The California GOP has chosen shrill PR gestures over substance. Gay marriage drum beating, nonsensical tax cuts, bold opposition to science and rational thinking and race baiting have replaced any thoughts about governing, leadership or even an old style, heads down on task, practicle conservatism.
What did they get for it?
California Republicans (Still) Collapsing
Since approximately the morning after election day in November, Dave Dayen has been writing over at Calitics about the dramatic Congressional pick-up opportunities in California that were missed in the Obama wave. Specifically, Obama carried 42 of California’s 53 districts (I won’t even begin right now to get into the state leg breakdown which is also a debacle), including eight districts held by Republicans in Congress. Well all of a sudden this week, the whole world is waking up to the Dayen gospel.
Attention started building about two weeks ago when the DCCC announced it would target all eight of these Obama-Republican California districts. But an announcement of DCCC targeting hasn’t always meant a lot, so to really get going it took a new report from California Target Book finding in part:
Not only is the current statewide Republican registration of 31% a historic low, but for the first time there is not a single congressional, state senate or assembly district that has a majority Republican registration.
Following two days later, Politico picked up on the buzz, quoting Target Book co-author Tony Quinn as summing things up nicely: “Across the state, what you have seen is a general collapse of Republican registration.”