 2008 edition of CAUSE’s newsletter lists Aguirre as a member of its “Advisory Committee,” a position he retained until July 14, when CAUSE removed Aguirre’s name from its website.

Aguirre, who has repeatedly ignored CalWatchDog.com’s phone calls and emails requesting comment, is also listed in the Summer 2007 edition of CAUSE’s newsletter as the organization’s first Grassroots Supporter for a contribution of between $1-$499.

CAUSE Involvement

CAUSE is directly involved in the political process and organized “Get Out the Vote” efforts in the June 2010 primary and November 2010 general elections.

“In the weeks leading up to both the June 2010 primary and November 2010 gubernatorial election, CAUSE had conversations with over 40,000 new and infrequent voters in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties,” the group explained on its Web site.

Aguirre’s relationship with CAUSE could impact the redistricting process by offering favorable treatment to incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Das Williams. According to his campaign website, Williams previously served as the organization’s legislative analyst and led “the group’s efforts to stop a proposed Wal-Mart development in Ventura.” In the same Spring 2008 newsletter that listed Dr. Gabino Aguirre as a member of the CAUSE Advisory Committee, Williams made a plea for CAUSE volunteers to “gather signatures to qualify” and assist with the campaign to ban the big-box retailer.

CAUSE, which bills itself as a community-based organization, boasts of its strong ties with organized labor and progressive causes. In the December 2006 newsletter, the headline for a front page story reads “CAUSE Strengthens Ties with SEIU.” That’s the Service Employees International Union, one of the most radical of state unions. It recently funded a massive campaign calling for tax increases.

Under the website section titled, “Campaigns,” CAUSE described its preparation for a the June 2011 special election on the tax increases: “CAUSE and our many community and labor partners are now focusing moblizing volunteers to participate in phone banking and precinct walking around the critical upcoming June 2011 special election.” However, the June 2011 special election never was held as Republicans held fast in the Legislature to their opposition to tax increases.

Even Democratic politicians, including Gov. Jerry Brown, have been attacked for failing to meet the group’s extreme left-wing views. CAUSE’s Web site admonished volunteers of the repercussions from failing to mobilize voters:

The result: this year, the Governor of the state of California is trying to cut millions of dollars out of the Ventura and Santa Barbara school systems, eliminate the CalWORKS program for unemployed job seekers, and eliminate in-home services for the elderly. These cuts disproportionately impact poor and working people, and California’s small businesses. The Governor has NOT proposed asking California’s wealthiest citizens and largest corporations to delay their own tax breaks, or to pay their fair share to support essential services.

Redistricting Involvement

CAUSE has been one of the state’s most active organizations involved in the redistricting process. On February 2, 2010, CAUSE hosted a seminar to educate its members on how to apply for and be selected for the redistricting commission.  The group also mobilized volunteers to speak at commission hearings throughout the state.

Its activism appears to have paid off. Tony Quinn, a former Republican staffer and expert on redistricting, believes the current maps for the Central Coast are “very close to those proposed by CAUSE at the first public hearing in San Luis Obispo last winter.”