“It’s a great day to be a Republican in California!” I thought to myself when my colleagues elected me to be the next Beach Cities Republicans Club President, a growing grassroots organization in an otherwise deep blue state, which has witnessed and assisted remarkable Republican gains. I was following a long-list of who’s who in the South Bay. The prior president, David Hadley, won the state assembly seat for my district, the first Republican in over two decades. Another fiscal conservative Republican won a seat in the East Bay, the first in over thirty years. Los Angeles County will enjoy five state senate seat pickup opportunities this year, too. Republicans will be competitive in ten -- ten! – California Congressional contests going into 2016. Why? Dragged down by an unpopular party leader, California Democratic house reps are retiring, as they find their regressive agenda stymied in Washington. More of them (thankfully) are giving up and going home. Californians have an open US Senate seat to vote for, too, another first in many decades, with a broad cadre of Republican candidates ready to revive the conservative vision in the one Golden State.
Along with Republicans and conservatives gaining ground in California, let’s take a look out and about, and watch as Republicans are gaining ground in battlegrounds once thought unheard of! It’s a great day to be a Republican just about anywhere in the United States. From Maryland to Massachusetts, and Michigan to New Mexico (where Republicans took back the lower chamber for the first time since the 1950s), the Republican case for free markets, free enterprise, and free people is winning hearts and minds. Republicans have a solid lock on legislatures across the country, especially the once Solid Democratic South. Democrats in Mississippi and Alabama have found their national party leaving them on almost every issue, and have left them. One Dem in the Magnolia State just bolted, and now Republicans have a solid supermajority for the first time in the state’s history. West Virginia, a true-blue stronghold during the Reagan years, is a nice ruby red, with right to life, liberty (and work free from union pressures) on the rise.
Elbert Guillory of Louisiana was the first of a recent rising tide of minority Democrats not only voting Republican, but registering GOP. Even one sad outcome in the Pelican state, Democratic governor-elect Jon Bel Edwards, cannot undercut the triumph of Louisiana Republicans who are on track to hold the legislature in Baton Rouge. Alabama House Rep Artur Davis supported Obama, then switched four years later, and announced his decision at the 2012 RNC Convention. Following the 2014 Democrat shellacking, one of their Missouri reps joined the Republicans. Connecticut elected a young Puerto Rican Republican to the state legislature. Recently, Carlyle Begay, an Arizona state senator of Navajo descent, announced his switch to the GOP.
What buoyed the Republican Party’s rise despite the last GOP President’s non-compassionate non-conservatism? The Tea Party backlash, certainly. The era of Big Business is ending, and Republicans are taking stronger stances against crony bailouts and greasy corporate welfare. More importantly, though, the Democratic Party’s deeply rotten demise has brought them oh so low. Haven’t you heard? The Donkey Party has been the jack-ass of politics for the last two decades, butting heads and kicking constituents, with rogue candidates running on union money (i.e. yours and mine without our consent). The Occupant in the White House, Barack Obama, aggressively shoved a bad, sad, and just pain immoral Saul Alinsky agenda of “Agree with me, or I will troll you to death!” down our throats, and We the People have said: “Enough!”
Americans are sick and tired of the pretenses: giving to one at the expense of another, redefining life, marriage, and individual liberty as an inclination of the state, rather than the decision of the citizen. The public has endured socialism on an unprecedented scale, and they hate it. Open borders, lax enforcement, selective tyranny against freedom of speech, assembly, and conscience have quickened once apathetic partisans. People who never spoke out are yelling and screaming. The homeowners who see their utility and property taxes skyrocket are crying out: “Where’s the hope and change?” More active activists are answering: “That’s where We the People step in!”
And the Democrats are taking their lumps in droves.
How many more Democrats will flee their party, now that they see how left-wing, anti-American, and anti-social socialist it has become? Barack Obama failed where Bill Clinton had succeeded: when your political posturing isn’t working and the voters reject your Big Government tendencies, you need to get back to the founding principles and remember your place. Bubba backed off, and the Republican Revolution took off. Obama never respected the Constitution, or the rights of the people. Let’s face it. He never cared about African-Americans or Hispanics, and used every divisive ploy to alienate his enemies, and now even his one-close colleagues.
The DNC is in debt ($7 million and growing), and their bench of Presidential candidates is as impoverished as it gets. Who really wants an over-long vetted grandma with honesty issues running our country? She can’t use technology, she doesn’t charm anyone, and she is losing to six Republican Presidential candidates. The alternative? An aged socialist who has to sell sweaters to raise money (a closet capitalist, after all) or an unidentified bystander from Maryland who ruined his home state for eight years. They have diminished state presence, and at the local level, even in California, liberals and progressives are losing left and right.
With the Democrats’ demise, the Republicans rise, and not just bringing the same old “not as bad as they”. A new coalition of conservative Republicans, advocates for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is breaking forth. No longer looking out for Wall Street, or relying on a fawning press to disparage the best and misinform the rest, Republicans are setting the terms, adapting to the shifting political game, and adopting the values to get the votes.