San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Seeking rebound, GOP ties Dems to socialists
California party blasts economic plans as extreme
SACRAMENTO — The California Republican Party is moving toward a two-pronged strategy for returning from electoral Siberia: Talking about how unaffordable California has become, while tearing into Democrats as socialists proposing extreme solutions for economic inequality.
Freshman Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who claims a democratic socialist label, and California Sen. Kamala Harris, one of several Democratic presidential candidates competing for progressives’ votes, have replaced Al Gore as reliable punch lines this weekend among the 1,383 delegates gathered at the party’s threeday convention.
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, a nonbinding resolution calling for a carbon-free U.S. energy landscape within a decade, is a juicy target for small government conservatives as it also includes a guarantee of universal health cov-
erage and government support for making college affordable for all. It contains no cost estimates or funding sources.
“What the Democrats are trying to do with the Green New Deal is begin the process of turning us into a socialist nation,” Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney — daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — told the convention Saturday in a speech that received a standing ovation.
And, Cheney continued, when people see Harris’ presidential campaign slogan, “For the people,” “I want you to remember that her real agenda is to take power from the people and give it to the federal government.”
But Cheney was light on specific prescriptions for how the California Republicans win back an electorate that has abandoned them over the past two decades. The party has no statewide elected officials and no ability to block legislation in the state Assembly or Senate. Just seven of California’s 53 House members are Republicans, nearly all of them from inland areas with few population centers.
Some Republicans mingling in the Sacramento Convention Center said the party needs to spend less time mocking Democrats and responding to — or defending — President Trump, and more on telling people what the party stands for.
San Diego-area businessman John Cox, who lost the governor’s race last year to Gavin Newsom, is working on a project to help reach independent voters dissatisfied with liberal Democratic policies that he said have contributed to the high cost of housing in California.
“As a party, I believe housing affordability is the best issue we can concentrate on,” said Cox, who said he will reveal details about his project within 60 days. “Voters need to know why their rent is so high.”
At the same time, Cox said, Democrats have “given us a gift” by electing people like Ocasio-Cortez.
“Socialism doesn’t work, and (Democrats) are not afraid of it,” Cox said. “If they look at history, they can look at Venezuela now, they can look at Cuba, they can look at what happened in Argentina. Competition and free markets deliver better products and better services. That has been proven over millennia.”
Former GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, who retired from his San Diego-area seat last year after nine terms, said that “in California, crazy left is in.”
He said Newsom and legislative Democrats are already speeding leftward, giving Republicans a chance to be the “sensible alternative” for voters outside the GOP base. “We have to be ready when they fail. Socialism always fails,” Issa said, referencing a line from Trump’s recent State