It seems the holy war between two individuals has escalated where Karen England of the Capitol Resource Institute is willing to sacrifice her goodwill within the California Republican Party by challenging the appointed Lt.Governor and dilute his vote so Mayor Gavin Newsom would have an easier chance at being elected.
Even though as an independent minded Republican, I did support State Senator Sam Aanestad because I thought Abel had no substance on fiscal issues and he forced Proposition 14 to be on the ballot to take away my choice to vote Libertarian Party when the Republican nominees are too anti-gay. Unfortunately Abel won because he won the rest of California that did not listen to the John and Ken show.
Even before this controversy which escalated with Karen running as a write-in candidate, Abel decided to back Harvey Milk Day when he was a State Senator and grilled her hard during a hearing about her opposition to Harvey Milk Day by asking her if Harvey Milk Day would really harm students. Karen and her friends expect 100% compliance with Republican leaders that their legislators will not support anything positive to the LGBT community in California and the United States.
Proposition 8 is the big reason Karen is so livid where she wanted to oppose Abel even though her soul mates are in the American Independent Party already have a nominee for Lt.Governor and his name is Jim King where efforts would not needed to be duplicated. Due to Governor Schwarzenegger going on an out-of state trip Karen and her friends were hoping that Abel would be their knight in shining armor by filing the appeal for Proposition 8. However Abel was more focused on the San Bruno natural gas explosion and did not want to rock the boat with his patron Governor Schwarzenegger so he declined to file the appeal.
The traditional values crowd believes that the voters who voted for Proposition 8 do deserve their day in court, but if their defenders could not pull a convincing argument in Judge Walker’s court earlier this year where most of their witnesses refused to testify out of embarrassment and organizations such as the Liberty Counsel lambasted the Alliance Defense Fund for their poor work in the case. Then what argument will the traditional values advocates have if they botched the case in the beginning because in the appeal they end up going through the work in earlier cases?
If Karen is going to take her values voters away, I guess Abel will need to focus on law and order in the effort to keep voters in his court. Since as mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom did much to annoy the Inland Valley of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties by sending his criminals out of his jurisdiction into their neighborhoods.
Unfortunately I do fear for Abel because he might become the next Dede Scozzafava ready to be another corpse in the war for Republican Party purity. Even though Proposition 14 excludes third parties in California elections maybe this is a good explanation why Abel did write Proposition 14. The Republican Party does not nominate viable candidates that can actually beat Democratic Party nominees and we have to rely on self-funded multi millionaires if we only had a mainstream yet fiscally responsible platform.
Although I can empathize with the tea party movement, their dance with the traditional values community may actually dampen the party where we might end up electing Democratic Party candidates.
Matt Munson is an occasional contributor to the Juice since 2009 and writes for iepolitics.com and inlandutopia.com.
Leave a Reply