— This letter to Andrew Sullivan epitomizes what the GOP is up against in terms of survival (www.AndrewSullivan.com – Letters)
THE TROUBLE WITH DICK RIORDAN:
I work in GOP political circles (and have for years) and have been following the California gubernatorial GOP primary race with great interest. You’re probably right that Riordan is the only Republican who can beat Gray Davis.
Let’s stop right here, GOP activist, because you’ve come to the end of your rational thought process. The party out of power has no ability to influence public policy, and with a 1/3 – 2/3 split in the legislature, you don’t even have a vote on the budget or urgency bills. If only one candidate has a snowball’s chance of winning, there’s no need for further discussion, unless losing is what you’re in politics to do. But he goes on:
However, I think you’re wrong on conservative doubts about Riordan. “[W]hy is the conservative line that Riordan must be undermined at every turn with the hope of destroying his candidacy?” The answer to this question is straightforward.
Right, and the answer is: “we don’t want to win, we want to wring our hands about how the state is going to Hell in a handbasket and do absolutely nothing about it. We’re lame.”
Dick Riordan is not a Republican in anything other than ballot designation. While quite conservative socially on a personal level, I am not a litmus test person. I have voted for or supported pro-choice candidates and anti-death penalty candidates in my time. I have no problem with candidates who support gay rights — this seems a reasonable and compassionate stance for a society to have, regardless of what my religious views of homosexuality might be. I can go either way on gun rights when considering who to vote for. That said, let’s consider Riordan. I can accept that he is a squish but you have to draw a line somewhere.
Let’s put on the breaks again, Floyd Turbot, and remember that we’re talking about politics and not about church, and we’re also talking about the candidates and not about you. (This sounds an awful lot like an Oprah whine, by the way.) The place you draw the line is as close to the right as you can draw it and still win. Then you have a prayer of drawing more people inside the circle, which might enable you to draw the line a little more to the right next time around. The geometry is the easy part.
And that line is decades of fund-raising and campaigning support for a rogues gallery of liberal and downright anti-GOP politicians. You cannot just take off the mouse ears whenever you want and still think they’ll let you sing the club theme song at the end of the show. Giving money to Willie Brown, supporting liberal activist causes, and insulting George Deukmejian gets your ass kicked out of the clubhouse.
Punishing a businessman for paying his Willie Brown tax so he can do business gets you kicked out of the statehouse, moron, and you like it there, apparently. Go to some committee hearings in Sacramento and just see how completely dispirited the Republican lawmakers are with their complete irrelevance in the process, when just 8 years ago there was a Republican majority in the Assembly thanks to the pragmatism of Riordan supporter Jim Brulte. But you probably can’t remember that far back, can you?
I’m all for pragmatism — I loved and supported Bill Weld in Massachusetts, Alan Simpson in Wyoming, and John McCain now. All three of these guys were/are pretty far off the damn reservation when it comes to ideological purity.
Off the map when it comes to sanity is about all I would say for any of them.
But, the difference is, you felt they were on the team and that they could be counted on in a fight. Dick Riordan has done a John Walker Lindh impression within the party too many times for even pragmatic Republicans to hold their nose and pull a lever.
The difference is you’re comparing a bunch of lifetime polticians to a lifetime businessman who turned to politics late in his life, and you’re using the pre-political phase of his life as your standard. Now go drink some Kool Aid and leave this hard stuff to the real pragmatists.