When did California go to open primaries? When I lived there (1984-1991) they were closed primaries.

Is this an area where the Committeman project would have any effect? who decides? and lastly GOOD LUCK at making real change and taking back your party!

The value of open primaries is highly suspect. I believe it is less likely to draw people into a party than it is to have crossovers/moderates pick the less conservative candidate. The GOP cannot win as conservative lite and has gotten slaughtered everywhere it has tried that approach. Rove’s approach of building on your base is how parties win elections (Bush in 2000, 2004, Obama in 2008).

…being forced to let your neighbor sleep with your wife.

Or, in the compact but accurate wit of a fellow biker, “It’s dumbassery.”

Democrats can flood in and hand a win to the weakest Republican candidate. Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos was a perfect example of how to tamper with a primary.
Open primaries gave us John McCain.

Neil,

Jon Fleischman over at the Flash Report at least tries to “spin” this move as a long term strategy for the health of the party. Jon’s words paint a nice picture that attempts to smoke screen the real reasons for this move, you’re a bit more open about your reasons for your support of the move.

But the one key point is the question of growth or death of the Republican party in CA as reflected in the increase in Decline to State registrations. What’s the trend line and how does this move effect that trend.

Fleishman openly argues for a less inclusive party, one that reflects his views, one which nominates through the primary process candidates who reflect “ultimately centered around the idea that people with common ideas and beliefs”. Not sated but implied are who determines those common ideas and beliefs, a large segment of the population in an open primary or the views of a group of party activists. Your support for this move is very open and plain and you leave no doubt about your point of view on who should be nominated and why.

The argument over making this change seems to turn on the idea that by focusing on a set of core values, excluding all other, you can grow a party as the power of those values attract voters. Fleischman clearly believes his strategy will grow the party, and only time will tell if he’s correct or will locking down the primary process to only “real” Republicans continue the downward trend lines of CA Republican brand to minority status with more people leaving the party to become Independents and or Decline to State.

The real question that is not being discussed in any of this issue in CA and for that matter in the national scene is why are people becoming I’s or Decline to State, why are they not self identifying with the Republican party. Why are people not buying what the party is selling? It’s actually an argument that is seen on here on RS all the time with little resolution.

The move to close the CA primary probably will increase DTS registrations as more people will begin to echo some famous words from 1962, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party. The party left me.” Maybe that’s a good thing in some folks view, with the Republican brand standing for something they believe in or not standing at all.

It will be interesting to see how this matter turns out, given that the meeting is in your back yard so to speak, guess you’ll give a first hand account.

A GOP-only primary electorate will prevent an operation chaos, but it’s not going to stop a Carly Fiorina or Meg Whitman from winning. DeVore’s main problem is that he can’t raise enough money to compete. McCain won a closed primary as did Pete Wilson a bunch of times. And no one could have beaten Arnold in 2006-even if it had been a closed primary. So a closed primary is no magic formula.

Still, you are probably right that down ticket, it will have some beneficial effects.

the problem with the CA Republican party has nothing to do with open or closed primaries. I signed up to volunteer for my county republican party over two weeks ago and I have not been contacted. I live in the 11th distrcit which I have saw swing from R to D in 2006. I am so fired up to help retake the seat that I volunteered for the first time in my life. Imaging my surprise when I can find no mention of a candidate to run against the incumbent, and I have yet to hear back from anyone from the party.

Disgusted by this lack of a excitement and no response, and also the general inability of the Republican party to act fiscally conservative, I decided to check out what the Libertarian party had going on. They responded to my email immediately with a welcoming and enthusiastic message.

to vote will have the effect of moving Party to the right. It doesn’t eliminate Democra/media mischief, but it helps to reduce it.

because I think it’s a pretty basic principle that parties’ nominees for elective office should be decide by their members and no one else. But lets not kid ourselves here — we’ve lost nearly every major statewide race with conservatives and RINOs, with millionaire neophytes and with career politicians, with unknowns and with celebreties.

I was shocked over Whitman’s clueless gushing over the communist Van Jones. It seems that she really didn’t know a thing about him, but wanted an excuse to say how much she loves “green” nonsense. She is now off my list. So it the tax hiker Poizner.

The problem is the way “government interference” is defined.

The Democrats have succeeded in reducing “governmental interference” in private affairs to strictly sex-related behavior. The have also succeeded in convincing much of the public that “social conservatives” have a monopoly on “interference in private affairs”.

Specifically, abortion and gay marriage are now the sole determinent of whether one is viewed as supporting governmental interference in private affairs, for all practical purposes. Either you support the unrestricted right to abortions and gay marriage or you are an evil social conservative who wants government in the bedroom.

(Pornography seems to have lost its power mainly because it’s hard to get most of the electorate really riled up about it, and the drug laws against marijuana are mostly federal, I think, so this doesn’t carry much weight, that is, the drug issue crosses left-right lines anyway; it’s the sex issues that absorbs the press).

And I think even gay marriage is going to shrink in controversy within the next decade as the issue gets resolved at the ballot box or as state courts rule.

Which really means for all practical purpose, the whole issue of government interference boils down to abortion.

My point here is two-fold:

1) First, you’re not going to get opponents to shut up about abortion. This is an issue that is not going away because it’s literally a life-and-death issue.

Furthermore, the pro-life position primariliy is about protecting the life and rights of our most vulnerable population, not about trying to get into bedrooms.

2) Rather, the point is to change the ground rules, just like Dick Cheney refuses to accept the biased definition that his interviewers try to force upon him.

There was a poster earlier today who made an excellent comment regarding just which side of the political spectrum believes in government interference in private affairs. He notes how the left/Democrats want the government to expand its power over our health care choices (Keep your laws off my body! should be our rallying cry, not the left’s!), about the food we eat, the cars we drive, and almost every other sphere of activity except for abortion (and again, as argued above, charging pro-lifers as government interventionist is a false charge).

And opposition to gay marriage is more about preserving a 3,000+-year status quo and really can’t be construed as “government in the bedroom”; it’s the “pro” side that wants to change the government’s role. (I don’t want to theadjack and start another pointless debate over gay marriage, just to say that accusing opponents of wanting government in the bedroom specifically should be out of bounds.)

Conversely, it is primarily the modern right and Republicans who want the government out of our lives.

What we need to do is to push back and shout from the rooftops in areas of people’s lives how the Democrats want government to run our lives – rather than allowing the argument to be solely centered around sex – and specifically around abortion.

For instance, on Cap-and-Trade, let’s talk about how the law will bring government regulation of every device with a motor, How ObamaCare will expose our private medical records to government bureaucrats and the IRS. Or the efforts to create thought-crimes, and all the other government-coerced social engineering that the left is advocating.

We should be attacking the privacy violators of the left, their advocacy of government interference, not allow ourselves to be put on the defensive. It’s late, but we’ve got to change the rules.