The California GOP - A View of the GOP's Future?

As I have noted many times, I was once a Republican and even served on the Virginia Beach City Committee for eight years.  But that was before the GP became totally insane and irresponsible under the control of the Christianists.  The rise of the so-called Tea Party has only made things worse.  Along with me, my entire family has for the most part fled the GOP because of it's down right nastiness on many issues and its fusion of hate and fear based religion and politics.   Things are to the point where the only thing that may turn the party around will be successive massive electoral defeats.  That has not happened yet, but the fate of the California GOP may hopefully reflect the future of the Party elsewhere and at the national level.  An article in the New York Times looks at the political suicide of the GOP in California.  Here are highlights:

[T]he state party — once a symbol of Republican hope and geographical reach and which gave the nation Ronald Reagan (and Richard M. Nixon) — is caught in a cycle of relentless decline, and appears in danger of shrinking to the rank of a minor party. 

Registered Republicans now account for just 30 percent of the California electorate, and are on a path that analysts predict could drop them to No. 3 in six years, behind Democrats, who currently make up 43 percent, and independent voters, with 21 percent. 

“It’s no longer a statewide party,” said Allan Hoffenblum, who worked for 30 years as a Republican consultant in California. “They are down to 30 percent, which makes it impossible to win a statewide election. You just can’t get enough crossover voters.” “They have alienated large swaths of voters,” he said. “They have become too doctrinaire on the social issues. It’s become a cult.”

 

Republicans said their problems were made worse this year by the emphasis during the Republican presidential primaries on social issues, particularly tough immigration measures and opposition to abortion rights. That focus could make it tougher to win independent voters who are crucial to any Republican resurgence in California. 

“The national party is becoming a party of very enthusiastic social conservatives driven by Southerners,” said Bill Whalen, a fellow with the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “It’s a problem if you’re an independent voter in California. If you think about the Republican Party, what national figure comes to mind? George W. Bush or Newt Gingrich.” 

“The institution of the California Republican Party, I would argue, has effectively collapsed,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican consultant who was a senior adviser to Mr. Schwarzenegger. “It doesn’t do any of the things that a political party should do. It doesn’t register voters. It doesn’t recruit candidates. It doesn’t raise money. The Republican Party in the state institutionally has become a small ideological club that is basically in the business of hunting out heretics.”  “When you look at the population growth, the actual party is shrinking,” Mr. Schmidt said. “It’s becoming more white. It’s becoming older. “

Kimberly Nalder, a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento, says Republicans in California are still too closely identified with socially conservative positions — on immigration, the environment, abortion and gay rights — that have put them outside the mainstream in a changing electorate.   “They’re just blind to the future,” she said. “We’re passing the tipping point now, and they are not realizing that.” 

This year in San Diego, Nathan Fletcher, a Republican state assemblyman, quit the party to run, unsuccessfully, as an independent for mayor. “There are a series of issues where I am just fundamentally out of line with the current Republican Party in California — reasonable environmental protection, equal rights and marriage equality, immigration,” he said. “And it’s not a party that is welcoming of dissent on those issues.” 

The same mindset holds sway in the Virginia GOP.  The question is when will enough Virginians wake up to the fact that the state GOP's efforts to revert back to the 1950's or even much earlier offer no plan as to how to deal with the future and a changing world and changing society.  Hopefully, voters begin to wake up to reality.