Well, that didn’t take long. Just one week after the midterm elections, Kristin Olsen — the vice chairperson of the California Republican Party — announced the party’s death.
The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time. The Grand Old Party is dead – partly because it has failed to separate itself from today’s toxic, national brand of Republican politics.
In a guest commentary at CalMatters. org — a public interest journalism site for California politics — Olsen reflected on the now-lost values her party once held dear.
Republican principles used to be about helping other people. We believed in lifting people up out of poverty by giving them robust and free economic opportunities and by providing a world-class education. We stood for giving people the freedom to run their own lives and businesses without undue government interference.
We welcomed people from all over the world who sought to live the American Dream and contribute to the economy and society. They could be secure in knowing that they would not be persecuted for who they are and that they could build strong families and vibrant neighborhoods.
She laments that her party no longer stands for those values and that it has sunk ever deeper into the mire over the years, terminating in the fetid cesspool that Republicanism has become under Donald Trump. She is right to grieve over it; the party that once gave the nation Earl Warren now gives us Mimi Walters and Darrell Issa.
The California branch of the party could have been the model for the national party, dramatically altering the nation’s future. Imagine if Republicans across the country had noted the 2003 gubernatorial victory of Arnold Schwarzenegger — a moderate who generally has a liberal attitude about social issues — and considered the well-known phrase “As goes California, so goes the nation” (meaning that California has often set trends in science, industry, and culture that eventually become national norms).
The Grand Old Party might have committed itself to a future of appealing to the better nature of all our citizens. We could have had nice things.
Instead, the California GOP chose the path to perdition, climbing down into the gutters and sewers along with the national party. Indeed, some of the worst offenders in Washington, DC, have been California Republicans, like Devin Nunes and Dana Rohrabacher.
Although GOP congresspeople held on to seats in historically solid Republican safe districts, the party itself mostly became a wraith-like presence within the state in recent decades. It hasn’t fielded a U.S. senator since 1989, the last statewide Republican officeholder was elected in 2006, and the party hasn’t held a majority in either chamber of the legislature since 1996.
I think Olsen is being more hopeful than factual when she states her case but I agree with the latter half of her opinion, at least.
Individual Republicans are good, conscientious people dedicated to serving their communities, but they belong to a brand and a national party that is toxic and growing more toxic by the day.
Let’s hope this is the first soft chime sounding from California’s traditional role as bellwether for the United States as a whole. If enough decent people — who just can’t find enough agreement with us to be Democrats — come to realize that their party is both mortally ill and dangerously toxic to the nation’s well-being, perhaps they, too, will bid it farewell and perhaps even seek out a new conservative party, grounded in reality and committed to responsible governance and honest debate of issues.
Perhaps the sane Republicans can recall the spirit of one of the truly great Republicans in history, Teddy Roosevelt. A newly reconstituted Bull Moose party, focusing on the reform of money and big business interests in politics and protection of our shared national resources, would create a great foil for our own Democratic party and spark healthy debate and occasional collaboration. Might I suggest a slogan for them: “The Other Sane Party”?
In the meantime, I look forward to similar defections and collapses in the GOP in the other 49 states. It will be a bright day for the future of America when the last state GOP headquarters shutters its doors and hangs an “Out of Business” sign on its door.