The California Republicans need to throw both visions down the shredder and start again with their state platform.
A platform that is vague and opaque will do nothing with the base that knocks on doors and staffs the phone banks, but we also need to make sure we can reach out to certain districts that have been alienated by certain facets of the Republican Party such as the Latinos and the LGBT community. Yet we should give the moderates who typically fund our party the confidence to continue funding our party with an agenda that does not turn off hearts and minds.
Yes, I am a supporter of the Munger faction. However we need to go after the ideas that win universally with all Republicans, yet decentralize on certain issues where certain regions of our state might love the gays and some regions may want to hide them under lock and key in the closet.
I agree with Governor Schwarzenegger that we are failing in the box office (Election Day) with 2008 and 2010 to name two elections that the Republican Party has tanked hard in trying to strike new ground.
Most of us can agree with Ingra Barks, a Bakersfield area radio talk show host/commentator on the issues she mentions such as: seniors of a certain income level should not be taxed their way into poverty, our agriculture industry should be protected from heavy regulation when we are the breadbasket of the nation, that we need a water system that would keep people employed instead of sending half their people into poverty in the Central Valley and beyond, Crime victims should be given our fullest support compared to the Democrats in the state legislature judiciary committee, people should be protected from government seizing their properties for the benefit for another property owner, the second amendment should reign supreme where cancelled carry and self defense should not be compromised.
Aside from these issues, there are some albatrosses that hang around the neck of our party. Cultural and social issues do honestly divide our party and inhibit its growth in our state. If we want California to remain any semblance of its prime we need to have a comeback in the box office so we can bring some sanity to Sacramento.
Immigration may be the issue that will cause us more problems than views on abortion and the gays. With a growing Latino population, we can not afford to maintain a minuteman philosophy even though the undocumented population has been a severe unfunded mandate on local, county and state budgets. Latinos are known to be hard workers and they help drive the American society. Deporting 14m illegals of all nations from Europe, Asia, Canada and south of the border would honestly be impractical. We are going to have to integrate this population so they can be part of our society, but we need to avoid the mistakes of Ronald Reagan and punish employers who do hire undocumented workers, and then we need to undo Plyler v. Doe to make it where we are not obligated to educate the undocumented for free. Also we need to require that 1 parent of the couple who makes a child in our nation must have legal status from a green card or citizenship to make their child an American. We will need to have a great immigration compromise if we ever want meaningful reform to happen.
On the two cultural wedge issues I have some solutions on the two issues that cause us to fail in the costal communities, abortion should be left to the individual and should only be paid for by non-government funds. Legislators should be free to their conscious to vote on LGBT issues. LGBT issue support or opposition is determined by religion, what region of our state people are from and the age of the legislator. Aside from that we should keep the existing platform with abortion and LGBT opposition stripped out.
We can not afford to be vapid like Mr.Munger, but we still need to be inclusive where Ms.Barks and the Republican establishment uses Latinos and LGBT people as raw meat on the balcony for their base. Existing platform does not need to be torched, but it needs less cuts than expected.
